Like making a record, it’s always hard to imagine what the new songs will feel like to perform live until you simply put them into motion. Going into it, it somehow feels like an impossible feat, but then, like magic, you watch it quickly come to life. After only two shows the songs already feel worn in and comfortable. I can’t wait to dig deeper and deeper into them.

Lucky for me, I am blessed to play with such talented people. For the promo week the live band was made up of Cochemea Gastelum, Liam Kazar, Camellia Hartman, Cole Berggren, and Nick Kinsey (who played in my band for many years). For the tour Nick will swap out for our friend Dom Billet and the rest will remain.

We played a show, fittingly, at Lucinda’s Williams Bar in the East Village and then up at Levon Helms Barn in Woodstock. Two sacred spaces started by absolute icons. One of whom I am eternally blessed to say makes a cameo on the new record.

The shows were a BLAST. Lucinda’s atmosphere was absolutely perfect for these songs and getting to play a packed show in a smaller space was so so special and incredibly fun. Then up at Levons, it felt great to be back in the barn - such a wonderful experience, always. Couldn’t imagine two better spaces to launch this whole thing. Thank you all for coming!

Anyways, tour starts Wednesday, and the album is out Friday. Get tickets here.

So ready for both, see you soon

xoxo KM

Here’s some wonderful captures by Harper Pix

I write to you all from my beloved Chelsea Hotel in New York City where I currently find myself in the pursuit of more press and a week of promo shows with the band. This is my third time zone in three days and I’m feeling a little dizzied by it all. I’m counting down the days to my albums release and I’m really anxious to start playing music.

Speaking of playing music, and press, I played Jimmy Kimmel Live earlier this week. I’m super happy with our performance, and super proud of the incredible band backing me up, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the autotune snafu that took place.

We taped Kimmel the night before our episode aired. It was fun to once again peek behind the curtain and see how the sausage gets made and watch Jimmy, along with his writers, break down how they wanted to respond to Trump demanding he be fired by ABC. I really support Kimmel and was proud to be playing his show. I’m grateful there’s people like him in pop culture, bravely standing up to this evil administration.

Also, the staff couldn’t be more warm and wonderful. We had a great experience once again and I remembered most of them from our time there in 2022. I hope I get to go back sometime, somewhere down the line.

On my flight home to Kansas City I was thrilled to see that the plane had live television, and I was going to be able to catch my episode up at thirty thousand feet. It felt like a fun secret I was keeping from the other passengers as I watched the episode in anticipation of my performance. Bucket list experience.

When we finally came on the screen I was more concerned with how it looked than sounded, knowing that I couldn’t judge the audio off the quality of the cheap headphones they hand out. But from what I could hear, it sounded good, and I could tell we gave a great performance.

Then the texts about autotune started rolling in. It wasn’t until we had landed and I was able to watch on my phone that I really noticed the autotune they had applied to our voices. Despite this, it was 2 in the morning, I was exhausted and I still had a forty minute drive home, so I put it in the back of my mind and when I got home I went straight to sleep.

When I woke up a few hours later my phone was flooded with messages, mostly kind words about the performance, but a handful concerned about the autotune.

In the light of day I had the awareness to become extremely disturbed by this as I re-listened to the performance. Without going into too much detail, over the next few hours I was sent into a deeper and deeper spiral. At first I felt I’d let it ride, the damage had been done, and I’d simply let this autotuned performance of the song exist forevermore. But as the day dragged on I decided it best that I insist the audio get changed as soon as possible. The Kimmel team was very understanding and accommodating.

Why someone would add autotune without my consent is shocking and beyond me. It would be similar to a talk guest being given a face filter to where they looked like an AI version of themselves. So much goes into making this happen on my end—money, time, scheduling, etc. To have the moment somewhat ruined by the press of a button is a huge, huge bummer.

This also all struck me at a bad time - I’ve been having a hard time these past few months with where technology is at - the quote unquote enshitification of everything. I know a lot of us feel this way. In the last few weeks I’ve had near meltdowns trying to do simple tasks both professionally and recreationally. Being an artist during an album roll out you’re inundated with terms like algorithms and content, both miles away from any real creativity.

But even when doing something outside of my professional life - my dad and I both had a near breakdown trying to figure out parking at a Royals game on the MLB app. It felt like No Country For Old Men Part Two. And this autotune experience felt like an extension of all these technological problems that have been plaguing me, plaguing us. More computers, more problems.

I trust the sound engineer was acting in good faith. In a way, I feel somewhat flattered; maybe he clocked Javelin as a conventional pop song, and he’s used to adding autotune to pop artists. Or maybe he looked up Aaron Dessner’s resume and thought I was more in line with someone like Ed Sheeran. Mistakes happen and all love to that audio engineer - who has been very understanding and apologetic. I’m sure his job is demanding, and the mix, sans auto tune, sounds great. Let this be a lesson to us both.

I’m very grateful to Kimmel and his team for having me on. It’s a privileged to play late night television. I’m also glad I spoke up, and I’m glad it got fixed. I have to trust that anyone who heard the autotune version knows that that wouldn’t be my call. All respect to those who use autotune, but it’s certainly not my lane. I love my pitchiness, and what always drew me in towards indie rock and rock n roll in the first place was the fact that the artists leaned into and highlighted their imperfections; that’s where the magic, and the humanity, resides.

When it comes to art, and being an artist, you end up dying on a few hills along your journey, and that’s part of the deal. I take great pride in some of the hills I’ve been buried on top of - they were hills I chose and confidently attempted to climb, and would do so again. But autotune, certainly, especially in a live setting, is not one of those hills, and so I had to make sure I got off it.

Excited to see you all out there very soon,

Where i’ll be singing,

pitchiness and all

xoxo

“Repair is the dream of the broken thing
Like a message broadcast on an overpass

All my favorite singers couldn’t sing
All my favorite singers couldn’t sing”

-Silver Jews, We Are Real.

Me messing around with a SJ cover of We Are Real below, live from the Chelsea, on me.

L to R: Rose Droll, Meg Duffy, Cyrus Gengras, KM, Amelia Meath, Chloe Saavedra, Dylan Fujioka, Liam Kazar.

So it’s just me and Ernie really enjoying all of springs offerings, which haven’t disappointed. The past few weeks have been cinematic thunderstorms followed by humidity and rainbows. Bless up!

Speaking of storms, I’m trying my best to savor this calm moment in time before everything in my life gets crazy. All things Little Wide Open get going here for me in a matter of days, so I’ve spent a lot of these past few weeks resting and gearing up, mentally and physically preparing for it’s launch and all the shows to follow.

A few things happening in my world;

1. The wonderful writer Jenn Pelly came to Kansas City to write a Pitchfork Profile on me recently. I’ve known Jenn for the better half of twenty years and she’s been writing about my work, starting with the Babies, since the beginning. I feel very grateful to have someone like Jenn write a long form profile about where I’m at in my life at the moment. I really trust her craft and am so thankful for her time.

   Ahead of this piece I went back and read a review Jenn wrote for The Babies album Our House On The Hill where she talks about seeing us play in front of a giant projection of Wim Wenders Paris Texas inside a clocktower in Manhattan. It was funny reading that and made me realize I’m still the same person I was when I was 22 years old. Still obsessed with Wil Wenders, still writing songs about the Texas Sun, and still, sometimes, wearing a cowboy hat.

   I would tell you more about Jenn’s piece but I’ll let the article do the talking, she’s a much better writer than I am anyways. I think it came out great.

2. It was Aaron Dessners birthday yesterday, happy birthday, Aaron! And for his birthday I recorded a little message and a part of a song of mine called All Sinners, which is Aarons favorite song from the album. He had pushed for it to be a single but for whatever reason it didn’t make the cut. Picking singles is such a delicate act! I kinda wish I woulda listened to him, but regardless, I recorded a few verses of that which you can watch below. I also recorded a video for part of my new song Dandelion, which is below the paywall.

3. We just got some updated fliers for the upcoming tour. It’s selling well in a lot of places and I can’t wait to get this show on the road. I’m really so eager to play these new songs and see how we handle them. Tix here.

   (FWIW, our Canadian shows are by far the quickest selling tickets across North America. Just want to give a special shout out to our neighbors up North! I feel the love coming from your direction, and I really appreciate it. I really wanna do a strictly Canadian tour someday to show my appreciation).

