Never let it be said that A.J. Croce used nepotism as a crutch towards crafting his own solo career.
As the son of late singer-songwriter Jim Croce, it would have been easy for the former to come out of the gate trading on his father’s legacy and canon. Instead, A.J. Croce kicked off his career with a self-titled 1993 debut produced by storied names T-Bone Burnett and John Simon that was a 12-song jazz outing that cracked the Top 10 jazz charts.
Three decades-plus later, the younger Croce is getting ready to release his forthcoming 11th album in 2025, the Shooter Jennings-produced “Heart of the Eternal.” And while it’s not slated to drop until the first week of March, fans get a taste of where Croce’s muse has led him via the first single “Complications of Love.” Croce, who will be appearing with John Oates at Flagstar at Westbury on Dec. 6, is rightfully proud of this slinky Latin-flavored shuffle, particularly given the fact that he got to work on this and the rest of the album with his touring band and old friend Jennings.
“I wanted to share something that was a little bit of a sneak peek of something new that’s a little different and a bit of an outlier from the rest of the record and it just has an interesting vibe,” Croce said. “I hadn’t seen Shooter in something like 20 years, so I cold-called him and asked if he would be into doing a record. He said he just took over Studio 3 at Sunset Sound and he’d love for this to be the first record. I sent him a few raw demos and that was that. We dove in and had a blast.”
Croce and Jennings go back to the ‘90s, when the former wound up being introduced to the late Waylon Jennings when both were playing consecutive nights at L.A.’s House of Blues (“I remember Waylon came backstage wearing one of my t-shirts and I was like, ‘Oh my God’). And while Croce subsequently met the Highwayman’s progeny Shooter as a shy and sweet 16-year-old, he’s thrilled to have gotten to have spent the week working on the new album with the older version.
Having worked with an array of storied producers that include the aforementioned Burnett and Simon as well as Mitchell Froom, Jim Keltner and Dan Penn, Croce is quick to point out how Jennings’ instincts and studio prowess fit in neatly alongside those other studio wizards.
“Like all those other producers I worked with, Shooter has that ability to work around the idea of a creative happy accident,” Croce explained. “It doesn’t matter if it’s written in black and white with whatever arrangements or players may be lined up, if something beautiful happens in the process, Shooter has no problem saying, ‘That’s really cool. Let’s keep that and work around that idea.’ We have different tastes in things, but I think they really complemented each other in what we were trying to accomplish with this. We have a lot in common and just really connected.”
One of those things both men have in common is not only being the second generation of accomplished musical fathers, but how both blazed their own paths while eschewing the pitfalls of being nepo-babies reliant on their respective parents’ own legacies. It’s a sentiment Croce agreed with when it was presented to him.
“We both worked for anything we accomplished,” Croce said. “Neither of us had an inheritance and it was different than some people’s experiences being second generation.”
That said, Croce’s last tour was the “Croce Plays Croce 50th Anniversary Tour,” which found him playing a complete set of classics by his late father mixed in with some of his own songs. For the Pennsylvania native, the choice to dip into the Jim Croce catalog was a long time coming and one he admits required him holding off on regardless of how financially unwise it may have been to wait so long to go down this path.
“I had grown up with my father’s records, and the huge influence I felt was predominantly from the music he owned—his record collection,” Croce said. “Working with Leon Russell, we connected on all this music and I realized that he and my father were the same age, the same generation. They were listening to older music and finding a way to turn their influences into something completely original. I think it was in that moment I recognized that it was something I had in common with my father—this deep love of music in a way that didn’t matter that it wasn’t about recognition. It was about the pure love of this art. Just when no one expected me to play my father’s music is when it became fun to play.”
Croce will be appearing with John Oates on Dec. 6 at Flagstar at Westbury at 960 Brush Hollow Road in Westbury. For more information, visit livenation.com or call 877-598-8497.
