I wrote and recorded these songs in the attic of a house in Newport, Rhode Island. My family took refuge in that house after making the hard decision to leave where we were living in Madrid when the pandemic got so bad in the city that they closed all the parks and declared that our children wouldn’t be allowed to leave our apartment. We couldn’t get back home to Santa Fe, though, and so we relied on the kindness of friends for housing, first in Newport and then in Taos. I felt an incredible mix of emotions, as did many of us, in those earlyish days of the pandemic. Relief, gratitude, fear, frustration, love. I also noticed more beauty in the world than maybe ever before, the slow coming of Spring, the leafing of the great Elm trees, the changing ocean, Sarah, our children.

I started writing songs to comfort my kids, my parents, Sarah, and me. I’d go up into the attic early in the morning, before Jackson and Noah woke up, and I’d stay up there until I heard them moving around. I didn’t intend to make a record initially. But writing felt important to me for the first time in a long while, and I wrote quickly (also for the first time in a long while). In fact, I wrote a song a day for a few days, and I made little videos from our house, which I posted online. The first song I wrote was “Gonna Win the War.” The final song was “When the World Sits Still.” My longtime sideman and good friend Jordan Katz was the first to suggest I record the songs for real, and so I reached out to Will Robertson, another dear old friend and collaborator. Over the next month or so, I finished writing the songs and began recording them on a single mic, which I had taken with me to (and then from) Spain. I had my Gibson LG-1 and a beat up thirdhand classical guitar that I bought in a suburb of Madrid from a man who was at least half blind and spoke no English. I also had Jackson’s ukulele and a harmonica. So those are the tools that made up the core of this album. I got Sarah and our boys to sing on a couple of songs. Later Will added some beautiful textures in his studio in Atlanta, Jordan played horns and banjo in Los Angeles. And the great Bill Titus sent in some French Horn from New York.

The album initially came out only in digital form. I wasn’t sure at the time when I’d play shows again, so virtual seemed the only appropriate medium. But as the world staggers back into some kind of motion again, I’ve decided to release a vinyl edition. I want people to be able to hold this album in their hands and sit with these songs, because I believe that just as music can hold people, music should be held. I think of this album a little like a prayer. Writing and recording the songs did feel a bit like praying. In fact, the first lyric calls on us to “wake up in the early light,” and the record ends with an “amen.” I don’t know when (or if) the world will return to anything resembling what it looked like before. And in many ways, I hope it never does. These songs are my reminder that we don’t have to rush back into old patterns. That we can strive to be better. Most of my music is an attempt to find hope and heart within the pain and challenges of this life, but I don’t know if any set of my songs does so quite as much as this album. We all needed to find the light in one of the darker most uncertain times in most of our memories, and these songs are my best attempt at creating something that shines.