Reigning Sound, Greg Cartwright’s main gig for the last 20 years, has been consistently the best in the game since their inception mostly because Greg is a really good songwriter. I have a hard time writing about what makes music good because I am a bad musician. And by musician I mean guy that took guitar lessons from a very old Shriner named Bill Wampler when I was 14 who taught me to play “the boogie woogie,” which was apparently “all I needed to know.” He wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t stick either way.

So I barely know what makes someone a great songwriter, it seems like everyone starts with the same foundation and the cool part is spotting the standouts among a bunch of people doing the same thing. You know the good stuff when you hear it, or at least you hope to, there’s obviously no accounting for taste. 

Reigning Sound is one of those bands that stood out though. I first heard them during the time I was supposed to be in college (sorry coastal elites, I quit because I can’t do math), when my friend Chaz played “Get It” from Too Much Guitar on YouTube for me. It might be one of the first YouTube videos I had ever seen. It was a very choppy and pixelated man dancing to the song. I think he was wearing a red shirt. After we watched it Chaz said “every song on this album is loud” and I bought the record that week.

Not an amazing story, but this is a band that you remember when you hear them. Plenty of music drifts through the background in commercials or at the grocery store. Good music too! But some bands have that special extra kick.

I bought most of their other records after that and it’s a fun catalog to dig around. You can hear the progression as you go. The first couple records stick to clean sounds and incredibly catchy guitar pop. The lineup shifted a little after a move from Memphis to North Carolina and they blew out the speakers on Too Much Guitar maybe to reset, maybe just because it sounded cool.

Then there was a mellowing with age, the country sounds started to be more prominent, but the hooks never stopped being dead on. The Reigning Sound song spectrum mostly goes from shit kicking rock n roll to melancholy country, two of the best kinds of songs. They did them both better than most.

They announced they’re calling it a day on Instagram and Twitter an cited Covid-19 as the reason they’re not able to complete what was supposed to be their final tour. 

They reunited the original Memphis lineup and it was supposed to be a victory lap for a band that paid dues and earned the celebration. Outside forces cut the legs out, ending a 20+ year run for one of the great bands left.

Since I have been alive people have said rock n roll is a living corpse, and maybe it is 99 out of 100 times. A huge element of the creation process is taking what you have inside and sharing it with as little interference or static as possible. That’s hard to do in the music industry, and that world is hard on authenticity. Reigning Sound always sounded like themselves though; no matter what trends came or went, they gave us what was inside them at that very moment. If we’re lucky Greg Cartwright will go on to do another project soon, but that’s just me being a selfish fan. No doubt whatever happens next will be a decision as thoughtful as his music.

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