4. We are offering a VIP package as part of my upcoming tour. You’ll get access to a private soundcheck, an exclusive Little Wide Open Hat, and there will be a meet and greet.

5. I’ve got a lot of new merch which I’m stoked on. A lot of great designers helped out on these and i’m real excited about them. There are hats and bumper stickers and keychains and shirts and even a handkerchief thats for crying only.

Other things:

1. I am obsessed with this new Hurray For The Riff Raff episode of Song Exploder for their song Alibi. Song Exploder is my favorite podcast and I love how it deconstructs artists songs and getting to peak behind the curtain of Alyndas, who I consider maybe the best living songwriter in my peer group, process is a real gift. Alynda and I go way back and the story of this song resonates with me deeply.

2. I’ve been having another love affair with running again. In the past few years I’ve treated running as this sort of morning chore, maintenance more than anything, but lately I’ve been doing evening runs, around sunset, and it’s been really transcendent and the part of the day I look forward to the most. On these runs I’ve been connecting with a lot of music. A list of some of those songs below.

Wednesday - Townies, Bitter Everyday, Elderberry Wine

White Fence - Unread Books

Waxahatchee - Where’s Your Love Now

Angela Autumn - Electric, Lizard, Dancer, trampstamp, Millionaires Money

I cannot stop listening to Angela Autumn. I want her music on at all times. While running, driving, cooking. It’s such a vibe and it’s so fucking good. She played my baseball game at sxsw earlier this year and she ruled live, too.

Sturgill Simpson - Welcome To Earth, Breakers Roar, In Bloom

I think I’m finally hitting my Sturgill phase. Maybe it’s because I am about to become a father and this album specifically acts as a love letter to his first child. But it’s beyond beautiful and when you hit mile three and the sun’s poking through some storm clouds and the chorus of Breakers Roar comes on, hoo boy.

Michael Henderson - Stay with Me This Summer

I heard this song recently in a clothing store and asked what it was, thinking it was an obscure Arthur Russel song only to find out it’s by someone named Michael Henderson. I can’t explain why this feels like such a springtime song to me, especially as he’s singing exclusively about Summer and Winter in it, but it just somehow is. See for yourself!

Happy Spring!

See you all very soon.

Photo by David Robert Elliott

Read more

You end up learning a lot about your work when doing a press cycle. You start answering questions and drafting bios of your songs and somewhere along the way you realize that sometimes you’re not entirely sure why you made what you made and that you, like the journalists themselves, are also figuring it all out in real time.

Badlands is certainly a song I feel like I’m just starting to understand. I love it a lot but why did I choose to write a song called Badlands? It feels like low hanging fruit as a title; everyone of course adores the 1973 Terrence Malick masterpiece, not to mention the Bruce Springsteen song or the national park in South Dakota - a place I’ve never been. Even while working on the album I noticed that Mumford and Sons had also written a song titled Badlands, scrawled out on a dry erase board in the same studio.

But what I’ve discovered as I’ve been talking about my album ahead of its release next month is that I’ve seemed to set out on some sort of mission to reclaim a handful of these titles from the American lexicon. Namely “The Great Wide Open”, “Badlands” and the “Bible Belt”. These are all iconic names of regions that don’t actually apply to where I live or what I’m singing about but I have made it my business to take those titles and superimpose them over my experience in the Midwest.

There can be something claustrophobic about wide open spaces. Especially when the only thing decorating them is a billboard on the side of the highway promising you hell or trying to sell you a handgun. There’s a sense of, am I in heaven, or am I in hell? The same is true of storms - in its darkness it can feel somehow satanic and terrifying, quickly followed to most heavenly skies you’ve ever seen.

It’s springtime in Kansas City, which brings constant storms, and just yesterday I got caught in a terrifying hail storm on the highway. Cars were gridlocked as ice pelted our vehicles and people pulled over under overpasses, eyes to the sky, fearing a funnel may start to form. But moments later, the sky broke up, and the most wonderful double rainbow appeared. My favorite time of year.

And so in that spirit, here’s my new song Badlands. I cried on the day we recorded this! I had been experiencing some imposter syndrome while making a lot of this album. I thought perhaps I had lost “it”.

“it”

pronoun

ˈit

ət

1

: one who has lost the ability to craft a good song.

“I used to be a good songwriter but I have lost it”

But alas, Badlands restored my faith while in the studio and I remember thinking that, if nothing else, I was able to make at least one more good one.

Amelia Meath once again sings with me on this track. Together with Justin Vernon the two create the sound of tornado sirens in the middle part of the song and it’s really one of my favorite things about the record. Aaron, Andrew Barr and myself do the rest! Mixed by Jon Low and engineered by Bella Blasko!

The visualizer for the song is wonderful. Lyrics and design done by Rena Johnson and very cool thunderstorm footage taken by my dear friend Iggy.

Other things; I just went on a press trip to London and Paris, which was fun! The only shareable moment at this time from that trip was this super fun springtime themed DJ set that I did at NTS which is up now.

I am playing a sweet and fun pre-release show, very fittingly at Lucinda’s bar in New York on May 7th.

I also played an instore at Rough Trade East, which was a lot of fun. I got to meet a lot of wonderful people, maybe some of you?! It felt amazing to play some of the new songs live and the whole ordeal felt very real and got me super excited for everything to come here soon with all my live dates, which are on sale now.

I hope you all enjoy the song! Happy springtime. xo km

POSTSCRIPT: I spoke in a lot of child metaphors in yesterday’s post. How records are like children, etc…and while I am so excited to birth my next record-child, Little Wide Open, into existence soon, I am even more excited to welcome a real life human baby this summer into our lives.

Katie and I couldn’t be more excited as we can’t wait to bring this little creature, whoever they may be, into this beautiful world.

There’s the first child who paves the way for the others, but becomes less significant when the second one arrives. Then of course there’s the loud one, the introverted one, the strange one and the people pleaser. Within this metaphor I now have something like eight children all competing for my attention at any given moment but you must understand I do love them all the same.

But Singing Saw was, and still is, very special. I think most people would agree with that.

It broke me through a certain indie rock glass ceiling that I had been tapping at for a while and set me on whatever path I’m still lucky enough to be on today.

Maybe within the metaphor of children, Singing Saw was my first child who got to go to college and see the world. Or no, I had already seen the world with my other projects, so maybe it was the first child to get a scholarship and not go into debt while doing so. I’ll drop the metaphor…

I was living in the Los Angeles neighborhood Mount Washington when I wrote the album and the neighborhood itself ended up inspiring a lot of the record. The eerie weeping trees, exotic birds and packs of coyotes all really made an impression on me and were unlike anything I had experienced before, especially coming from my time in NYC and a childhood in the Midwest. What’s most perplexing about the neighborhood is just how close it is to Downtown LA, one of the biggest and most recognizable skylines in the world, while somehow feeling completely rural and shut off from it.

I lived in Mount Washington with my girlfriend at the time in a small house that can only really be described as a miniature hobbit castle which sat halfway up a very steep hill. She would go to work most days, leaving me there alone with an out of tune piano the previous tenants had left behind and this became a major influence on the shape of my songwriting. I had never really played piano before but suddenly there was this new tool which really opened up a whole new world for me.

After writing the songs I took a shot in the dark by working with Sam Cohen. We had met briefly at a re-creation of the Last Waltz where he was the musical director and I dug his self produced solo album, Cool It, and asked if he’d by chance be into producing my record and was excited when he said yes. And so we booked a trial session at Dan Goodwin’s Isokon Studios in Woodstock and four days later we had effortlessly, if not accidentally, tracked a whole album. It was a magical experience that began a very collaborative and wonderful relationship with Sam that still continues today.

Sam knew how to meet my songwriting and novice musicianship halfway with his intellect, articulation, and instinct for the craft. At the time, I was religiously listening to Nina Simone, Mulate Estake and Emahoy Tsegue-Mariam Guebru and Sam knew how to pin down and tastefully blend those influences with my Dylan, Cohen, Van Zandt and Bill Fay’isms. Together we created something that, to my ears, felt incredibly new - something almost spooky and hard to pin down. I remember being surprised and excited as Sam threw out references in the studio like “early Wu Tang”. I like to think that combining those references with my rootsy songwriting created some sort of secret sauce.

