If memory serves there were rumblings that whole day that the secret headline guest was “someone huge” but no one knew who.

Shortly before she took the stage I remember what can only be described as some sort of floating tent backstage making its way towards the main stage - the tent being a way to obscure whatever celebrity entourage was within it. Then Dolly Parton emerged and took the stage.

I remember many things from her set that I think of often. One was that they pulled up every female musician who had performed that day to sing with her. This was amazing to witness - artists like Jade Bird and Courtney Marie Andrews getting to sing with such an icon. You could see their excitement and disbelief beaming out of them.

I also remember her incredible banter. What a pro! Everything she said was hilarious and delivered with such warmth. I remember her making the crowd give it up for her backing band which was made up of all men - saying something to the effect of “I know it’s supposed to be all about the girls tonight but these boys are working hard too!”.

I remember her playing I Will Always Love you and being so genuinely in the moment and grateful that I got to witness such a thing. I also remember singing 9-5 with my band as we ate ice cream cones. What a gift.

And lastly, I remember how she ended the set. As the band struck the last chord Dolly did a twirl like motion with her hand and over the last note she said: “I got a plane to catch!”.

Dolly donated her paycheck that year to charity. This kind of thing was common for her of course. I am enjoying all of the articles emerging not only about her philanthropy but just plain kindness. It’s all so inspiring.

About how she could have been a billionaire but chose not to be. About how she invested royalties from Whitney Houston’s cover of I will Always Love You into Black neighborhoods in Nashville. About how she congratulated 3 Six Mafia when they beat her at the Oscars. About how she once sent fan mail to Eminem. There was simply nobody like her.

Anyways, I keep thinking about how she ended her set that year at Newport - about saying she had a plane to catch. I picture her saying the same thing over the final chords of her life and then hopping in a rhinestone jet, bound for heaven.

Dolly Parton lived to be 80 years old and we are all so lucky - to have shared space with one of the greatest humans that time will ever know.

Safe journey, Dolly!

Heaven just got a new lead singer xoxo

It’s existed in many different forms of demos over the years and I could never tell if I actually liked it while simultaneously also feeling like there was certainly something there if I were to just focus in on it.

A few days before going into the studio with Aaron I was nervous about the session - about working with someone new and wondering if my songs were really any good at all.

So I called up one of my best friends and most trusted collaborators to see if he’d wanna get together and play some of my new songs together. Justins always had a good ear for my songs and I was curious to see which of the tunes he’d gravitate towards.

I was surprised and pleased after a few hours of jamming to find that Justins favorite from the batch was All Sinners. This sentiment carried over into the studio too as it soon became Aarons favorite from the record as well. It was touching that this song I thought had run out of gas was gonna make it to the finish line as a favorite to some. Sometimes a song can take a long time and require a good deal of patience.

All this just to say - I have a lot of demos of All Sinners dating as far back as 2021. Most are unlistenable gibberish throwing 4 minutes of ramblings at the wall. But somewhere around December 2023 I started to zero in on what eventually became the final version.

So here’s a few demos, below the paywall.

The most cohesive of the two is the top one. I’m really proud of this demo, listening back to it now, and think the piano is really pretty.

The other demo is a little harder to decipher but a nice memory is attached as I recorded it late at night at a friends lake house lying in bed with all the windows open, letting the white noise of the cicadas into the recording.

XO!

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I wanted a song that felt like its own journey - an album within an album - something that slowly ascended at a slight incline before gaining speed and flying off a cliff.

I kept picturing the white lines of a highway passing beneath a car as the metronome to the song. I imagined the white lines passing faster and faster until they were one continuous blur.

I cherish this demo and got a bad case of demo-itis from it and it was really hard for me to let some of the sonic elements go once in the studio with Aaron. I am so proud of what we achieved, especially with Aarons guitar solo and Lucinda Williams on the track, but I do feel this demo captured something that can only be captured in the delicate early moments of having just written a new song - it is very close to my heart.

I hope you all enjoy,

Demo below the paywall xox

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I’ve barely come up for air these past three weeks but I want to extend a very heartfelt thank you to all of you for such kind and encouraging words about the birth of our son. Thank you so much - we all really appreciate it.

We’re deep within the baby bubble and it’s all hitting me at exactly the right time. In a lot of ways, the baby bubble isn’t that much different from a post-tour bubble and the confluence of the two is incredibly peaceful. Everyday feels like such a gift — a time in my life I can already feel myself longing to get back to somewhere in the future.

