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New album 'Dog' available now on Red House Records!

My plans for this record changed nearly weekly in the months leading up to the actual recording session, and the recording session had been scheduled and cancelled three times. Over the past couple years I’ve been dealing and continue to deal with clinical depression, and the songs on Dog all seem to reflect a little of my state of mind about that. I initially thought to do a solo record, all alone, since these songs felt very personal, but then I thought I should bring a lot of people in and make it a large ensemble record and try and lift that heavy mood, and I thought “why not do both?”, I could do two records, one version alone and one version with a whole mob of folks. Then I crashed into another bottom and I cancelled everything, called everyone I’d invited and told them it was all off. I decided to just try and forget about it for awhile, maybe now wasn’t the time anyway. The realization came over me that I actually needed to record these songs though, if only just to get them to move along and stop harassing me. One more time I called the infinitely patient and kind Tom Herbers and scheduled time at Creation Audio in Minneapolis, then on very short notice asked Mikkel Beckmen, Dave Hundrieser, Liz Draper and Jeff Mitchell to come over and listen to the songs and see where we could go. We sat in a big circle and played the songs mostly for the first time, even for me the songs readjusted themselves to my friends’ personalities and we managed to let them go. And I’m grateful, and I’m still working it all out, and I’m glad to be doing so.

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