Coupled with this, Singing Saw saw me beginning what has become a long and fruitful relationship with Dead Oceans - a label that was undeniably a level up from anything I had ever experienced before - sending me out on press trips and giving me proper video budgets, publicists, etc. It was also around this time that I started working with my manager Aja, who I still work with today, who continues to change my life in more ways than I could ever count.

After the album came out it was received better than anything I had done before. After years of duking it out in the Babies and solo, it felt like a triumph. I still remember celebrating the night Pitchfork deemed it Best New Music and I was in disbelief that I was getting asked to do sessions and interviews for publications I grew up with like; NME, Rolling Stone, and Spin Magazine.

What I remember most, though, was getting to travel the world alongside my bandmates Cyrus, Meg, Justin and Nick with more ease than ever before. Pre Singing Saw it always felt like we weren’t supposed to be wherever we were. Like we were convincing venues to let us in and begging people to come. But with Singing Saw it finally felt like we were being met with open arms across the globe. The five of us were like family and together we got to take on the world one city at a time.

I’ll return to the metaphor of children to close. Singing Saw, as my third child, felt like the first time that I knew what I was doing. The other two that came before it, love them as I do, had me stumbling and struggling a bit with my career as a solo artist, but that stumbling with the first two only helped create the goodwill that I was then able to apply to the third and properly meet my moment. Now all my “children” since get to walk with a bit of ease down the path those first three created - and for that I am forever grateful.

Long live Singing Saw and all my wonderful friends and memories she’s given me. And most of all - thank you all for listening! It means absolutely everything to me!

Here’s some highlights that I recall from 2016 out touring the album as well, as well as a version of me singing Cut Me Down right here and now in my living room. I made it free, with it being the ten year anniversary and all. Also I’ve held this in for a long time - ten years, in fact - and I can’t hold it in anymore. But Cut Me Down is about…this.

A quick message to my paying subscribers! I have not forgotten about you! As soon as my album is out I will be posting a series of demos for each song on the album, tracking my process! I already have the posts qued up. It’ll be fun!

3.23.16 Playing a Blogotheque Take Away show with Whitney in Paris

6.23.16 Playing Tiny Desk for the first time

7.16.16 Playing Pitchfork Festival in Chicago

9.11.16 Opening for Wilco at the Fillmore in San Francisco

9.13.16 Opening for Wilco at the Ace Theatre in Los Angeles

11.8.16 Playing Islington Hall in London

Jamming with my good friend Rodrigo Session in my living room for Issue Magazine

Photos by Dusden Condren

Photo By Robbie Simon

It is my favorite song off of Little Wide Open and the one that I was most excited about while writing and recording.

Die Young was born out of melody I wrote during a soundcheck in a small village in France, summer of 2024, and finished later in 2025. A song I chiselled away at, little by little, always putting it back in my pocket, excited to take it out later. I’m really happy where it ended up.

A lot of Little Wide Open is me reflecting on my time spent on the road. Being a touring musician as a career has made for a wonderful but often complicated lifestyle and in so many ways has proven to be very dangerous. And thus, a love song; to the road, my romantic partnership, and my many travel companions over the years.

Die Young features Mat Davidson (who performs under the name Twain) on fiddle. I’ve been a big fan of his work for a while now, so it’s an honor to have him on this album. Aaron’s on bass, banjo, and guitar and Andrew Barr is on drums. Jon Low mixed!

Also - my friend Caleb made me put his name into the song and there’s also a nod to one of my favorite David Berman lines. Two easter eggs tucked away in there somewhere; can you find them?

As for the video - it’s footage we captured on the day Chantal Anderson and I went out shooting for the album cover. We had videographer Zak Gorsuch follow us, capturing the process, and I really love the outcome and thought it paired perfectly with this song. It captures that wonderful day.

Anyways, come see us play Die young, and lots of other songs, live! Our North American and EU/UK tour is on sale now. You can get tickets here. We are also offering a meet n greet fan experience during soundcheck and before the show. Tix here.

Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy :) xoxo

PS: I found the first little phone recording I made in real time as I wrote the guitar part during said soundcheck. I’ll post it here in front of the paywall, and once the albums released, i’ll do an individual post dedicated to breaking down each song with multiple comprehensive demos behind the $ wall.

Demo is from June 29th 2024, moments after I wrote the guitar line on stage. The internet tells me I would have been at Parc du Château, Mayenne, France.

I am so deeply honored to be encapsulated by something Rachel penned. She’s a living legend and a great friend. Thank you Rachel, I owe you one! Essay below, or you can read it here xoxo.

And for those of you who aren’t familiar with Rachel, I couldn’t recommend her work more. Start where I started, with this great essay. And FWIW, her book The Mars Room is one of my favorite books, and has - in my opinion - one of the best last paragraphs of a book ever.

* “Field Guide to the North American Troubadour”

Written by Rachel Kushner

You want to shine for friends when they’re shining—for you or maybe not for you, either way shine is shine—and you can equalize the levels by bringing a bit of your own recent glow, and that other light-filled person can enjoy it instead of worry.

That’s how it is with some people. Two auras, touching, as you each bring your way of worlding into the bar or the diner or the movies, the car, like so. See Morby, Kevin, in the Encyclopedia Britannica of Glow, or Who’s Who in America and Outside of It That Moves Me, published by No One Ever, but indelibly print-on-demand.

Last time I saw Morby there was a gash on the driver’s side rear quarter-panel of his big blue truck. “What’s up with that?” A happy shrug. “Looks like I use it.” He does use it. I was in the cab practically yesterday in Kansas City and now we’re West. He parks on my street. We go down a secret stairwell and along a brutal stretch of Sunset. “This will never gentrify,” I say, “because the cars here go seventy.” “It already is,” he replies, as we pass a natural wine shop or whatever they’re selling, spare shelves and a tote bag logo. But it’s mostly nuclear fall-out, the underside of a rich city, trash and weeds and plundered copper, before we turn left up to what I call Peacock Park. Kevin’s never been. It’s dusk. We sit like kings, like Mickey in the Night Kitchen, perched over the storybook up-close downtown skyline. I’m ready to practically camp out when Kevin says, Let’s go. Next is Astro Family. Him, a burger and fries. Me, omelet. Pacifico; Stella. Kevin poses with the Heinz bottle, and we agree that “I like ketchup on my ketchup” is a T-shirt in the category of Pop sublime. “Haruki Murakami wears one,” he says. (I can hear a baby crying on this part of the tape. Next over orange vinyl booth. I like ketchup on my ketchup. I like babies in the booths.)

Our beers come in chilled steins. “I’d be into having a fridge full of these,” Kevin says. But he does not strike me as someone who lives for beer, and he seems to be leaving behind the midwestern concept of the den, the wet bar, the basement pool table, Miller Lite pendant lamp. Or maybe not. But he’s leaving Kansas, is the point, and this record is about it. Before our hangout I googled “little wide open” to see if there’s something besides my sense of this phrase, which is that if once the future was legible, it’s now a bit less predictable. It’s a little wide open. But to some this phrase means lit, as in drunk. News to Kevin. For him, the LWO is the big sky, the small lives—it’s his origins in the Midwest and every duty and modesty and familiarity and isolation: the land, the people, and the parts of that inside him. “I love the little wide open,” he tells me, “and I hate the little wide open.” Cities of a hundred thousand people. Places where girls twirl batons. Hearing those lines, “pretty girls, pretty sisters, twirling batons, blowing penny whistles,” I think immediately—as would you—about the story of Terrance Malick asking Sissy Spacek if she had any special talents. Baton, she said, and twirled one in the movie. But Kevin’s song Badlands isn’t exactly about the Malick. “Kansas City is not the badlands but it’s my badlands. It’s not the bible belt but it’s my bible belt.” The song “Bible Belt” alludes to something that happened in 2021, when Kevin was on tour and got word that a couple, a boy and a girl who were on their way to see him play in Denver had a car wreck and the boy died. The girl lived, and while she was in the hospital, Kevin sent her a message. A year later he played at the Bataclan, in Paris, which naturally made him think of what had happened there, ninety shot dead in a terrorist attack. Onstage, he looked down, and there was the girl who had survived the car wreck in Denver. She was with the mother of her boyfriend who died. They had come all this way to see Kevin play. He recognized them immediately. “Do you have priestly instincts to rise to the moment and be what people need?” “Sure. But everyone goes into a show with a preconceived idea of how it’s gonna go. Whether it’s, I want to drink beer and rock out. Or …. That. It broke the ice for me. The Bataclan felt like hallowed ground. It was very very sweet to see them.” We shift to talking about time. The record isn’t just about leaving. It isn’t just about Katie (there are more love songs here than usual, I tell him, and he concurs). It’s about time, about feeling like he has shifted from nostalgia, and the losing game—losing but beautiful—of holding onto the past. He has accepted that time is ceaselessly flowing, and you can’t stop it. Instead, he feels like he’s riding it. He’s riding passenger with time. They’re doing it together, shooting forward in tandem, Bonnie and Clyde. I ask him about that line, “I’ll ride passenger in a burlap sack,” it’s more than at peace, and passive. It’s, I’ll risk everything, and could end up dead. That’s what I hear. I started rambling about a memoir I just read by a musician I once knew, a guitar player who was in the band Tuxedomoon. Every story in his book was about how fate intervened. Fate did this fate did that. He was riding passenger to the extreme. It was all excuses. It was sad. In Kevin’s case, he conjures death but it feels more fictional, speculative, it’s reality, but he has no death wish that I can sense.