Katie and I have been taking shifts with the baby. I take the first shift while she sleeps from 8 PM to 1 AM, then I hand him over until the morning.

I cherish these late hours with him. He lies on my chest, skin to skin, while I rewatch the Sopranos, play Mario 3 or read.

From midnight to one, though, we come down from these other activities and use that last hour as our runway to settle down. Here we’ve been listening to music while I stare into his face, which sometimes looks incredibly new and young and sometimes looks exactly like an old man, his eyes kaleidoscoping around the room.

I saw a meme recently that said maybe babies look old when they’re first born to give their parents, who won’t be able to see them in their old age, a preview of what they will look like one day. He is so beautiful it drives me crazy.

Anyways - we’ve been listening to two albums almost exclusively during these midnight hours and those albums are; Grouper - Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill, which I mentioned in my last post, and the Velvet Underground and Nico.

The Velvet Underground is my favorite band and I’d argue that they have three perfect albums, but it’s been a minute since I’ve really sat with any of them. Listening to & Nico is a reminder of how perfect an album can be and my mind is being blow all over again while listening to it — as if i was listening to it for the first time.

I am also realizing how child-friendly a lot the Velvets music is. The vibraphones, lyrics, droning instrumentation, etc. All of this juxtaposed to just how harsh and dangerous they can suddenly choose to be is what I believe to be their secret sauce and why they are the best band of all time. Like all the greats - they contain multitudes.

Anyways, I’ve been realizing that the things I’m spending most of my time doing within this baby bubble are all things I’ve done before, but am now doing again for the first time as a father.

What I’m trying to say is that even though I’ve seen the Sopranos, saved the Princess, read Nina Simones Gum and The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe, and logged many hours in the past two decades with both Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill and The Velvet Underground and Nico, these things are bringing me great joy in this time (if you haven’t looked a newborn in the eyes while listening to I’ll Be Your Mirror, I highly suggest it).

But perhaps these are the first experiences as a father of seeing my old world through my sons brand new eyes. Whatever the case may be - I am really enjoying all the things mentioned above that are keeping us entertained and I’m really enjoying being a dad.

xox

For our little beautiful baby to kick the door in two weeks ahead of schedule

The tour - as amazing as it was - was somewhat tense having to leave a very pregnant Katie at home.

We all found ourselves holding our collective breath that he wouldn’t come too early.

And like clockwork, I was home all but eight hours before Katie’s water broke. I like to think that the little guy waited for me.

His due date was August first but luckily we get some extra time with him. Who we thought would be a Leo is now a Cancer. He is perfect.

Born July 21st 2026

Katie’s such a badass

But yall already knew that

I do have to drop out of my scheduled performance at the Eaux Claires festival this weekend in Wisconsin. I was looking forward to jamming with Justin and Aaron which was going to feel very full circle but I know we will have lots of jamming in our futures. Sending everyone there my love this weekend.

For now, in terms of jamming, I’m going to be holding this little ball of magic while listening to Grouper - Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping on repeat. We are so in love with him.

“I opened a mirror up, and saw true love”

God bless! Xoxox

Today I am writing about my demo for my song Die Young.

In bullet points:

• Die Young is one of the last songs I wrote for Little Wide Open.

• My friend Caleb kept joking that I should put his name into one of my songs and so I called his bluff

• I was wanting to write something that felt in the same universe as a Gillian Welch song

• I think in some ways I was also wanting to write a response to Katies song Right Back To It.

• This song sort of walks the line between being a love song aimed at one specific person while also a different kind of love song aimed at bunch of different people from throughout my life.

• I realized as I was singing this song recently in Joshua Tree that a big influence on the subject matter were the firsts tours I ever did with my band Creepy Aliens, when I was 17 years old.

• Creepy Aliens was my highschool punk band fronted by my good friend Griffin, who, in a lot of ways, is responsible for a lot of my good taste at a young age. For example, I believe it was he who turned me onto the Silver Jews and David Berman, who I namecheck in this song!

• Creepy Aliens toured in an old van that our friend Chris had bought. The van had a rusted metal floor with holes in it that we’d drop our cigarettes out of.

• I began writing this song during a soundcheck at Parc Du Chateau in Mayenne, France. That initial demo of me capturing the melody on stage is below the paywall, dated at 6/29/2024

• Second demo is also below, dated 7/25/2024 and is titled “Die Young Sweetheart”. It has a whole other alternate verse.

• I then finished writing this song at my home studio in Kansas City around a year or so later before eventually taking it to Aaron and cutting it for good. That home studio version below!

ENJOY! Xoxo

A few other things: I am still on tour!

