“Home” seems to be the biggest example of the band going in a different direction.

It’s funny that the bones of that song, I wrote it but didn’t intend for that to one I performed or played. I wrote that for somebody else, the choruses at least. I had different verses for it. But it’s funny, if you get out of your own headspace and just write what can come out. That was something I wrote but never intended living in personally. But while we were in the studio and throwing ideas around some of the guys are like “Hey we should try that one, that ‘Home’ song.” Initially I just bulked at it and said “Nah.” But I took a second look at it and I rewrote all the verses while we were up there, in about fifteen minutes.

And then we tracked it and it was really fun. It felt really good. I’ve learned now not to second guess anything or to force anything on its face but to follow the energy. And if you’re getting energy back from something or someone, keep exploring that because that’s a connection, that’s energy resonating, that’s what we’re chasing. So I was getting good energy back from the song so we kept going for it and we consciously treated it like it was asking to be something like a Traveling Wilburys song and maybe something off of [Paul Simon’s] Graceland or something. And that what I think it was asking for and that’s what we gave it.

I love it. I’m so pleased how it turned out and excited that people seem to be reacting to it. I think it’s a great end of summer, beginning of fall jam. It’s a good driver, sounds great on the radio with broadcast compression on it. I’m excited we’re giving a potential audience an opportunity to have a big door to walk through to get into the rest of our world.

I read that you originally wrote “Home” for a commercial. Is that accurate?

Yeah, I’m on a list of writers that if there’s a television or film thing and they’re looking for a certain kind of sound or idea and they can’t find it in the list of songs that they’ve been able to clear, they’ll send out an e-mail and be like “Hey we’re looking for something like this, sort of about this, kind of feels like this and you have two days.” [Laughs] So I submitted it that way and it never ended up getting used. But it was a fun exercise to get yourself into a fun way of thinking. I sent an early version with different lyrics of “Home” and they passed on it because they thought it sounded too sad. But I’m really glad I got that one back, because something I didn’t think I would be able to live in and was just going to be on the junk pile I think now I’m able to live in that. It’s relevant for me since I have a living relationship with that song, and it’s going be easy for other people to have relationship with it too.

With “Home” you seem to be talking about homesickness.

Yeah that’s one layer of it. Just wanting to be home and sort of making promises that you may or may not be able to keep. Sometimes when you’re away, whether that’s physically away or emotionally away or something, you say things just because you’re supposed to say them. So there’s an underbelly of that song, where you’re not sure if the narrator is going to be able to keep that promise or even if he intends to and you start to question his motives in even saying something like that. You don’t know where he is or how far away he is or if it’s impossible for him to be home. So it’s looking at homesickness or longing or desire whether it’s genuine or not, to get back to a place where you’re not right now.

In “Home” I really like the line “The body remembers what the mind forgets.”

It’s true, you know. Anything we take in whether it’s an unhealthy meal or I think in the next line I talk about cigarettes or just holding onto a grudge or whatever, it takes a physical toll. Our bodies, to go back to Marigolden, are in constant states of decay and atrophy and a little closer to death every second. There’s an attempt to remind us about that while we are here, that we’re always moving toward a different state of being and that is unbeing. I think we need to remember to use our time wisely or in the best ways that we can while we are here.

On the label page they talk about there being a sunrise in first and last song, in essence going full circle.

Yeah, I didn’t even notice that until they pointed that out to me. The first line on both of those songs reference the morning. On “Decision Day” you’re witnessing the tail end of a sunrise and on “ Enchantment” another sunrise. The sequencing of this record I thought a lot about. I really wanted it to not be a thing where there was a nice tidy ending. I think it would been easy for us to end with “Summons” which is track nine which has a lovely, roll the credits kind of sound at the end and it’s about coming through on the other side, “I’m coming home!” And it would have been easy to end it there.

But I wanted the last track to remind that nope, you’re not really out of it. You’re still in it. Tomorrow is another battle. The narrator in “Summons” had been sober for two weeks and on “Enchantment” we hear that he passed in his 30 day chip, which is a AA reference that you get for 30 days sober. So he went sober for 30 days but then walked away again. I just wanted to have it so it wasn’t a happy ending sort of thing, kind of continuing struggle and revelation.

You recently quit drinking. Can you talk a bit about that?

Everybody’s got their own relationships with alcohol and mine was a complicated one. But at the end of the day I loved it too much, and it was getting in the way of my relationships with people that I love. I was sacrificing too much for it and it was changing the way I was thinking and I wasn’t even aware of it at all. You get so blinded by it that you lose perspective of it. I think ultimately I was sacrificing clarity for it.

And that’s been the biggest surprise for me in sobriety, is just the level of clarity that I can feel and experience that I haven’t for years, maybe ever. It’s been an amazing thing. My health is better, my relationships are better, my marriage is way better for it. I’m an easier band leader to work with. But yeah, I was sacrificing too much with my relationship to alcohol and something had to give. And it finally got to a point where I was willing to give that up rather than everything else. There’s not a point where you can give everything to everything so you’re going to have to not give something to something. It became clear to stop losing myself to alcohol in order to save everything else.

