The Perils of Small Mining
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What an overwrought album title, huh? Just who exactly do I think I am - Fall Out Boy? Well, no, but I do think that an overwrought album title pairs with my emo-leaning music like a fine wine with, uh, aged...cottage cheese. And if you’re interested in a little textual excavation, I’m more than happy to give you a quick glimpse of my inspiration for the title: basically, it’s cribbed from a line in East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Strap in for the full excerpt:
“I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining - small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.”
So there you have it! My songs tend to hone in on the same sort of backwards-looking melancholy that Steinbeck seems to be talking about here, and borrowing his metaphor for my album title felt both appropriate and like a nice way to pay homage to a really good book. For real - five stars. Go check it out.
Okay, are you back? You finished East of Eden that quickly? You’re amazing.
Most of the songs on this album have already been released as singles over the course of 2023, so I don’t feel compelled to spend any additional time introducing or analyzing those here; that said, there are a few little numbers that will be new to my most eagle-eared listeners. Two of them are shorties right around the one-minute mark, one is a re-do of a song I originally released back in the halcyon days of 2011 (?!), and one is genuinely new and of normal length.
“Olive Trees” was my intentional effort to crank out a short song with no recurring parts that still feels “complete.” Pete Yorn did this with his song “Intro” that leads off his sophomore album Day I Forgot, and for some reason that has always stuck with and inspired me.
“Median” is just that: the mid-point of the album. It’s fully instrumental, and I debated leaving it off and turning it into a full song later, but it’s got a vibe that suits the album well, and besides, it’s always nice to have a divider.
Deke’s house. Fucking 2017.
“Fulcrum” is the re-do. I originally released it as part of my 2011 album Flood | Lights, but to me, that album has become a showcase for how to butcher some decent songs by mixing them horribly (to be clear, I was the mixing engineer), and so that album has been scrubbed from the internet and lost to the sands of time. “Fulcrum“ felt like the song most worthy of a divine resurrection, though, and so here it is. Fun factoid: I tracked those main acoustic guitar parts at Deke Spears’ house in 2017. We’d planned to work up a version back then but ultimately let it lapse; I had Deke send me the in-progress tracks, and they happened to include these very lovely guitars. Boom! Cheat code activated.
Finally, “Nasty Fall” is the brand new, traditionally-sized one. I considered releasing it as a single, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned through this Year of Endless Promo, it’s that the songs that are even arguably difficult to pigeonhole into an established popular genre are nearly impossible to market using the usual tools (playlisting, ads, etc.). Personally, I think it’s pretty straightforward, but it does transition from Ben Folds-y, lushly stringed verses into epic Phoenix/80s-inspired choruses, so I spent a minute picturing the internet’s collective bafflement and balked. I hope it doesn’t offend your delicate sensibilities. It really shouldn’t.
So, yeah! The Perils of Small Mining. Here it is. I’m proud of it and excited to get it into your hands and ears, but if I’m being truly honest, I’m also ready to get it behind me and move on to the next release(s). I’ve been writing and recording like a mad woman during this Year of Endless Promo, and I think the songs on the horizon are really gonna butter your bread. So please: enjoy this album, order it on vinyl if you’re one of the cool kids, but don’t go anywhere.
PS: To answer a recurring question: the cover art is from Grand Central Station. It wasn’t that red irl, though.