Our food arrives.

“A side of ranch dressing with the fries, without even asking? This is very midwestern.” He can access the comforts of his origins without living there any longer. Without the isolation, the big sky, the small lives. You can sing about the ugly brothers with the muscle cars in the front yard but that doesn’t mean you have to stay. In the song they are characters, and listening to, as he imagines it, Metallica. “In reality, it’s probably trip-hop,” he says. But Kevin is burnishing his lyric-fictions to something more timeless and poetic, than now and tomorrow. I assure him there are ugly brothers out here, too, with muscles cars in the yard. I know them. And he’s like, Yeah, Rach, you would.

After dinner I want another beer and Kevin says let’s have it elsewhere, someplace dark. That’s when I see something about him that I never have before: he’s restless! I like that I can see it, because I would not have guessed. We walk under the freeway to Zebulon. It’s closed. On its locked door is a flyer for a show next week by a former member of Tuxedomoon. “Weird!” we say in unison, checking the box that we are following destiny’s map, the one that is presented to the human mind as “chance.”

We go to the Red Lion, with its quiet local Oktoberfest vibe. I ask Kevin what sign he is. I know nothing about astrology, and so any answer is good. “Aries,” he says, “the most fire of the fire signs. The most intense. The type who leaps before they look.” Is that you, I wonder. And he nods. “Most definitely.” I tell him I kind of see him leaping and looking. “Yeah, maybe. But remember, I dropped out of high school. Moved to NYC. Joined a band. Then started a band.”

I come back to little wide open. The song by that name. “Sometimes the myth grows bigger than the dream” I read out loud from a lyrics sheet. “It’s about the two of us being songwriters. The pros and cons. The complications. A crazy lifestyle of us each crisscrossing the world.”

Could it be, I ask him, that he and Katie created something together that partly takes place in the Midwest, Kevin’s “little wide open,” but his dissatisfaction with that place isn’t a dissatisfaction with her, or her with him, and instead, maybe they are lifting off, together? “One thousand percent,” he replies. Since moving to LA, he’s been so happy. I remind him that I’d accidentally left a “Los Angeles” sweatshirt at their house in Kansas City and was hoping Katie would find it and wear it. “It’s in the valley of the lost,” Kevin says. The way he says it, it’s like even losing things is wholesome to this dude. They go to the happy valley of the lost.

Morby, those golden-brown curls, the jacket with fringe, different versions, like a paper doll whose variations, gold or white or American flag, only reconfirm a consistent core, editions of one. Heartlander but no, not a rube. The broad, open face, and yes he throws flowers to his public but he’s marked by death like you and me. The way of standing, feet a little out, what anatomy declares a slight external rotation. I could recognize Kevin’s gait on grainy security footage, I mean if I needed to. If they asked, and if it mattered. A flood of people walking past CCTV? Border control, 7-11, truck stop, or even Joe Paranoid’s Ring camera? I could ID him no problem.

If I needed to guess what his music would contour toward, or away from, that would be harder. He thinks in the unit of the album, album-sized steps into the future, each one a concept that ripples through, song by song, to the end.

“Field Guide for the Butterflies says everything this record’s about,” he tells me. “It’s all in there. I was on this drive through Arkansas by myself. I noticed that butterflies kept hitting my truck, as they were trying to cross the highway. I went to Dickson Street Books in Fayetteville, and looked at this book, Field Guide to the North American Butterfly. It was this moment where I was like, what does it mean that there are butterflies crossing the highway, what do they mean as a symbol? The people who died going to my show, it means that. It means me and Katie meeting on the road and touring together and falling in love. It’s like, we’re floating around. Flying over the highway like we are not butterflies. Like we are not fragile.”

But they are. We are.

First off - my “world” tour is now on sale here.

Second,

I don’t remember the season in which I wrote Javelin. But I do remember that I was sitting on top of a picnic table in the front patio of our house in Kansas City at night.

Season depending I was either bundled up and freezing, or sweating under a canopy of chirping cicadas. Likely it was both.

When I was out touring TIAP I would often come home to an empty household as Katie would also be out on the road, our two ships passing in the night. Returning home would feel always strange and I’d feel disconnected from most everything around me, thus I’d spend lots of time alone - out on the picnic table writing songs.

And alas we have Javelin; A song very much about being in love and circling the globe around your person. Sometimes I’d think of Katie and my schedules like a cartoon detective chasing a bandit around a tree, the two of us nearby, but always out of sight from one another.

That, and, the sheer wear and tear one experiences after weeks of traveling on planes, trains, and automobiles. That special brand of vertigo brought on by coming home where everything is seemingly the same and not the same all at once - a touring musicians story, as old as the hills.

I believe Javelin was the last song that Aaron and I tracked, which is ironic seeing that it was the obvious first single off the album. In a different reality we may have ran out of time or skipped over Javelin, but thankfully, here we are, in a reality where Javelin is very much alive and thriving.

The demo - which I will share on a dedicated post, beneath the paywall, once the album comes out - is much more somber, much more longing and sad. But Aaron and I saw a potential to give it a face lift and have it jump out of the speakers.

For the longest time I had put in a placeholder track of myself doing falsetto backup vocals at the end of the song. Then one day I thought to ask Amelia Meath to replace them - a person I’ve known now almost 20 years, and a talent I’ve admired just as long.

After tracking the song at Long Pond with Aaron and Andrew Barr on drums (who absolutely crushed), we did Amelia’s vocals in Los Angeles with engineer Elliott Kozel.

Amelia absolutely blew my mind in the studio. I had asked that she harmonize with herself and create some sort of Amelia-Choir and that’s essentially what she did, but it feels much bigger than that. Amelia’s personality leaps to the forefront and it’s truly one of my favorite parts of the album. It makes me so fucking happy - Amelia is such a natural star.

As for the video - I had thought to make something very simple and fun with my best bud Caleb Hearon. For a while we were neighbors in Kansas City and on the rare occasion we were both in town at the same time we’d often find ourselves out on some kind of motorized vehicle putzing around town, just killing time.

So I thought to buy a motorcycle camera and record the two of us in some fun HI-VIZ outfits ripping around a field in Missouri. The video also features Katie and our good friend Tara. The result makes me really happy, and I think it captures all the fun we had making it.

Im so proud of this song, and this video, and I really hope y’all can connect with both.

Love!

Kevin

This awful news found me on a tour where I was, for the first time, having a lot of anxiety surrounding being out on the road. Sitting still during the pandemic, and then suddenly being back out on the highway had the ground passing beneath me feeling somewhat terrifying. This news, of course, greatly amplified those feelings.

It, coupled with laying in my coffin shaped bunk everynight as we rolled onto the next city, the faint smell of gasoline wafting in from beneath the bus, had me considering just how dangerous it can be to be rocketing down the highway at high speeds inside a vehicle.

Bible Belt went onto lead the way for this album that, by all means, is very much centered around many different highways.

