The songs that make up The Dark Ages were written after a career in music seemed far out of reach for Dewey Kincade.  Kincade left New York City with his wife and newborn daughter to embark on a new life in Louisville, Kentucky. Raising a band to notoriety was replaced with raising his kids. Trying to secure a deal was replaced with trying to make a living- no small feat when your resume has such a huge gap in it. Still, the songs kept coming. He didn’t have the same time to work on his music as before, but he still had something to say. He was no longer an artist, but a father coming to grips with the mundane world he’d strived so hard to avoid. 

The Dark Ages is a reference to the time that these songs were written. Dewey worked under a cloud of failure, and in an age where meaning seemed to be replaced by memes. And yet even in the shadows a light emerges as the dead and dying give way to the joy in a child’s face. 

This is the first album featuring the Louisville version of The Navigators (Glen Howerton, Tim Halcomb, Woody Woodmansee, Mike Snowden and Tonya Buckler) as well as some Fellow Travelers (Danny Flanigan, Steve Sizemore, Jordan Berger) and many other Louisville luminaries (Steve Cooley, Kimmet Cantwell, Meredith Noel, Leigh Anne Yost, Small Batch Brass and Donna Mason) as well as the next generation (Sam Yost and Penelope Kincade).  

This is also the first album recorded entirely in Dewey’s studio. Once again the Grammy-nominated Andrew McKenna Lee co-produced the album with Dewey as well as mixing and mastering it demonstrating that Lee has the ability to add sparkle and basically clean up anything Dewey throws at him. 

Like many of its predecessors, the album traverses genres from the folkie to the funky; from pop to a bit of punk, and while the album began in darkness, it is a journey towards the light, which tries to have some fun along the way.