As a storm made its way to shore on an otherwise still and perfect evening in August, I sat on the porch of a beach house letting my fingers dance around the moment in complete awe. The sky above was filled with stars, each one nestled in mystery, while the storm cloud continued to surge toward me. Lightning flashed and I counted the seconds between it and the rolling thunder, attempting to gauge the distance. An untouchable sky above me and an unavoidable sky in front. Both captivating and devastating. In that instant I began writing ‘Stormy Point’,and what would become Fable and Fire.

2020 left us no time to count the seconds before the thunder boomed overhead. We felt the glow on our faces, we closed our eyes on the realization that life as we knew it was coming to a screeching halt, and the thunder shook our core in the same moment. The storm was upon us. Like a child reaching for the covers I folded in on myself. My body became a shield, my mind a vessel. I began reaching for melodies and found them to be readily available. Like gazing at a star and finding yourself instantly in its orbit. For weeks, I was gathering various parts of myself and putting them to melody.

I spent one evening around a fire thinking of my late mother’s hands. I have struggled off and on with her memory and hating myself for not spending hours just taking in her entire being when she was here. That cold fall night, sitting around the fire pit, her hands hovered above the coals. I remembered the passion she had for playing piano. I remembered her effortlessness. I remembered her tone and her timing. I wrote the song ‘Fable and Fire’ that night with my mother’s hands. I felt her presence and her embrace as though she were teaching it to me and simultaneously encouraging me to keep writing.

If ever there was a spray of ether in the imagination’s carburetor it’s an entire year spent day in and day out with a toddler. The wonder of words and the relevance in the ridiculous is abundant and revelatory. Plainly spoken, it’s magical. My tendency towards self-loathing and cynicism is constantly thwarted by her earnestness. As I read to her I am often transfixed by her complete absorption in the story. One particular story is called Ox-cart Man. It’s a tale of a man in pre-industrial times who, alongside his two kids and wife, spends a year making and harvesting all sorts of things on their farm. The story is literally just an account of everything they made and harvested, like an inventory list with pictures. But it was a favorite around the house and my daughter learned how to say embroidery needle. Magic. I used the title, ‘Ox-cart Man’, for one of my songs because it reminded me of how much meaning can be found in the mundane.

I could go on but I won’t. It’s time to pull back the covers and journey over to the recording part of the story where we find the flesh and bones of all this music. I needed my friends and I needed to play with them. Christian Sedelmyer, the Erie fiddler himself, played fiddle. When Christian joins me on a melody, the chemistry between the mandolin and the fiddle seems to push the pair into a single elevated form. This symbiosis has come to serve as a fundamental part of my instrumental writing. On bass is Clint Mullican. If music is a flood, Clint is an ark. On guitar, banjo, and piano, is Josh Oliver. Josh is the human equivalent of spice level—probably the most dynamic player I have ever heard or met. On guitar and bouzouki is Jordan Tice. Jordan never met a moment that didn’t deserve deliberation and dedication. On cello is Nat Smith who seems to know every song even when he doesn’t. Nat is intuition’s man and we can all only hope to learn how he does what he does.

We recorded this record at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, NC. Over the course of three days we let the intimate moments that bore these tunes resurface as the melodies took shape and form. It’s difficult to explain how magical it felt to play these tunes with this band and luckily I don’t have to because the music is all right there for folks to hear. On the last day of recording we did a quick mix of every tune so that we would have something to listen to, and it is those mixes that became the finished record. Those rough mixes, in all their imperfections, captured the music perfectly.

Amidst global trauma, it’s difficult to feel like your own experience is unique and relevant. Fable and Fire is a sonic account of how the journey within has no destination. It’s like looking at the stars and knowing you’ll never touch them, or believing in magic and seeing it for what it isn’t.

It’s the bones of emotion dug up and rearranged in the shape of sanctuary. It’s the much needed eye contact from a friend in a wordless moment. This is my most honest work to date and without saying anything it somehow says it all.