“What have you been up to recently?” people have asked me.
True, I’ve been quieter than usual for a couple of years. It wasn’t planned that way. Life kept happening, the way life does. Some parts euphoric, others not so much. But the songs, in splinters and scraps, half-formed or strangely complete, never stopped coming. In the bedroom, in the kitchen, in the car, in my barn. Late at night and in the early morning, when the house and dog have nodded off, and I should too but can’t.
Comes in Waves is what came out of this time. Twelve songs, some of which are reimagined from years ago. The album’s name is inspired by the return of everything: love, grief, joy, loss, creativity, your own identity. Images and feelings that show up unpredictably, and never in a straight line, as if washed ashore.
A useful habit of mine is that I keep everything, always have. Notebooks, contact sheets, recordings, drafts, boxes crammed with tapes, photographs I’d forgotten were taken. Parts of some of these songs have been lounging in cardboard, hoping to be revisited someday, and now here they are.
So come in, the doors are open, take off your shoes or don’t, linger as long as you want. This isn’t an art gallery, it’s a room, a series of private spaces inside my head, ever changing. In one, I’ll show you where these twelve songs came from. In others, you’ll hear the demos I was too shy to play for anyone, read about the afternoon when “Howl” came together, see letters in my own handwriting tracing out a lyric, a theme, an idea, an obsession.
You have carried so many of my songs in your own lives for so long. You’ve stayed with me. I wanted to give you something back. In gratitude. And always,
love from
