Eliza and I got married in May of 2023.
we went on our honeymoon in June, and then Eliza started a new job- one that paid three times anything she’d made before .
In July we found an old craftsman house to rent, on the mountains about 25 minutes outside downtown LA. We said goodbye to our Silver Lake studio and moved just a few carfuls of belongings out to the suburbs.
I went on a UK tour with one of my favorite artists and then played the Newport Folk Festival for the first time with a few more favorite artists.
In September we fostered and then adopted a puppy from Bakersfield.
In October I released my album “Dusted Beauty,” and then within the next 18 months all our big wins, our “arrival” as respectable adults with ascending careers, fell apart.
Eliza was let go from two companies within a year of eachother. All my touring gigs as a drummer went in new directions with their bands. My father accidently revealed his 7 year long affair, and then our city caught fire.... coming withing feet of our house.
At the lowest point of our consecutive defeats, we found out Eliza was pregnant.
This window of time is when the songs from “Hard Days, Sweet Dreams” were written. A period of ambigous loss, a slow release capsule of grief. Learning that life always takes hard work and maintenance. And a light at the end of the tunnel that was always there.
It’s also the time when Joshua Crumbly reached out to me and became one of my closest collaborators, friends, and advocates. He and Adrian Olsen are responsible for this album coming to be, the way it is, recorded in my music room, the First I Ever Had. The Nearly Burnt. Attached to the bathroom where Eliza would soon labor on the floor delivering our child ...
Regardless of where we will have to move and shift next, I am so grateful that we made this record here, in the home I became a parent. My fortress of solitude when I felt nothing was going my way. Surrounded by the mountains, forest, bears, hawks, owls and bobcats. The stone porch and fireplace that have made memorable nights for so many friends and acquaintances.