By Craig Horleman

Wyoming musician Rezac keeps humming along

By Craig Horleman

Daily State News

WYOMING — The beat doesn’t stop for Jim Rezac.

After more than 30 years making music, the well-known singer/songwriter is busier than ever, writing his own tunes, garnering accolades, getting a song in a movie and performing in festivals around the East Coast.

In August, Mr. Rezac plays the 11-day Musikfest in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for the fifth straight year. And, in September, he will perform at the Rochester (New York) Fringe Festival, where he takes the Rochester Music Hall of Fame stage.

He’ll also be seen at Harvest Ridge Winery in Marydel on July 6, at Tre Sorelle Dolce in Wyoming on July 7 and at the Wyoming Peach Festival on Aug. 3.

What’s nice about it all, he said, is that he’s performing on his terms.

“I’ve tried to talk myself out of this about 11 times. Like, ‘OK, you missed the boat,’ or I didn’t have a voice. But I wasn’t writing music 30 years ago like I am now. It was only about 13 years ago that I started writing my own stuff,” he said.

“And it’s not only staying fun; it’s getting more and more fun.”

He moved to Dover with his family from the New York City area when he was 8 and graduated from then-Holy Cross High School, said the 66-year-old Mr. Rezac.

Spending a few years in the Philadelphia vicinity, he returned to Dover in the early 1990s, joining bands such as The Coyotes and playing with the likes of Deloy Moore and Ossi Becke.

Though pleased being part of cover bands, Mr. Rezac said entertaining didn’t really begin to click for him until he formed the group Runaway Train in 2011 and began to write songs.

Over the past couple years, he’s been recording music from his small studio in Wyoming, where he also gives piano and guitar lessons.

“I do all my own recording because I don’t have the budget to go into a big studio. So, I’ve been learning to record for the last year-and-a-half, and you can tell, if you listen to the stuff that I recorded a year-and-a-half ago to now, ... it’s like ‘Oh, he got better,’” he said with a laugh.

Mr. Rezac’s music — which he terms “indie garage” because he says it really can’t be pigeonholed into a one genre — can be heard on Spotify and YouTube by searching for his name. He also posts on the Facebook page Jim Rezac Music and on Twitch at Delacaster.

Putting his pieces on the web has resulted in exposure he never thought possible, including an upcoming film.

“I heard from a young guy in (Los Angeles) named Jermey Ashley, who said, ‘I have a movie called “Meathook,” and I’d like to use your song “Tryin’ to Be an Angel” in the film,’” Mr. Rezac said.

Being released later this year, the horror movie’s synopsis reads, “Two years after the horrific massacre of her friends by an infamous killer, recluse Jordyn grapples with her past. When a string of similar murders occurs, Jordyn must face her fears head-on with the help of a true-crime podcaster.”

“When I saw the trailer, I thought it was good. The production was good, and there are no actors you’ve ever heard of, but they were good,” Mr. Rezac said.

“I said to him, ‘If you don’t mind me asking, where are you going to use (my song)? The credits or something like that?’ He said, ‘No, towards the end of the movie, when the heroine is walking into the house, where the killer’s laying in wait for her,’ and I’m like, ‘That’s good.’ I was getting goose bumps,” Mr. Rezac said.

His music is also featured in the podcast “Muckey Landing,” a comedy about a fictional town in Delaware and the comings and goings of its eccentric citizens. The show is produced by local actors, and Mr. Rezac creates the score.

For such work, in 2021, he took home the award for Best Theme Song at the New Jersey Web Fest, an annual gathering celebrating achievement in independent films and fiction podcasts. “Muckey Landing” also won the Outstanding Comedy Podcast award there.

“There were hundreds of people from Greenland, U.K., Colorado. I’m channeling Tom Waits and Leon Redbone on this. I’m up against all this great competition, and I won. I almost fell out of my chair. I really did not expect to win something like that,” he said.

He was also involved in Make Music Day on June 21, part of a global effort that celebrated music for the summer solstice.

As part of the initiative, he was paired with Nigerian musician Isaac Blessed Odiachi who covered his song “Paper Cup,” while Mr. Rezac recorded a version of his song, called “Tongues of Fire.”

Meanwhile, the first studio recording of Mr. Rezac’s original music arrived digitally in March and on CD in May. Called “Telescope,” it’s an eight-song EP, which followed a live album in 2012.

And he continues to write and record in various genres. His latest song, “I Don’t Feel So Good,” has influences of hip-hop and gospel. It will be released on Spotify on July 30.

“I’ve written so much that it’s like anything else you do — it becomes habit. I wake up more often than not thinking about what I’m going to write about next. I’ve barely got an eye open, and something’s floating through my head. I always have to make sure if it’s something that has flowed into my head because it’s an existing song, or I have some sort of a nucleus of a melody,” he said.

“Lately, weeks will go by before I come up with something. But that’s OK because I have so many ideas that I go to,” he said. “I haven’t had what they call ‘writer’s block.’ I don’t know what that is yet.”