All that to say, it’s going to feel tender and full circle to be back out on the road, in a bus, playing these songs along the same highways on which a lot of them were conceived. I’ll be singing my heart out for all the highway angels out there - especially the young man who lost his life far too young, just trying to get to my show. I think of him often.

My close friend and collaborator Liam Kazar, whose first solo album I released, and latest album is a stunner, will be warming up the stage every night before playing in my band.

Speaking of my band - it’s gonna be a great one. Cochemea, Slick, Camellia, Liam, and Cole. All all stars.

We have also partnered with PLUS1 where a dollar from every ticket sold will go to Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Oh, and, now that the set list potential has gotten quite long given the amount of albums - I’m considering pulling out some deep cuts based off what people are wanting to hear. What would YOU like to hear?

We’ll see you all out there xox

Tickets go on presale today at 10 AM local time with password JAVELIN. General on sale begins tomorrow also at 10 local.

poster by Mike Krol

I recorded Little Wide Open with producer Aaron Dessner and engineer Bella Blasko at Long Pond throughout the winter, spring and summer of last year.

Aaron and I constructed these songs from the ground up - and then we built our own little world around them before calling in the calvary to get us to the finish line. There are many amazing friends across the album; Andrew Barr plays drums, Mat Davidson plays fiddle, Lucinda Williams sings, Amelia Meath sings, Katie Gavin sings, Justin Vernon sirens, Meg Duffy guitars, Colin Croom steels, Oliver Hill strings, Rachel Baiman plays violin, and more.

It was a thrill to witness Aaron and Bella operate within Long Pond as if the studio itself was its own instrument. Aaron would float around the studio picking up instruments and adding them where he saw fit; mandolin, guitar, banjo, bass, piano, synths and drums. And me, I did my thing, singing my songs, playing piano, guitar and banjo. Outside the glass walls of the studio the snow gradually melted into spring and spring turned into summer across three different sessions and before we knew it we had made an album.

I wrote LWO throughout the many-year cycle touring my last album. I’d get back home and chip away at these songs in my little midwestern isolation chamber and also out on various solo road trips - across Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas - my own private America, my own private heaven.

LWO is set to a backdrop of tangled highways, towns with populations less than 100,000, roadside crosses, a rock and roll romance, coupling butterflies, being an American entertainer, Econoline vans and more. This is, without a doubt, the most personal and vulnerable album I’ve ever made. Aaron did a heroic job of holding me back from throwing too many tricks at the songs, and letting my stories stand a bit naked. Despite its title this album is in fact, very wide open.

The great Chantal Anderson took the cover photo; my arm, inside an American stunt jacket, reaching out of an Econoline van towards a field of sunflowers. I like to think of the sunflowers less as flowers and more as a crowd of people. People who are looking on at an entertainer who has just arrived to perform their tricks, and is doing all in their power to connect.

*

For now, please enjoy Javelin - it features Amelia Meath, who absolutely shines all over it, and the video was a lot of fun to make and features Katie and our good friends Caleb and Tara. I’m very proud of both. I have a lot more to say on Javelin that I’ll save for a separate post. That reminds me…

Once the album is released I will be publishing a post dedicated to each song with a demo in tow, beneath the pay wall, just as I did for This Is A Photograph, so look out for that. It’s something I really enjoyed doing then and am stoked to be able to do again; breaking down each individual song and revealing their demos that outline my process.

OK - I love you all! And am forever so grateful for you listening to my music. Please let Little Wide Open season commence. I’ll see y’all out there! xoxox

Album cover taken by Chantal Anderson and laid out by Mike Krol

Photo by Chantal Anderson

Pictures by Harper Cowan

Poster by Mike Krol

A decade later I was in Los Angeles at a house party where someone was giving out free tattoos with a homemade gun. My old friend, the wonderful artist Cali Dewitt, suggested we get matching “Box Of Rain” tattoos given our mutual love for the song and I followed his lead.

Around that same time I woulda been playing in Woods who, because of our band leader Jeremy Earl, constantly had the Dead on in the van. Jeremy was, and is, by all means a certified Deadhead and I spent many hours staring out at America for the first time with various Dead bootlegs and albums as the soundtrack.

It was there that I realized that I wasn’t a huge fan. At least not in the way Jeremy or so many millions of others are. But I certainly loved the idea and vision of the Dead and what they represented. Their ethos and how they elevated and changed the course of live music forever. I guess you could say, until joining Woods, I hadn’t realized just how punk the Dead were.

And while I will always stand by the Velvet Underground being the greatest American rock band, I do believe that it took the Grateful Dead being the Grateful Dead to make the Velvet Underground fully be The Velvet Underground as I know and love them - proof, perhaps, that the Grateful Dead were the most important American rock band.

I digress.

I didn’t mean to come here to talk about how I don’t love the Dead as much as some of my friends. I came here to talk about how I really loved meeting Bob Weir in Mill Valley around a decade ago.

I was asked to do a short tour in a round-robin line up curated by promoter Ramie Egan in 2016. Eric Johnson, Sam Cohen, Joe Russo, Josh Kauffman and myself all traded off songs while backing one another. Josh had recently produced Bobs solo album Blue Mountain and one of our tour stops saw us at Bobs venue in Mill Valley and Josh asked him to sit in on a few songs.

When Bob showed up he was in a suit jacket, slacks and berks and the first words I can recall him saying was “that’s show business!” What was show business, I wondered? All of it, I suppose; being in a venue, sound checking. It’s fucking show business! I loved his vibe immediately.

Backstage we attempted to run through some of the songs we wanted him to sit in on and about halfway through the first one he stopped and handed the guitar back, saying “I don’t know, just get up there and follow me”. And like a true musical icon, the moment he hit the stage, he transformed into the charismatic performer he had been mastering for decades.

I hardly contributed to the songs. I played some rhythm guitar and percussion but really I just sat back and watched it all go down. As maybe the only non-Deadhead on stage, I tried to stay out of the way, just happy to witness a buncha my friends get to jam with their hero.

My favorite moment was when Bob went off script, looking to Eric and telling him to take a piano solo in place of where Bob usually takes a guitar solo. I watched Eric receive this prompt with childlike wonder before jumping into perhaps the most important piano solo of his life. Eric was full on jamming with the king of jamming! The kind of life moments musicians can only dream of as teenagers.

After the set it was all laughs and chit chat backstage. Ask Any of us who were there that night what we remember the most and we’ll likely all tell you the same thing; Bob ate Eric’s burrito he had been saving for after the show. Eric had sequestered it in a corner of the greenroom and when he went looking for it he found Bob hovered of it, the burrito all but gone.

But I also remember my short convo I got to have with Bob. He told me that a lot of people were speaking highly of my album that had just come out, which woulda been Singing Saw, and that he wanted to check it out. That really meant the world to me. “People keep talking about this album of yours” he said, with the look of somebody who had been recommended millions of albums in their lifetime, but genuinely interested in what someone might show him next.

And though I’m not sure how I responded, I like to think that maybe I said; yeah? Well people keep talking to me about yours, too.

Rest easy Bob.

Thanks for changing the world for the better and injecting people with so much joy and music down here on earth. No small feat.

Xoxo

This year, aside from its political turmoil, was my favorite kind of year.

A year where I got to be creative, make new work and take some time off of the road. And as much as I love touring, I certainly needed a break after three years of supporting This Is A Photograph.

I did however get to play just enough shows to scratch the itch of being a live musician, but I also go to hunker down at home in Kansas City and Los Angeles for prolonged periods of time - spending time with Katie, family and friends to make some new memories together. I also finally found the time and inspiration to get back into the studio - but more on all that later.

Anyways, I’m grateful for surviving yet another year down here on planet earth. Here are a few of my favorite things from the year that we’ve come to know as 2025:

Blood On The Tracks 50th Anniversary show in Tulsa, OK.

My year started off doing this amazing tribute night in Tulsa, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks at Cains Ballroom. I’ve meant to write about this night ever since it happened and it definitely deserves a longer post, but the year somehow got away from me. It was an incredible experience getting to sing songs with friends and legends alike at one of the best venues in America.

I also got to explore Tulsa in a way i’ve been meaning to for years. I went to the Outsiders Museum, Leon Russels studio, and re-visited the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie Centers. Tulsa is a classic American city with big wide streets beneath a giant sky. My kinda town.

