Today is a big day. Today the third single from our new record is out everywhere, AND later I pick up Jordan from the airport to spend the next two months with me learning to play these songs live together! It’s wild to me that today will be the first time Jordan and I are in the same room together since we started truly making this record. We’ve been working so hard together for so long and haven’t yet shared a meal or a hug about it. That all changes TODAY!

More on the new song, Like a River:

“Like a River is about an attempt at quieting the noise of my own thoughts and of a chaotic world around me in order to try to be more resilient. A too-late-coffee-fueled yellow-light-lit silent moment - having arrived at myself just in time to feel my pulse speed up and the news of the day sweep me away into frothing rapids. Hoping for the peace of a quiet river bank, only to remember that a river is swift, chaotic, and ever-changing the earth beneath it. Inspired by Paul Simon's Peace Like a River- a song I've always held in my heart as a beautiful protest song." 

Like a River was written in the late Summer of 2024, shortly after my first ever solo tour. I was about 9 months into my decision to quit drinking and at that point it was really not feeling like a great decision. I felt anxious and less fun and lonely and weird. I was navigating a lot of personal loss and change and not having a substance to immediately quiet my thoughts felt like such a ridiculous decision. I was feeling everything a lot and was exhausted by my own brain. I wrote Like a River late one night when I couldn’t get my brain to quiet after a day of listening to Paul Simon’s self-titled album, one of the greatest albums ever recorded, in my honest opinion. At the end of the song Peace Like a River, he repeats the line “I’m gonna be up for a while” over and over in his perfect voice. It really latched onto my brain. I wanted to write an homage to that line specifically, and how it had been sound-tracking my own restlessness.

When I showed the song to Jordan a day or so later, he jumped at it and had a similar deep dive into working on the track. The production came together really quickly - he used my head bonking the microphone during my scratch track vocals as some of the final percussive elements. I went a little ham on some of the backing vocals, but it felt necessary to capture the insanity and mess of what I was feeling. The percussion felt so much like bongos that I thought for sure Jordan knew the Paul Simon song I was referencing and was paying homage in his own way. It wasn’t until months later that I showed him the song and realized he’d never heard it before, and gleefully exclaimed “OH MY GOD THE BONGOS!” Andrew Goldring mixed and mastered this one so beautifully - there is a lot of stuff going on in this track and I love how well you can hear it all. HEADPHONES RECOMMENDED! My delightful label head for Audio Antihero has also been making exceptional memes based on some of my favorite movies using lyrics from the album.

Preorders are up for the full album If I Let It Quiet out on July 24th. Vinyl arrived this week - I haven’t seen it in person yet but I will this weekend with Jordan and I can’t wait.

And if you’re in SLC, snag tickets to our super special album release show on July 25th with Strog and Nicole Canaan. If you’re not in SLC but somewhere else on the West Coast, come to another of our shows - we’re hitting the road next month and we have really neat new merch to bring with us! Tickets and more show details can be found here.

WE LOVE YOU, SEE YOU NEXT MONTH!!!!

Love,

Josaleigh