Elseworthy

In March 2022 I loaded my 2010 Prius up with every instrument I could fit except a drum set. Four hours of driving later I was at my Mom’s house, a small two bedroom mobile home on a hill in the middle of Manchester Kentucky. There I spent three days laying the groundwork for what would become Elseworthy. Songs I wrote while driving on long road trips or when I got back from them. It was only appropriate that I had to travel to lay these tracks down.

If you know me, you know that there are two things that I love besides my family: music and traveling. This album feels like it is the marrying of the two.

It’s been nine years since Sad Songs came out and six years since The Great Unnecessary With. Both of these albums were from a place of deep heartbreak and loss. Elseworthy is about hope, adventure, finding God, life, death, and most importantly, love.

In 2014, when I was standing on the side of the black highway, in total awe of the Vermilion Cliffs, crying my eyes out, I thought I saw a part of God. The Cliffs represented something enormous beyond my scope of understanding. Something ancient and raw, untouched, unmoved, and unbothered by the drama in my small insignificant life.

Ego is rearranged and you can feel confident or scared, beautiful or ugly, something or nothing. Or anywhere between the two. And that day, I was All Of It. My insignificance made me both afraid and brave. Handsome and haggard. Everything and nothing. Stardust and Dirt. Love and hate. I will die, but I will LIVE.

A hunk of red rock in the desert is God.

This album is going to try to capture that feeling. While music is an incredible art form, I already know it won’t even come close. But I’m going to try. Thankfully I have some help from people who really seem to understand what I’ve been through and what I still go through. People who have also lost and hoped, hurt and healed, died completely inside. And after all of that, they created something. That’s Elseworthy. We are worthy of the other side of our pain, where the Vermilion Cliffs can whisper something profound.