Jerry Sword and David Price

Jerry Sword and David Price have known each other since the seventh grade, growing up in Russell County, Virginia, and attending Lebanon High School together. From the beginning, they shared the same pull toward music and the same restless curiosity to learn how songs were built. That early connection grew into a lifelong friendship, even as time and circumstance eventually carried them in different directions.

For many years, the two lost touch. Life moved on, as it tends to do. When they reconnected in 2024, the years between them seemed to vanish almost immediately. The conversation picked up where it had left off, and before long, music found its way back into the room. Writing together again felt natural, familiar, and inevitable.

Out of that reunion came Deep Black Water, written and performed by Sword and Price and produced by Sword’s son, Johnny Sword. True to their roots, the project stayed close to family and friends, with several longtime collaborators contributing to the recording. The song is a Southern narrative steeped in heartbreak, deception, and the quiet severing of ties, where love gives way to consequence and the past is left to sink into still water.

The accompanying video was filmed along the shores of South Holston Lake, in southwest Virginia, a setting that mirrors the song’s sense of finality and unease. Deep Black Water is a story shaped by place, memory, and the enduring bond between two friends who found their way back to the music they loved, and they are proud to share it with anyone willing to listen.