thedailytimes.com : Your 24/7 news source

After Hurricane Katrina forced his family to evacuate from their Louisiana hometown 20 miles north of New Orleans, Michael Ford Jr. turned to the guitar for solace.

Not because he wanted to express himself therapeutically -- the 18-year-old wasn't devastated by the disaster, although it did send his world into a tailspin of continuing change. He did it because he was lonely, he told The Daily Times this week.

"New Orleans is a city that's really rich in the arts, so I was exposed at a young age to music and the visual arts -- just the whole spectrum," Ford said. "I lived in that area until I was 18, and my family would go to jazz and music festivals, so the arts were a big part of our lives.

"Up until Katrina, I had played bass in bands around town, and I played guitar some, but I wasn't really interested in it until we moved to Florida. There, I was isolated and by myself and didn't know anybody, so I started writing songs to offset the loneliness."

Shortly thereafter, Ford moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University, where he met his future bandmate, Michael Harris. They lived in the same dorm during their freshman year, often playing music together -- Harris on guitar and Ford on drums, jamming to Jimi Hendrix songs.

After Ford moved out of the dorm, the two lost touch, but two years later when Ford was seeking a band to accompany him on songs he had been writing, a mutual acquaintance told him that Harris had formed a bluegrass band called The Apache Relay.

"He thought they would be really good for the songs that I was writing," Ford said. "They were their own band before I met them, and I was doing my thing on the side. When we came together, it was so much better than what we were doing apart."

Within a few months, the combined musical forces -- now known as Michael Ford Jr. and The Apache Relay -- were ready to enter the studio. They did so on May 16, and because Ford was born in 1988, he decided to make that year the title of his album as well.

"I wanted to call it that because I feel all of the songs -- where I was at musically and as a lyricist and the whole deal -- was being kind of reborn," he said. "I find that when I write songs and produce them all by myself, it's really one dimensional. Playing with these guys has been really helpful, and the songs and ideas on the record are drastically different from how they started. They've helped make the songs three-dimensional."

Ford and The Apache Relay have earned a number of comparisons to The Avett Brothers, and for good reason -- after all, Avetts collaborator Joe Kwon even plays on some of the "1988" tracks. But there's a distinct buoyancy to the material on "1988" that's optimistic where the Avetts are introspective. Ford's vocals hover somewhere between those of singer-songwriter Brett Dennen and singer Caleb Followill of Kings of Leon on that band's gentler songs. The instrumentation adds a layer of intricacy that sparkles like baguette diamonds, prettiness that adds to the compositions without detracting from the shiny stone at the center of the whole thing.

"My goal as a songwriter is to just be honest," Ford said. "It's also to write songs that have some sort of light and good in them. I guess that's really my main goal, because I want other people to enjoy the music as well. I want to be honest, and songwriting is the only time I can be completely open and unguarded with someone."