I couldn’t recommend all of these places and things more. Go to Tulsa!! You won’t be disappointed.

Baseball

This year was great for baseball in my life. I got to host my first ever hard ball game at SXSW where I assembled a bad-news-bears team of musicians to face off against the Texas Playboys at their own Long Time Sandlot. The game was absolutely heaven on earth and I plan on hosting a similar event next year, too, so look out for that.

Similarly, I was asked to be team captain at the inaugural softball game at Newport Folk Festival. This too was an unbelievable amount of fun - even if my team of Allstars got absolutely crushed by SG Goodmans Allstars.

Aside from hosting games I also released a new line of merch in collaboration with Official League and the Kansas City Monarchs.

I later got to throw out the first pitch at a Monarchs game and to top off my baseball-centric year, my song Parade got synced in the Dodgers World Series documentary. God bless baseball!

Salvation Mountain

Earlier this year I ran into my friend Tim Bernardes in Los Angeles who was visiting from Rio, Brazil. Tim told me that he had never been to Salvation Mountain but wanted to go so on a whim we assembled a small crew; Rodrigo Amarante and Kyle Thomas and the four of us piled in my car and drove out to Salvation Mountain.

I mention this as a notable part of my year because sometimes you gotta get a random crew of friends together and take a road trip if even only for 24 hours. When’s the last time you did this? If it’s been a while then I highly recommend it, it’s great for the soul.

Meeting Mavis

I know that I’ve been screaming about Mavis all year long. It’s been life changing for me having her sing one of my songs on her latest album, but I finally got to meet her last month in Denver, CO when our mutual friend Nathaniel Rateliff had us both guest at his holiday shows at Mission Ballroom to sing Beautiful Strangers together.

Mavis is a beam of light, and unlike anyone I’ve ever met. Getting to sing with her was a life highlight i’m still processing.

At one point after rehearsal I overheard Mavis telling Nathaniel that I had gone to the other side of the mountaintop and came back with Beautiful Strangers. And that right there was the highlight of my career.

(Another notable moment of these holiday shows was, at one point while doing my vocal warm ups in my green room, David Rawlins overheard me and came in and did them with me. I’m a long time huge fan of his and Gillian Welch so getting the pipes warmed up with him was an honor. God damn that man can sing).

Nathaniel, if you’re reading this, thank you for making this all happen!

Craig Finn and Patterson Hood

My favorite show of the year was seeing Craig Finn and Patterson Hood live in Los Angeles at the Lodge Room. I went to the show last minute with Jake Lenderman and Anna St. Louis - a random assortment of friends from different circles in my life, but we made a great trio.

It was fun witnessing this show through both of their eyes. Anna was unaware of Craig and Pattersons music, but I saw her become a fan in real time when Pattersons song Uncle Disney brought tears to her eyes.

And on the other side of me was Jake, a devotee in the church of Patterson. Watching Jake sing along to Pattersons career spanning set list was a treat.

This show also carries the title for likely the longest I’ve stood up at a show in my whole adult life for a single act - somewhere around two and a half hours - and I never once thought about sitting down or leaving it was so good.

Other favorite shows I saw this year were David Byrne, Oasis, Sabine Mccalla, Deslondes, Will Oldham and Nick Cave. All life changing in their own right.

WEER By Natalie Palamides

WEER is the one person rom-com written, directed, and acted out solely by genius Natalie Palamides. If you EVER get a chance to go see it, make sure you do so. You’ll laugh and likely get covered in fake blood. Natalie has become a fast friend this year, and seeing the world through her eyes is a real gift.

Albums I listened to most this year

The Purple Bird by Bonnie Prince Billie, Bleeds by Wednesday, Big City Life by Smerz, Want by Esther Rose and 24 Hour Sports by El Michels Affair.

Books I read

Lord of the flies, The Actor, Catching the big fish, Pick-Up, Stoner, Train Dreams, I Who Have Never Known Men, Emperor of Gladness, Ecstasy, Moonlight, Tokyo Express.

Movies

I also felt this year was an exciting year for film. It seemed every month I was running to the threat in anticipation to see something new, or often rewatch something I had just seen.

I loved Marty Supreme, Weapons, One Battle, Sentimental Value and Train Dreams. I also saw the 90s french film Lovers On The Bridge in theaters and it was one of the best movies i’ve ever seen. Also I highly recommend my friends incredible new film Bunny.

***

And then there was a lot of other amazing moments to my 2025 that I will talk about soon enough or I’m forgetting to mention, some pictures below. I made a lot of new music with a lot of new friends and collaborators and can’t wait to tell you all about it when the time is right.

Outside of my handful of one off shows I got to spend a significant amount of time in Upstate New York and down in the city. I also spent some time in New Orleans, my beloved Memphis, Austin and Miami. This year was significant in that it’s the first year in fifteen years that I did not go to Europe. Insane! So for better or worse, 2025 was full blooded American.

My heart aches for anyone who has had a hard year or suffered any kind of loss, as undoubtedly a lot of people have. Anyone who has been affected by ICE, or the genocide in Palestine. To those who have been victim to racism, antisemitism or senseless gun violence. There is so much pain, so much struggle, happening all around us all the time and I truly hope that 2026 can bring some peace to anyone who needs it.

Thank you so much for reading this thing yet another year. Onto the next. Wishing you all a peaceful, safe, and wonderful night as we fall out of the past and into the future - see you there.

Talk soon xoxo

Backstage at Cains Ballroom by Graham Tolbert

Working with Aaron at Long Pond

god is real

unc, young buck, OGs

bootleg

A good while back I drove to Springfield, Missouri to visit my friends and artists Julie and Stella Blackmon as well as gallery owner and friend, Bill Haw. Julie and Stella live inspiring and idyllic lives out in the heartland, which is often their muse. They gave me a tour of Springfield and later we floated a nearby river where Julie has a house along the water. Afterwards we returned to the boathouse where we played songs and ate dinner and eventually everyone left, leaving me alone, where I worked on songs with the windows opened wide, the white noise of cicadas making their way into my demos.

The next morning, before meeting everyone for breakfast, I walked down to the river with a paddle board and floated it alone. At one point as I paddled upstream a Wood Stork, out of nowhere, flew across the water, briefly dipping down beneath the tree line. It was a breathtaking and graceful moment; the green water beneath the green trees with the stork gliding through it all, as if in a dream.

With this, some form of gratitude surfaced inside myself that must have been sitting dormant. Suddenly I felt so incredibly thankful and proud to be existing on such a profoundly beautiful planet, immersed in all of its various plants and animals.

It brought to mind an excerpt from Patti Smith’s Just Kids where she describes seeing a Swan for the first time as a child:

“The narrows of the river emptied into a wide lagoon and I saw upon its surface a singular miracle. A long curving neck rose from a dress of white plumage. Swan, my mother said, sensing my excitement”.

It also brought to mind my favorite scene from Stand By Me, where Gordie has a breif interaction with a deer, but doesn’t tell his friends. He instead keeps this moment private between himself and the natural world. This scene always perplexed me as a child but ever since the stork I feel I understand it better.

*

A few weeks later I was fortunate enough to be asked to open for Guster at Red Rocks Amphitheater just outside of Denver. Red Rocks, of course, is one of the most, if not the most, iconic outdoor venue in America. I decided to drive there (as that’s what midwesterners do whenever anything is within a twelve hour drive) and my bandmate Liam Kazar joined me.

This specific drive across I-70 has been voted one of the most boring drives in America (or so Liam told me), but regardless, still remains one of my favorites.

As Liam and I approached western Kansas I knew that we were close to the Chalk Pyramids, where I shot my Campfire music video. It felt like a twist of fate as I had bought my truck after making that music video when my car at the time got stuck in the mud, so it felt triumphant to return with my mighty Ford Ranger - Big Blue - ready to take the back roads. It was a scorching 107 degrees but the Chalk Pyramids were just as fantastic and strange as I had left them.

Once at Red Rocks, it, like the Chalk Pyramids, the river and the stork, can only really be described as breathtaking. It’s so rare that rock n roll and the natural world cross paths in such harmony, but Red Rocks is certainly one of those intersections.

