Dispatches
Finding the Voice
At Atlantis Studios in Stockholm, while working on new upcoming material, we recorded my vocals through a historic AKG 251 microphone and a Neve 1073 preamp.
The sound brought unexpected weight and character to the lower part of my voice. We began lowering keys, and songs first imagined in a tenor range found a different character as baritone performances.
Many of the vocals recorded live with the band, intended only as scratch guides, will remain on the final recordings.
Not every song wanted the same treatment. Some called for something less immediate and more lush, and were recorded again through a Neumann U 67 and Germanium preamp.
Later, a FLEA 251 and BAE 1073 recreated much of the Atlantis sound when several performances needed to be revisited.
One voice. More than one sound.
Leaving Room
I’ve been listening to several albums classic favorites from the 1970's: Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Supertramp’s Crime of the Century, and Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk.
On vinyl, their scale is striking. The sound feels broad and deep, yet the arrangements rarely feel crowded. Each instrument seems to occupy its own place. Nothing is present merely because another track was available.
Recording offered fewer choices then. Fewer tracks, fewer layers. More decisions that couldn’t be postponed. Perhaps limitation required a different kind of attention.
These records don’t sound empty – they sound considered. Room was left for the music.
StateQuest: New Mexico
StateQuest is an ongoing attempt to spend meaningful time in every state.
After living together in eight states and visiting all fifty, my wife Laurie and I began a project we termed “StateQuest”: spending roughly a month in each state we’ve never called home, renting a place and trying, however briefly, to experience life there rather than simply pass through.
We’ve been at it about 10 years. As of July 2026, we’ve now “lived” in forty states.
In January 2026, we lived outside Taos for a month. I brought a small recording setup and continued working on songs already underway.
Distance has a way of unsettling the familiar.
Recording With My Childhood Musical Hero
My journey in music began in Indiana, listening to country albums on my parents’ RCA console.
One Christmas, when I was about 9 or 10 years old, I received a Hohner Marine Band harmonica and a record
by Charlie McCoy. I learned to play by listening to his records again and again.
In 2024, while recording The Way, Charlie joined the sessions and played on several songs.
The musician whose records taught me to play became part of my first album.
No Direction Home
More than twenty years ago, I watched Martin Scorsese’s documentary No Direction Home.
Until then, I’d thought about music mainly as a player – as someone who learned songs, played instruments, and admired the people who made records.
The film opened another door.
For the first time, I began to think seriously about songwriting and recording as the work of an artist: not simply performing music, but creating a world through words, sound, image, and intention.
It would be another fifteen years before I acted on it.
