R.J. Carter Opens ANOTHER SECOND CHAPTER as New Album Drops on Streaming Services

After months of writing, recording, revising, mastering, and learning considerably more about digital music distribution than he ever expected to know, R.J. Carter's Another Second Chapter is officially out.

The ten-track Americana album released digitally today, August 14, bringing together songs about fathers and sons, faith and failure, stubborn independence, lost years, second chances—and what might happen if somebody actually makes good on the threat to turn this truck around.

Another Second Chapter isn't an album about starting over. It's about realizing the story didn't end where you thought it did.

That idea is most explicit in the title track, but it runs throughout the record. “Days Ahead” and “Years Behind” look at life from opposite directions. “Self-Made Man” challenges the mythology contained in its own title. “Charity” considers what we owe one another, while “Rejected American Hero” looks at a very different kind of debt.

Then there's “The Boy I Told Goodbye,” the album's most intensely personal track.

Released earlier this month with a lyric/photo video, the song recounts a father's decision to surrender custody of his autistic son when the financial and institutional realities of obtaining the care he needed left no other workable choice. It isn't a fictional character study. Carter wrote the song from his own experience.

The album isn't uniformly somber.

“Car Girl” lightens the proceedings, while “(Turn This) Truck Around and Find Out” turns the classic parental warning into an unapologetic country-rock challenge. The latter appears twice—first as the studio recording and again as a live-styled closing performance.

“My Heart Belongs to Jesus (But)” finds room for faith, romance, and a title that probably requires hearing the song before passing judgment.

Carter wrote and developed the songs and served as studio producer on the project, using a mixture of digital production tools in bringing the finished recordings together. Generative technology was used as part of that process to supplement the audio performances and broaden the instrumentation available to the songs. The resulting tracks were subsequently edited, mastered, sequenced, and assembled into the finished album.

It's an unusual route to a debut album, perhaps, but Another Second Chapter is itself about taking unexpected routes.

For Carter—whose creative work has traditionally been associated with writing, publishing, comics, and Critical Blast—the record represents another outlet for stories that didn't necessarily belong on a printed page.

Some are funny. Some are angry. Some are deeply personal. And some took decades before he was ready to write them.

The physical CD has already been available directly, but as of today the digital edition is officially in the wild.

So this time, when somebody asks where they can hear it, there's finally an easy answer.

Everywhere.

Another Second Chapter by R.J. Carter is available now on Spotify and other major streaming and digital music services.

Listen to Another Second Chapter on Spotify

The story ain't done.