Javelin

Through the air and down the highway

Dear friends,

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