NEW ALBUM Dreaming Aloud Is Out Friday 6/12!

Friends,

The big day is almost here. My tenth album, Dreaming Aloud drops in two days.

I want you each to know how grateful I am that, at some point, you took a chance on coming to a show of mine, bought an album, heard a song somewhere, and thought enough of it to ask to hear more from me via this newsletter.

I wrote a bit about the origins of the album, below. But the TLDR is: thank you. I am deeply, deeply grateful for your support. Also, I believe in you - I believe in us: humans. We have the power to dream and the power to create. Don’t let anyone tell you those things are not enough to move us forward. They actually 100% are, when we commit to them. I know that’s not a popular viewpoint these days, but I’ve seen enough people do enough amazing things that I stand by it. Thank you for helping me commit to creating this record.

Pre-Order Dreaming Aloud on Bandcamp

Stream Dreaming Aloud

If you were a Kickstarter supporter, THANK YOU! I sent an update yesterday via Kickstarter with a download of the album and a note that your physical rewards are on the way!

Here’s a little preview of one of my favorite songs from the album: I Wanna Be Love.

Getting to spend your whole adult life making music can be many things - a phenomenal blessing, a spiritual journey, a kick in the teeth. If you stick with it long enough, hopefully it becomes a decision to choose authenticity over slickness again and again. Like Lucinda sang, “take the glory any day over the fame”. Or if you’ve been to a show of mine lately, you’ve heard me sing “I’m in it for the Love”. Nothing but that pure soul motivation will truly sustain you in this kind of work.

Nevertheless, we all have demons, and while mine aren’t of the obvious trash-the-hotel-room or do-lines-backstage variety, they still exist. There has been for many years a constant pushing in my head telling me I have to prove something - to whom, I don’t know. The people who liked that one album but not the one after it? The guy in the green shirt in the 7th row? The 9 year old dressed as a linebacker who lives in my head and gets in my face every time I want to take a risk?

When I started writing Dreaming Aloud, I was ready to stop trying to prove something. I wanted to go deeper - or to just be deeper. Not harder, not pushier, just deeper and more true. I wanted to let everything breathe. I wanted to say what I felt and leave plenty of space around my voice when I said it, trusting that whatever truth I spoke was going to reach the right ears, even if green shirt guy or the little linebacker in my head didn’t understand it.

I had been playing around with alternate tunings and when someone leant me a baritone acoustic and I tuned it to AEADEA, something new opened up for me sonically. The chord shapes and resonance were deeper and broader. It was like discovering a room in your house you never knew was there - a sun room full of plants with diffused light and a faded chaise lounge - a dream-like space - and now that you’ve found it, you’d like to spend some time there.

I called Feathers and told him I wanted to make something like a cross between Astral Weeks and Led Zeppelin II. Spacious and maybe a little trippy and also like a sledgehammer when necessary. Because he’s the coolest ever and one of the most genuinely creative people I’ve ever met, he was down with it.

In the studio, I decided, maybe for the first time in my life, to really trust the process, and it felt magical. We just got to try things and try other things and keep playing around until we found the right things. It may sound like a small victory but I wasn’t worried about anything. I was there for the experiment. The musicians who joined us — Luke Leverett, Colin Brooks, John Chipman, John Pointer, Betty Soo, Pat Byrne, Sheridan Roalson — brought total presence to their performances. Seasoned pros, at the tops of their respective games, just enjoying creating together. There’s nothing better. They were so generous with their ideas, their musicianship. It was, again, like a dream, to create this way.

We live in a time when grief and fear are everywhere. There’s a lot of bullshit telling us we should give up. We’re too late. We’re doomed. Fuck that. I made Dreaming Aloud as an act of resistance — and as an invitation. To sit down. To ask questions. It might take a minute to deal with what comes up, but I’m telling you from experience, if you take a moment to feel and express the hard shit, you will come back stronger. And that matters - to the people around you, and the people around them. Over and over again I hear Patti Smith’s voice singing “People have the power”. We truly do. We are the damn people. That means we can change things, and it can start with simply noticing where you are, what you’re feeling, and being honest with yourself about it. Believing that healing ripples outward. Sharing it with someone you trust. Dreaming Aloud is me sharing those things with you.

The thing I want most in life is to use my work to give you, the listeners, permission to feel, to be alive. Feeling alive, claiming your space, trusting you came here for a reason - these are acts of love for the world. And despite all the noise and robots and uncertainty, despite the scared little linebackers, love is still, stubbornly, the best that we can do.