*

I did the drive back home, alone this time, a few days later from Aspen to Kansas City, watching the landscape slowly, and then drastically, change. It’s hard to believe that I-70 can live so many different lives. I-70, to me, has only ever had a banal and negative connotation attached to it - but here it was, running parallel to the Colorado River which rushed beneath an explosive three dimensional mountainside, thriving.

It was a thrill winding through the mountain pass on I-70, but my favorite part of the drive was when the landscape opened back up and suddenly it returned to the rolling plains that I’m familiar with, as far as the eye can see, like an ocean of prairie grass, signaling that I was close to home. (PSA: when I die, will someone please scatter my ashes across the Flint Hills in Kansas, and some in NYC and Los Angeles, too).

The drive back had me feeling small, like I was a microscopic fleck of dust drifting on top an alien landscape. I couldn’t help but laugh when I later came upon a car dressed up like a UFO, going 70 MPH down the interstate.

*

Maybe it’s because I’m getting a little older and staring down the barrel of my late 30s, but I am gaining such a rapid and immense appreciate for the planet we inhabit. Something about seeing the stork ignited something in me and I feel so lucky to be here and able to experience all that our wonderful mother earth has to offer; her colors, landscapes, plants, animals, and so on. What a gift!

We spend so much time as a culture in awe of science fiction - watching Luke Skywalker trek across Tatooine under its two setting suns and as an audience we are taken with the double sunsets, as if our own sunsets weren’t magical enough. And that’s the point I’m trying to make - that those two suns on Tatooine are based off of our one singular sun which illuminates our very real, and incredibly gorgeous planet earth.

*

Below the paywall I cover the Bright Eyes song Bas Jan Ader, my favorite song off of the latest album about a dutch sailor who disappeared while attempting to sail around the world at age 33.

Also, for other earth inspired music, I highly recommend Hurray For The Riff Raffs album Life On Earth, especially the title track.

And also Alyndas masterpiece, Pa’lante, which includes one of my favorite and most relatable lyrics of all time:

“Well I just wanna prove my worth on this planet earth, and be something”.

Read more

Although Verlaine was also a songwriter and vocalist, I think most will remember him for his iconic guitar lines - at least I will. He’s my favorite type of guitarist - one who doesn’t write masturbatory and meandering solos, but instead lyrical ones, where every note is right where it’s supposed to be, serving a greater purpose - as if the guitar parts themselves were the vocals, more so than the actual vocals. To prove this I’d bet good money that the majority of people could sing the guitar part from Marquee Moon before they could recall any lyrics to the song.

Anyways, my friend Dave, who runs a wonderful book shop in Brooklyn called Better Read Than Dead, inherited Verlaine’s book collection, which is a whopping 50k + books, and was tasked with selling it off. Alongside this, Toms liaison told Dave that there were a few guitars from his Collection that he was looking to move as well. I got the sense that Verlaine’s nicer guitars probably went to family, friends, and high profile artists who knew him personally, as they should. But these junk guitars, let’s call them, were for sale at a reasonable price and so I jumped at the opportunity to buy one.

I picked a nameless Japanese six string (though it only had five) that feels a little worse for wear but somehow the most “Verlaine” of the batch. It’s cherry red and effortlessly rock n roll. As Dave explained, Verlaine apparently played it on one song on one of later solo albums. It thrills me to know that Verlaine even looked at this guitar once upon a time, much less held it.

Though I bought the guitar in January, I wasn’t able to pick it up until March 3rd, when I attended a house party at Dave’s and he handed it over. It didn’t come with a case and I didn’t have one on me so when I left the party around midnight, drunk and freezing in the subzero temperatures, I held Verlaine’s guitar, suddenly mine, proudly over my shoulder as if wielding a battle axe on my way to cut down a tree.

I ended the night at a bar somewhere in Fort Greene with a night cap alongside my friend Clay, the guitar leaning between us, when we noticed a small practice amp hidden behind the bar. We asked if there was a cable to plug the guitar in and test it out, and they told us to look for one in the back.

Clay searched around the back but couldn’t come up with a cable so alas we didn’t get to plug it in but that’s okay. The night was still perfect, getting to walk around New York City carrying a guitar over my shoulder that once belonged to one of my heroes and, without a doubt, one of the greatest guitarists of all time. In fact, remembering it all now, maybe the guitar felt less like an axe over my shoulder and more like proudly flying a flag. A flag that read:

LONG LIVE VERLAINE

GUITAR HERO

GUITAR GOD

🎸🎸🎸

When I prepare the tea, there’s actually no tea involved. Just hot water, honey, and a meyer lemon I pick from the backyard.

As I spoke about in the leaf blower post, I love the unintentional music of inanimate objects that contribute to the white noise of our everyday lives. But if you focus in, they’re their own instrument. You can hear it in a tornado siren, a passing train, and in todays case - a teapot.

Years ago I covered a Bob Dylan song for Aquarium Drunkard and while I was singing the song the whistling of a tea kettle on the stove in the other room made its way into the recording forevermore.

Since then, I’ve envisioned the tea kettle as its own instrument, or rather, a singer - or something that is at least trying to sing. It’s screaming is something wildly and passionately out of tune, begging to be heard - and I can relate to that energy.

So anyways, here’s me making tea this morning. I starting improvising a song on the guitar and I really love it a lot, actually. I realized about 5 minutes in that the whistling cap was left off the kettle, which is why it took so long to start making noise, but I put it on towards the end, and the two of us make a little music together. Enjoy!

xoxo km

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I had been in New York to sing with Hamilton Leithauser at his residency at the Carlisle Hotel the night before and wandered around the city all day before meeting up with Nathaniel in his back stage a couple hours before the show. I chatted with Nathaniel a bit before drifting out into a mainly empty MSG.

I had been to The Garden a few times before; once for a Knicks game (ironically, with Nathaniel) and a few other times for concerts - once to see Blink 182 and once to see Weezer. At those events, of course, the garden was completely full - of 20,000 people or so. But suddenly there I was, sitting in an almost empty room, with only a handful of souls drifting in and out - crew guys and otherwise, but mainly, I was alone in the historic arena.

I needed a pick me up before the show began and had been searching for a good place to do my transcendental meditation - a practice I began in 2019 - when I decided what better place to do it than right in the middle of this gigantic and historic room. And so for 23 minutes I sat there in the bleachers, repeating my mantra to myself, with my eyes closed.

Coming out of TM sort of feels like waking up. You’ve been deep in your consciousness - what David Lynch describes as a pure and vibrant ocean - when suddenly, upon opening your eyes, the world returns to being three dimensional and full of color. No matter what you see when you first open your eyes after a session - it will always have a new perfume to it, but opening my eyes onto an empty MSG was especially a thrill, and completely surreal.

So anyways, I’m on this mainly-arena tour with the wonderful Lord Huron for about two weeks, with plenty of opportunities to mediate in an empty arena and I’ve been taking advantage of it. So far I’ve meditated in the Moda Center in Portland - alongside my bandmate who also practices TM - and also alone at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. At the Climate Pledge I climbed up into the last and highest nosebleed in the house to meditate, and it was really peaceful up there, like a bird perched in the rafters. God bless the nosebleeds.

It’s been a wonderful opening for Lord Huron so far. They couldn’t be more lovely and I mean it when I say that they have some of the most receptive and wonderful fans I’ve ever had the pleasure of opening for. It’s a good package! Which doesn’t always happen.

Thanks to everyone who’s in the room early and listening to us, as well as Lord Huron for bringing us out, can’t wait for more :) xox

PS: todays title is a nod to one of my favorite books of poetry; Frank O’Haras Meditations in an Emergency. The first poem of which, To The Harbor Master, is one of my favorite poems of all time, which I read beneath the paywall.

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So naturally, here’s me harmonizing and improvising some words alongside a leaf blower while taking my dogs for a walk this morning.

May I one day write a real song out of this melody. A song which, had I not walked by a church with a groundskeeper blowing a certain model of leaf blower humming a pitch that caught my ear, it would never had been born into existence.

The world is full of music! Everywhere you look.

:)

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I felt my attention span really slipping earlier this year and knew it had to be directly related to doom scrolling online. I was also in the process of getting ready to go into the studio for the first time in years and didn’t want any outside distractions.

