When you think of a singer-songwriter, who comes to mind? Nathan Graham says it probably isn’t somebody who looks like he does. And he wants to change that. Raised in Chicago on Prince and Earth, Wind & Fire, Graham bridges South Side Blues with Nashville Americana to deliver a bittersweet and soulful sound.

Starting out backing blues singers at famous haunts like Buddy Guy’s Legends and Kingston Mines, he spent a decade building his career as a guitar-for-hire before forming bands to perform his own music and lyrics. But it took a bit of convincing to overcome self-doubt as a singer. Some advice from his mother eventually pushed him forward: “All you have to do is open up your mouth, and project.”

What Graham projects now are stories of the human condition, somehow both achingly painful and exquisitely comforting. His guitars convey heartbreak, lyrics tell stories of regret, but his rich vocal delivery offers the remedy.

He puts it altogether on debut record Saint of Second Chances, where his guitars reach from delicate and pristine to reverberatingly powerful. Tracks like “Good Honest Man” speak frankly about the urge to give up on love rather than risk loss, while “Fake Friends” offers a stomping, nostalgic rhythm behind some anxious self-reflection: “Saw you going down, down in flames / Well I guess I just didn’t know that I was doing the same.”

“I wrote a record about the human condition of having anxiety, having feelings of love and being scared to lose that, or scared that you’re going to screw it up somehow—or they’re going to screw it up somehow,” he says. “I want the audience to go on that journey with me. To sometimes be sad, and sometimes be joyful. I want us all to be walking through that journey with each other.”