I didn’t intend to make a sobriety record but that’s where my head was at. These songs were coming out as we were going into the studio. I decided that I had to stop drinking sometime last October so I was still very in that headspace by the time I got to the studio. But I don’t want it to be a preachy record and telling everyone what to do. But I also wanted to be really open about my experiences.

The whole point of all this is and even making music even is to have a connection and a shared experience and to put ideas in a way not everyone can. But to leave enough room in that thing so other people can live in them and use them as a lens to look through at themselves and their own life. The record isn’t even out but I’ve played some solo shows and people have come up to me afterwards we’ll have long conversations about other people’s experiences and it’s pretty cool to have that trust and openness with someone you never met before just based on playing a four minute song one time that they never heard before. Just like I was saying before, just following the energy, and I could feel that resonating with me and sending energy back to me and when that cycle is happening is when other people can feel it too.

Did music and songwriting help you with that decision to quit?

Yeah, definitely. Sometimes you don’t have enough distance from yourself in order to recognize things in your life. It’s not until you take a step back that you really evaluate where you’re at and realize you’re telling yourself something. There’s a song on the album called “Ambrosia” that closes out side A, I wrote that last fall. Looking back at that song a few days later it made me realize that “Whoa, I’m giving myself red alerts here.” That song actually helped push me over the edge to decide to change my relationship with alcohol. That’s a heavy tune for me to do. When we were in the studio I wanted to do that really simple, just me on the piano. We played it one time and is the take on the record and I like it for its honesty. It’s not a perfect performance but I think it fits with the spirit of that song. It was just a moment that we documented and didn’t treat it any special way or fix anything or make it pretty. It was just four minutes and that’s what happened.

You’ve mentioned that the first album songwriters like Paul Simon and Neil Young were big influences as they had lyrics that were full of detail that could be unpacked. Was that the case for this album?

Yeah I think that holds true on this one too. I think that stuff is probably fused into my bones at this point. I don’t have to go back and listen to them every day and study it like I used to do. I think that’s become a part of what I do. And you could argue that Marigolden is probably closer to a Paul Simon approach than the first record was, just with its use of percussion and some of the guitar sounds I guess. I’ve heard people say “Ambrosia” reminds them of something off a mid-period Neil Young record. It doesn’t surprise me because I think I’ve ingested so much of that. I’ve begun to grow little Neil Young wings or something. But those guys are still benchmarks for me as far as writing with your mind and your heart, which I try to do.

But also with Marigolden we got the opportunity to explore some of my other interests too, some of my less overly songwriter loves and just searching for sounds that I was drawn to. Things like synthesizers and drum machines, lately that’s the stuff that excites me more than acoustic guitar guys. That stuff I’ve been draw to and listen to when I’m on my own. So digging into that and those worlds are some things I found exciting. It’s trying to find stuff that excites me to, like we were talking about, complete that feedback loop of energy and that’s when you know you have something.

Has songwriting come easier?

Yeah I think so. There’s that saying that you’ve got a lifetime to work on your first record and a couple years to make your second. So I think that’s true. The other thing is that I got better at it too and they come easier, like I just know how to do it better now. I think the writing is a level up all around. I have a better idea of what they are and what they’re about, how they relate to one another, how they relate to me and how they speak to each other as a whole, as a piece of work. And I’m still getting better at it. I’m in a writing mode now already and have a handful of songs written, that I’m looking forward to recording for the next record.

With the first album the songs had been around for awhile but with this one the songs are more recent. Did that impact things?

I think so. I have a low tolerance for listening to myself and if I’ve done something enough times and haven’t gotten a jolt of energy off of it lately it’s easy for me to become dismissive of it. For me shorter is better especially in a recording environment. So a lot of these things were still pretty fresh. We didn’t have arrangements worked out yet. So we got to dig around on the ground floor and make a record. And because I hadn’t exhausted these things yet I think the energy is good.

What are some of the biggest lessons you learned through touring with a bunch of big names like the Counting Crows and Aimee Mann?

You learn something every time you do it, truly. And I’ve learned so much from being on the road and every time I step on the stage or in the studio I learn something new. My mental map grows a little bit, the world both expands and becomes a little smaller and becomes a more understandable thing. And it goes that way from how to be in a band in a van on the road for a month or how to physically interact with the microphone. Or how to use a compressor in the studio or how to leave more space in your guitar playing. All of that continues to reveal. I’ve learned something from every single person I’ve interacted with. Truly, it all has some effect.

Having the opportunity to cross paths with people who have done this a long time, I’ve never really asked for advice. It’s just more observing how they do it and how they’ve done it and how they’ve carved out fulfilling careers but also maintain a relationship with their audience or the people they work with. There’s no secret other than just try to do better tomorrow, like in every way, from music performance perspective to being a decent person to striving to write better and better and not go for easy things. But go for hard things because that’s where the magic is. Somebody doesn’t need to do the easier stuff, someone already it taking care of that. The big stuff, that’s my job.

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