Apparently I have a new blog! Well here goes.
My new CD, Let the Lonely Fade, has been my project for quite awhile now. I started writing these tunes back in NYC, which I left two years ago.
I think this project started when I began hunting down endless country records with which I often tortured roommates and neighbors. Merle Haggard, Lefty Frizzell, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Townes Van Zandt, Roy Acuff, Bill Anderson…the list could go on. I played this music until it was a world I could crawl into.
I’m really a kid from the country and I was in a big, big town. This music was my own private rebellion. The subway could rattle, the suits could hustle to make that meeting, but I had Merle hopping freight trains and George opening up the abyss all to myself on two little headphones.
I had made mostly loud rock music up until that point, but I felt the need to respond to what I was hearing. I wrote the title track after watching Crazy Heart and trying to imagine my own version of the theme song. I wrote “1000 Miles” and realized the neon sign I was singing about was the one I had heard about in Merle’s “Swinging Doors.” I heard Roy Acuff’s “Wreck on the Highway” and made a car crash sequel of sorts out of “Find Our Way Back Home.”
I started the album in NYC but ended up finishing the writing in Minneapolis. After I finished the CD I could hear so much of both places in it.
I’ve headed in all kinds of new directions since I made this CD, but honestly I can say I wrote this from way deep inside me, and out of a deep love and appreciation for all the music I’ve discovered along the way. Hope you enjoy it.
