Light a candle, pour something strong, and let Gregory Ackerman take you to church. Not the fire-and-brimstone kind, but the smoky, dimly lit kind where the congregation is three deep and the groove hits your bones like a freight train. His new track “Call Me Crazy” is out, and it’s the kind of slow-burn rager that proves rock just went to sleep in a jazz club and woke up with a soul hangover.
This cut comes from the album Challenger Deep, a record that was literally captured to tape at the late, great Verdugo Sound Studios. And get this: Ackerman’s sessions were the first AND the last ever tracked in that room. That’s some full-circle magic right there. The whole thing was produced by Dillon Casey, and the trio in the room was tighter than a lug nut: Ackerman himself holding down the bass, Keenan McDaniels smacking the drums into submission, and Casey slinging guitar. Just three dudes in a room chasing the take that felt like THE ONE.
The track’s about that moment when someone shows you who they really are and you’re left standing there like an idiot trying to process the whiplash. Confusion, anger, doubt, acceptance—it’s all in there, tangled up in the groove. And because the music itself never settles into a predictable pocket, you feel that uncertainty in your chest.
This whole album was born from some seriously heavy soil. Ackerman wrote these songs between 2022 and 2024 while life was throwing haymakers. He married his wife Carly while her mom was battling stage 4 lung cancer. She passed the following year. Joy and grief, back to back, no breaks. The album title, Challenger Deep, refers to the deepest point on Earth—a place of crushing darkness. But even down there, life adapts. That’s the spirit of this record. And “Call Me Crazy” is the moment where the pressure turns into a groove. Gregory Ackerman just reminded us that sometimes the only way out of the darkness is to lean into it and let it ride.