The title of this new EP comes from the third verse of Gerry Stanek’s “Brakeman,” a straightforward murder ballad set to a pretty melody. Grease and Dust and Blood seems an apt metaphor for the themes that run through this collection. So, the hammer literally falls in “Brakeman” when the titular character kills the conductor. As train songs go, “

The title of this new EP comes from the third verse of Gerry Stanek’s “Brakeman,” a straightforward murder ballad set to a pretty melody. Grease and Dust and Blood seems an apt metaphor for the themes that run through this collection. So, the hammer literally falls in “Brakeman” when the titular character kills the conductor. As train songs go, “Brakeman” has some key ingredients, with references to The Little Engine That Could and Jack Kerouac’s “The Railroad Earth” chugging by in three-and-a-half minutes.

Gerry Stanek’s mind was wandering through books and women, through trains and Sir Isaac Newton when these tunes appeared. How do you make gravity analogous to a relationship that can’t be escaped? The answer comes in a song where wishes collapse into black holes, where book smarts won’t do much good in matters of the heart because we’re all held down by something. The singer finally asks, “Is Newton’s Law a tragedy?”

There are several avenues to dilemmas of the heart in Grease and Dust and Blood, and there’s plenty of atmosphere that’s more analog than digital. Something unmistakably real lives in these songs, all of them recorded on a Tascam 4-track cassette player. Something would be lost if this recording was polished and shiny. Gerry Stanek thinks in analog terms, what some might call old fashioned. You might find something analogous to your own dilemmas in the warmth of this collection. You can settle into it like a well-worn couch and find your own perfect spot. There might be some sad subject matter here, but somehow Gerry Stanek makes it feel comfortable, like he’s risen above it.

Gerry Stanek makes records rooted in his own raw vision of what rock and roll is supposed to be, where things are fast and gritty. “I write and record quickly,” he says, “because you can’t overthink something that already has a certain type of spirit when it shows up.” Stanek earned his musical stripes on the corner stages of VFWs and American

Gerry Stanek makes records rooted in his own raw vision of what rock and roll is supposed to be, where things are fast and gritty. “I write and record quickly,” he says, “because you can’t overthink something that already has a certain type of spirit when it shows up.” Stanek earned his musical stripes on the corner stages of VFWs and American Legion halls in Western Pennsylvania’s coal towns. Then he played bass and toured extensively with major label acts in the 90s: The Lost on Epic Records, and Outcry on Eureka/Polygram. There were lots of solo gigs in the city and on the Jersey Shore.

Gerry Stanek left the music business behind around the turn of the millennium and drove a tractor trailer for eight years. He also earned a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction after his final day in the truck. Three daughters showed up along the way, and he’s raising them in Greensboro, North Carolina.

In early 2021, Stanek began to write the songs that make up Heart in Peril: authentic roots rock with smart lyrics and what can only be called kinetic energy, the same type of energy that lives in the music he studies obsessively—Rockpile, Elvis Costello, JD McPherson—records with a clearly defined attitude that remain, somehow, intangible. As a fan and obsessive listener, Gerry Stanek craved music that lived in that same neighborhood. He says, “The only answer, at least for me, was to make my own songs to see if I could capture that thing I love so much.”

“Learned to Love” showed up first, at 4:30 in the morning on March 6, 2021, written at the kitchen table over a cup of coffee. That turned into a template and maybe it explains the swift two-step of “I Got My Wings.” The entirety of Heart in Peril is hopped up on caffeine and fueled by a will to make something real.