Jack Ingram

Jack Ingram is a Texas-born country singer whose records have earned both critical and peer adoration, and spawned massive hit singles. Emerging in the 1990s with a slew of well-received but commercially inert outings, the modern-day honky tonker didn’t find major success until 2005 with the release of the single “Wherever You Are,” which climbed to number one on the Billboard Country charts. “Love You,” “Lips of an Angel,” “Measure of a Man,” and “That’s a Man” kept Ingram in the Country Top 40 over the next five years, with “Barefoot and Crazy” giving him a second Country Top Ten in 2009. From that point forward, Ingram pursued an independent route, re-emerging in 2016 with Midnight Motel on Rounder Records, but a collaborative album with Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall called The Marfa Tapes brought him back to the top of the Country charts in 2021.
Ingram first carved out a niche for himself in the bars and roadhouses between Dallas and Houston. By the mid-’90s, after extensive touring with his Beat Up Ford Band, he had released two well-received independent albums and had opened for artists like Merle Haggard and Mark Chesnutt. The end of 1996 brought about a deal with Warner, which reissued his first two indie albums, and in 1997 issued his major-label debut, Livin' or Dyin'. Moving to Sony’s Lucky Dog label in 1999, Ingram released his fifth roots rock album, Hey You. Three years later, he hooked up with Lee Ann Womack’s producer Frank Liddell for Electric. Young Man, a compilation of recordings of many of his earliest songs, and Live at Gruene Hall: Happy Happy both arrived in 2004.
Live: Wherever You Are, a live recording featuring two studio singles, was released in 2006 and was his first for Big Machine Records, a label operated by record executive Scott Borchetta and fellow country crooner Toby Keith — the title cut would go on to become both Ingram’s and Big Machine’s first number one hit. A second release from Big Machine, This Is It, followed in 2007 and included the hits “Love You” and “Lips of an Angel.” Big Dreams & High Hopes, his eighth studio LP, appeared in 2009. The album produced two modest hits — “That’s a Man,” which preceded the set’s release, and “Barefoot and Crazy,” which went to ten on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart — but the record stalled at 21 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart.
Ingram left Big Machine in 2011 and spent the following five years slowly working on the folk-rock material that became Midnight Motel, the album he issued on Rounder in 2016. After its August release, it debuted at 24 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. In 2019, he released his tenth full-length effort and second outing for Rounder, the swaggering Ridin' High...Again, which marked a return to the dusty outlaw honky tonk of his earlier works. In 2021, he teamed up with Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall for the spare, intimate The Marfa Tapes. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine