So this is my first solo acoustic album. I’ve always wanted to do one, and I always figured that I would have done several of these, and now that I’m on the other side of having done one, I find that it has been a liberating experience. All this begs the question: what took so long? I think of my songs similarly to how I think about my children: I don’t want to release them into the world until I think they are ready to stand on their own. I’ve never heard a song that I’ve written that I didn’t think I could add some color or interest with other musicians and voices. And yet… some of the songs that I listened to the most include early Dylan and Woody Guthrie. I’ve come to realize that big production is cool, but if a song requires a big production to communicate its message, maybe the issue is the song itself. On the other hand, a song that can work as a solo acoustic song is a good song.
This album began in the middle of the night. I woke up and wrote the lyrics to “Out of My Body Again.” My family was asleep, so I didn’t want to wake anyone up playing guitar. I can’t say that I’ve ever done that. The next day I wrote some music to go with the song, and it was like the two had never been apart. Then another song followed. And another. They all came quite easily. That’s pretty normal for me. I don’t force my songwriting. I have learned from experience that it doesn’t work. Songs come when they’re ready and not a day sooner.
At some point, it seemed clear that I was writing another album, and something seemed particularly urgent about it. I have been in the middle of a project that I started just after Christmas in 2024. It’s a doozy. A three-part album of songs I wrote when I was in New York. There are horns, strings and dozens of different musicians. It’s taken up a lot of psychic energy. But then these new songs showed up. What to do? Last fall, I was working with Nick Stevens from Downtown Recording Studios on the live Dark Ages show. He invited me to record at his studio. I figured that these songs were going to be the genesis of my follow-up, so why not get them started? So I brought the Navigators into the studio, and we recorded three songs. It sounded like a pretty good start, but it was clear that in order to complete this album would require a budget that I didn’t have. So I tabled that album.
But the album kept nagging at me. Something about the songs that I had written had an urgency to them. People needed to hear them now, or they wouldn’t have the same impact. This is not normally how I think about my music. I often say that a good song has no expiration date. A good song is timeless, and needn’t feel of a time.
I was planning on releasing my next album, The Other Side of the Sea: Act 1, in September, but one delay led to another. Meanwhile, I kept playing these songs each night, and I began to wonder if I could just record the album that way. I’ll be honest: I was a little nervous about sharing these songs without any help. I play with some great musicians. But playing a song solo really emphasizes the songwriting. In the end, I decided that I could always do a version of these songs with the band down the road, but I could only get these songs out now in solo acoustic form.
Is there a story that unifies the whole album? They sure seem to be connected to me, but I never consciously tried to connect them. For me, writing a song is like riding a wave. My job is to simply decide when the right wave is going to allow me to surf. When I was younger, I would hop on any wave that came by, but I’ve learned to be patient and to wait. What is the wave you might ask? Inspiration? Mmm. That seems too impartial. The wave is personal. I do believe in a kind of muse. She moves you when you are ready. Sometimes she whispers in your ear, “Don’t miss this one.” Why does she do what she does? I don’t know.
I do know that as I’ve compiled these songs into this album, there are a lot of recurring themes. There are people trying to make sense of a world that is on the cusp of either madness or genius, and maybe somewhere we’ve lost who we are. Or maybe we’ve lost the knowledge that we define who we are.
The title is a reference to the elevation of pronouns in our society. Ever since I’ve seen people signing off their emails with their preferred pronouns, I’ve wanted my preferred pronouns to be “we/us.” I decided that doing so was a sure-fire way to alienate me from everyone- at least, just a little. Liberals might think I was attacking the practice of announcing one’s pronouns, and conservatives might see it as an extension of that practice. In some ways, they’re both right. But they would both be wrong. Sure, there’s some humor, but it’s more of a “let’s not take ourselves so seriously” kind of humor.
We need a universal. That seems clear to me. Our society is very focused on either the individual or the group that we belong to, but we haven’t been all that focused on the whole of us. What is a human, anyway? One of my favorite parts of the U.S. Constitution is that it begins with the phrase “We the people.” It would have been more accurate to say, “We, a select few who have taken it upon ourselves to represent the people,” but it would have been far less inspiring. We need universals, because universals are what bind society together, and without them, society falls apart. When Thomas Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal,” he was trying to tear down the ancient wall of inherited titles. The idea that some people were nobles and some people were peasants stretched back all the way to the Roman Empire. It was only a step in the right direction, though. Jefferson left out women, and it’s not like all men were included. As I pointed out to students, the man legally “owned” his own son.
The Declaration of Sentiments managed to correct the oversight and said, “all men and women are created equal.” Although nowadays it might just be simpler to say “all people.” If we as a society say that “all people are created equal,” it shapes how we treat one another. There are not a lot of things that can be said to be true of all people, but I suspect that part of the reason for that is that we’re not really trying.
There are, of course, dangers with universals. When I was taking African American philosophy as a graduate student, I came to understand the critique of universals. We might say “all people”, but the practice has to match the words. It’s not enough to say “all people are created equal” if all people aren’t being treated equally. So it can be necessary to focus on groups who are being excluded. At the same time, if you only focus on those groups, you lose the really big prize: all of us. So, in a nutshell, that is why “we/us” are my preferred pronouns, but I understand the grammatical necessity of using other pronouns.
Meanwhile, outside of the ivory tower, I went into Downtown Recording Studio with Chris Greenwell on the day before the election and shortly after Halloween, which I always find to be a peculiar time. We are often jarred by gaining an hour, slightly hungover from the Halloween festivities, and anxious about the political future. What a perfect time to record an album. On top of that, I was finishing up my last week teaching for the foreseeable future. I arrived around 4, and by the time I left at 7:30 the album was recorded. I hemmed and hawed a few days as to whether I needed to re-record any of the tracks, but ultimately decided against it. I have to realize that there would be no definitive take. Instead, I asked: Is this a take that “works” and is interesting?
I concluded that they all were, and set about mixing the album. I thought about having someone with much better gear do the job, but I found that the tracks didn’t need a lot of polish, and in the interest of moving forward quickly, I did it myself. I also did the album cover (with the help of AI). My original idea was just the words “we/us” for the cover, but then I wanted to get a picture of people behind the words to create some depth. That’s something that I think the album had, and I truly felt that cover should represent that.
Nine days later, the album was out. That is a record for me. And now it’s your job. As you probably know, streaming will not even cover the costs for this relatively inexpensive recording. Only you can do that. I have a lot of material that I would like to release. What to do next? If you hear something that speaks to you, then let me know by purchasing the song. For now, that’s the only way to hear the music. But even when the music is available for streaming (shortly), I want to encourage you to demonstrate your appreciation. As a fan, you need to know that you have the power, and every dollar helps.