In the fall of 2011, my band and I spent a week at White Star Sound in Virginia with my friend and producer, Jamie Candiloro (Ryan Adams, R.E.M., PJ Olsson) and tracked a collection of songs I had been writing over the past two years. The songs on my fourth full-length studio album, Fading Light, were written for different reasons, but this particular collection is some of the most intense, emotional and personal work I’ve done to date.
I grew up in Rawley Springs, Virginia. Rawley Spring...
In the fall of 2011, my band and I spent a week at White Star Sound in Virginia with my friend and producer, Jamie Candiloro (Ryan Adams, R.E.M., PJ Olsson) and tracked a collection of songs I had been writing over the past two years. The songs on my fourth full-length studio album, Fading Light, were written for different reasons, but this particular collection is some of the most intense, emotional and personal work I’ve done to date.
I grew up in Rawley Springs, Virginia. Rawley Springs isn’t a town — just some cabins, trailers, and campsites in the mountains just east of the West Virginia state border. When I was a kid my uncle had October-fest parties. At one of these parties I remember this bluegrass band playing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Seemed like the whole party was singing along. My mom gave me Music From Big Pink by The Band soon after. From there music became my obsession.
I started messing around with guitar when I was 3, but I wasn’t really playing until 11 or so, and didn’t start writing songs until around age 13. My first shows were open mic nights at local bars in Charlottesville, VA. I eventually moved to DC thinking it could be a good stepping-stone to New York. It was in DC where I recorded my first full album, Blue Dreams in 2004. I just went in with my acoustic guitar and sang for a couple hours and finished the same day.
For about 4 years following Blue Dreams, I found myself lost and addicted to drugs. I did manage to record an album in that four-year stretch, Love Verses Heroin – certainly not the feel good album of the year. When I recorded my third album in 2007, …And I Am The Song of the Drunkards, I was clean and back to enjoying playing music. I formed a band and we just played for the fun of it. There were no expectations, just joy.
In 2010, I was the first artist signed to 9:30 Records in Washington, DC and released a collection of songs I called The Little Fox EP. Since that time, I have been fortunate to perform with Ray LaMontagne, K.D. Lang, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Drive-By Truckers and Badly Drawn Boy.
Seems no matter the struggles in life, I always come back to music. Fading Light is my reawakening.
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