So, I handed the keys to my social media over to my management, and anytime I felt my phantom limb reaching to open the apps, I would open a book instead. The result was that I read seven books almost immediately, which worked great, especially with going back into the studio.

I’m currently doing a one-two punch of reading Mark Twain’s the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn followed by James by Percival Everett. Living in Missouri, and growing up on the Kansas/Missouri state line, it’s crazy that I somehow never read Huck Finn as a child.

But living in Missouri now, and having such an affinity for the Mississippi River, I figured it was about time and so I bought a copy of the book while on vacation in Bentonville, Arkansas with Katie at a wonderful bookstore called Two Friends.

The next week I was off to Newport Folk Festival and then another fest in Chicago where afterwards, instead of flying home, I decided to get a sleeper car on the Southwest Chief that goes from Union Station in downtown Chicago to Union Station in downtown Kansas City. This specific Amtrak ride is incredibly serene and nostalgic for me, and one of my favorite things in the world.

Anyways, I decided there was no better place to crack open Huck Finn for the first time than while on a train through rural Illinois and Missouri, passing over rivers and through corn fields, surrounded by amish passengers.

I of course loved and related to the book. Mark Twain has a way, even in the late 1800s, of dropping timeless bombs like this one, my favorite paragraph from the book:

“I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for I’d noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if I left it alone”.

and that paragraph right there, basically sums up the entirety of being alive, in my opinion, especially being a writer flying by the seat of your pants.

But now I’m halfway through James, a retelling of the story of Huck Finn through the perspective of Jim, the runaway slave who travels alongside Huckleberry, becoming best friends along the way. I’ve never read anything by Percival before, but this book is completely blowing me away. I was worried that it wouldn’t hold up against the original but I - and this may be sacrilegious - find myself enjoying this one even more.

I love reading. It’s one of life’s greatest pleasures and anytime im doing it I find myself cursing all the times that I chose not to do it. May I never look at social media ever again.

I included a list of the books i’ve read so far in 2025. I loved and would recommend them all, for the most part. I put an asterisk next to my favorites. What should I read next? What are you reading?

Also, in the spirit of adventurous and beautiful spirits from Missouri I have tried my absolute damndest to cover Pink Pony Club by Missouri royalty Chappell Roan. What an unbelievable singer with an unbelievable song. I like to think that if Huck Finn were alive and real that he and Chappell would be friends. Two Missourians bound for the wild unknown.

EDIT: I wrote this post in the summer, as is probably obvious. I have sense seen Chappell Roan live and it was incredible. I also finished James, which was also incredible :)

LORD OF THE FLIES - WILLIAM GOLDING

MEMORY - DONALD E. WESTLAKE*

CATCHING THE BIG FISH - DAVID LYNCH*

PICK UP - CHARLES WILLEFORD

STONER - JOHN WILLIAMS*

I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN - JACQUELINE HARPMAN

EMPEROR OF GLADNESS - OCEAN VUONG*

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN - MARK TWAIN*

JAMES - PERCIVAL EVERETT*

MOONLIGHT - BARRY JENKINS*

ECSTACY - ALEX DIMITROV*

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IF you’ve been following this substack then you know that I’ve been shouting from the rooftops about Mavis Staples covering Beautiful Strangers a few weeks ago. In my post about it I wrote that I had written the entirety of the song while lying in bed looking up at a ceiling fan.

A few days later one of my close friends and old bandmates Meg Duffy (who released an amazing new album recently) wrote me to say that they remembered it differently. They told me they have a vivid memory of me workshopping the song at an airbnb in the room next to theirs somewhere in Oregon while on tour and them telling their girlfriend at the time that I was in the other room singing about a “big bad wolf”.

Was I work shopping a mostly complete song, or was the song slowly developing while on the road? Perhaps we’ll never really know, but Meg and I did put our heads together and realized that, at the very least, the timeline I thought I had written it on was wrong, making it possible that I indeed may have been workshopping some of it on tour, just as Meg said.

Ironically, a few days before this conversation with Meg I had watched a great clip of David Byrne discussing something very similar that happened to him in which he remembered a significant moment in his life a certain way, but then a fan did the math and wrote David to let him know that there’s no way that could be true, given the timeline.

David then goes on to discuss memory and how time can distort and tell it’s own, much different story, even if we don’t mean for this to happen. We’re not liars when this happens, per se, we just simply remember the story differently than how it actually happened. It’s like how I have often heard that a person doesn’t remember things actually taking place as much as they remember the last time they told the story of it taking place. It brings to mind the great Mark Twain quote: “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.

My conversation with Meg then diverged into how I was upset that my iPhone from that period in my life had died with all of my demos on it and had I had those demos we could trace how long it took to write the song, instead of it being Megs memory against mine. I have mourned this a lot over the years, especially with regards for the demo of Beautiful Strangers.

But as I texted with Meg about all of this, a light bulb so obvious and clear illuminated inside my brain that I’m almost embarrassed to admit it; I went into my email and searched “Beautiful Strangers Demo”, and lo and behold, there was not one but two demos, that I had sent to my friend Agnieszka on August 28th 2016, which had been sitting there all along.

It makes sense that I would have sent the demo to Agnieszka who, at the time, worked A&R for Dead Oceans in France. It was her who had told me a story about her friend who had been at the Bataclan during the shootings and laid on the ground repeating the mantra “I am a rock” to himself, feigning death to fool the shooters. I had sent her the song to send to him.

So at long last, beneath the paywall sits two different demos of Beautiful Strangers! One in the key you hear on the recording and one in a much lower key. I am so so happy to have unearthed these little snippets of my past songwriting life.

In the email to Agnieszka I describe the version in the regular key as the “better” version. But listening to them now, I think I prefer the lower take, actually.

Agnieszka, wherever you’re at and whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re well! And thank you for letting me send you demos near a decade ago.

And thank you Meg, for helping me dig up this little piece of my past. This all has me thinking about memory as well as feeling nostalgic for when you and I used to tour together, so here’s a video of us playing on Tiny Desk in 2016.

xox

“Memory is imagined; it is not real. Don't be ashamed of its need to create; it is the loveliest part of your heart. Myth is the true history. Don't let them tell you that there are no monsters. Don't let them make you feel stupid, just because you are happy to play down in the dark with your flashlight. The mystical world depends on you and your tolerance for the absurd. Be strong, my darling ones, and believe!”

-Nick Cave

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I visited a friend at his family’s farm in Wisconsin a few weeks ago. My friend lives in Brooklyn and grew up in Chicago and was commenting on how loud the sound of cicadas was on the farm. Which was funny because when I had arrived at the farm my first thought was how quiet the cicadas were in contrast to my neighborhood in Kansas City, where they are fucking deafening.

I don’t mind that deafening sound though, because thankfully, I love cicadas. They sound like humidity itself began making mad and chaotic music - providing us midwesterners with a blanket of white noise that soundtrack our summers. When I hear cicadas, I envision thousands of bugs playing broken violins in the trees beneath biblical clouds. When I hear cicadas, I hear home.

A few weeks ago I went for a walk and recorded some of the last cicadas of the season and put a lil cover of one of my favorite Beck songs He’s A Mighty Good Leader over it, beneath the paywall. I’ve loved this song a long time and love playing it - especially in its C# G# F C# G# C# tuning.

A little ode to the end of summer, which has been great. Happy unofficial first day of fall everyone, onwards xoxo.

A few other things: I am playing a show in San Diego at the end of this week. It is a 30th birthday party for the music box. Tickets to that here.

Also, I saw a very very good movie last week in theatres with my bandmate Cyrus - the 1994 french film Lovers On The Bridge, and I can’t get it off my mind. A cinematic feat that’s really stuck with me.

also also, a playlist of the songs I found myself listening to most this summer.

Turned To Dust - Bonnie Prince Billy

Heart Of Gold - Fiona Apple

Everything Is Peaceful Love - Bon Iver

Cinderella - Remi Wolf

Tailspin - Esther Rose

Me & Magdalena - The Monkees

Waiting On You - Reverend Baron

Elderberry Wine - Wednesday

Modern Girl - Sleater Kinney

You Got Time and I Got Money - Smerz

Losing You - Solange

Until The Dawn - The Fentones

Black River Swamp - Link Wray

Oranges - Alex G

Bird On A Swing - Cory Hanson

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