Pandemic years took so much from us.

 
While the world was witnessing deaths of millions due to a highly contagious virus, most of the lives lost around me were to suicide & drugs. Faces i hadn’t been able to see for a long time no longer had faces & the final memories between us consisted of short text message check-ins, heart emojis or songs shared between friends struggling to come up with proper words to help each other wade through the swamps of our shared reality. 

The years also took away my ability to wrap up the final piece of the Sad, Fat Luck trilogy “Bring Us The Head of Francisco False”. With all scheduling with Factor thrown out the window - I felt trapped in a creative, personal & professional limbo. 

A lot of this guitar album was started shortly before & during lockdown while i lived in Glassell Park, east side of Los Ángeles. Across the country from my family, living in a house with my manager, her boyfriend & a lovely woman who understandably no longer wished to be a chronically depressed musician’s partner. Dreams turned to letdowns, the world was on fire, nothing happened as we had wished nor imagined. 
After our quiet, peaceful relationship disintegrated, I helped her move to Long Beach then mostly locked myself in a room, ordered excessive vegan food & played guitar like I was 13 years old and listening to In Utero for the first time. Time didn’t matter the way it used to. 
Not sure if it’s true, but it felt like I stayed in bed for weeks at a time on some Brian Wilson shit - between livestreams, reading or watching celebrities ruin the song “Imagine” on TV. It felt as if i was doing nothing. But, as it did in prison, nostalgia would slap me in heavy waves. The dreams were a little more vivid & memories of youth began to reappear clearly. 
I started to write songs that reminded me of simpler times, of the grunge, indie rock or punk of tween years. Songs that unearthed pain from youth that had not yet been confronted. 

I wrote & wrote - attempting to analyze what was happening around us in a world crumbling before our eyes. 

In one case it took me 7 months to finish a nearly 8 minute song about the domestication of humans by a manipulative, violent capitalist power structure.


I remember talking on the phone to Patrick the Rabbit about that concept - explaining that it felt more like a history essay and how I needed to somehow chisel it into a song. My minor obsession with the frightening lunacy surrounding the Q-Anon movement inspired me to finish that song. 

Then…there was writing about that everlasting fog of grief that still required clarity & understanding. 
Grief - that giant tortoise of a process - one that drags itself in & out of our hearts & minds until we ultimately find pockets of temporary relief within the harshness of existence. 

Heaven & Lucky were part of processing the deaths of dear friends. Nod Off was a reminder of multiple situations in my life, how badly it hurt to love an addict while feeling completely helpless watching them slowly kill themselves. 
Teach a Rat to Fish was specifically written for my good friends Bobby & Pepe who are in federal prison right now. 
I can go on and on but…
that’s the album you’re listening to…

When i drove across the country, numb, back to CT from LA - i set up recording sessions with Jon Conine who had recorded the split album with Pat. 
We started June 2020 with live takes, i would return and attempt to capture the best live takes until one struck. Jon Conine & Steve Hill were extremely patient during this process as I tried to record the same songs over & over week after week. The final pieces of the album were recorded in October 2021 with added help from Patrick Dalton before being meticulously mixed / post-produced by Baz The Frenchman in Los Ángeles then mastered by Michael J Collins of Filthybroke Recordings.


Processing, gratitude, reminders, growth in guitar song form…is what you’re listening to here. 
It would never have been complete without the cast of incredibly talented musicians I’m proud to call friends & family. 

So much has been taken from us…
But even the guitars stolen from me still live on records. 

It’s just a reminder that they’ll never take everything from us.

credits: released November 5, 2021