Also my friend Caleb, who I mentioned above, was my second guest on my I Ride Passenger Series which just came out.

ALSO I have gotten into the candle business and I have a candle out in collaboration with Earl of East called ALL SINNERS. I concocted the scent myself and I think it’s quite wonderful if I do say so.

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Tim is an old friend and an incredible recording and visual artist. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing him something like 15 years. We used to tour together when I was in the Babies and we were briefly neighbors in Echo Park in 2011.

Last night in Paris was our biggest show so far of the cycle and it was everything I coulda hoped for. A little over 24 hours in the most romantic of all the cities. I ate a ceasar salad alone on a square for lunch and then again the same ceasar salad at midnight after the show. Perfect.

I am still basking in the afterglow of the wonderful night while sitting backstage at the Troxy here in London, where we will take the stage in only a few hours. Can’t wait.

Anyways, in Paris Tim and I sang You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory by Johnny Thunders, which is one of the greatest songs ever written as far as I’m concerned. There’s a certain sect of songwriters born out of the punk movement in New York during the late 1970s that wrote some of my favorite songs ever. Songs that maybe-perhaps-somewhat-kinda get overlooked in the cannon of the best American songs because of being punk.

But for my money, You Can’t Put Your Arm Around A Memory could hang in the ring with any of the titans. It is a perfect tune.

I got emotional watching Tim sing on stage. I’ve long looked up to him as a kind of older brother and am so in awe of his talent and natural charisma. We’ve come a long way as friends and made a lot of memories over the years and it meant a lot to make yet another. I’m cherishing those more and more all the time.

Tim actually covers the song on his album Growing Faith. Here’s a little voice memo of us rehearsing it in my green room - the “Jim Morrison Room” - before taking the stage. This one’s above the paywall!

Anyways, tour carries on into England. Less than two weeks left to go. Schedule is packed!

Thank you Paris, and see you in a few hours London :)

Artwork by Tim Presley

I write you all from the Minneapolis airport during a 5 1/2 hour layover on my way to Amsterdam.

Nice little break at home with Katie and the dogs and now I’m already out the door to the next tour, which I am VERY excited for.

So much of the subject matter on Little Wide Open surrounds traveling. A lot of it is heavy; death, mortality, butterfly blood, etc.

And so, somewhere in the writing process I made it a point to write a song, about traveling, that felt lighter in spirit. That song is Junebug.

I wrote the melody that’s the basis for the song on the piano in our living room one morning shortly after waking up and wrote lyrics from there. I like how child like the melody feels, like something from a nursery rhyme.

I love traveling and I love returning home. Both wouldn’t be so significant without the other, really, and in Junebug I try and capture that. My muse was all the traveling I had done for This Is A Photograph; America, Europe, UK, Australia, SE Asia. Then the wonderful things that would be back home waiting for me in Kansas City; cicadas, my family, rivers and yes, junebugs.

Another muse for this song was my visits to friends Stella and Julie Blackmon at their riverhouse in Missouri. Julie dropped a new photo the other day which per usual is pretty stunning. I think in a lot of ways I was trying to make a song that felt like one of her photographs.

There are two demos beneath the paywall. One is me very obviously stumbling through the song and getting a feel for it beneath my fingers. The other is a more cohesive one I made in my home studio and then later took to Aaron and we brought it to life in the way that we did.

Anyways,

The world is full of of wonder and so are our homes.

And in the spirit, EU/UK here I come, see you soon xoxo

The Spring by Julie Blackmon

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For those of you who aren’t aware what that is - it is a reference to the great scene in Cameron Crowe’s iconic Almost Famous - the best tour movie of all time. (Also maybe the only tour movie?? If not, please enlighten me…).

In the movie the band Stillwater drives away from Topeka, Kansas after a night of debauchery. The band is a little tense, very hung over, and road weary. But someone, a genius, puts on Tiny Dancer by Elton John and everyone just sorta shuts up and sinks in, ending with them all triumphantly singing the songs chorus. It’s one of the best and most memorable scenes of all time.

Anyways, like I said, every tour is alloted a great Tiny Dancer moment and if you’re lucky you’ll get a few. For me personally this often comes after a show. Usually a big one - a milestone - when we put on music in the bus while driving away from a city that we just performed in.

For example I remember playing Webster Hall in New York in 2022 and we put on Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side and turned the lights off as we drove out of the city, watching Manhattan blur all around us. That was a great Tiny Dancer moment.

I also remember distinctly my band the Babies, after a fight, getting in the van and driving away from a gas station outside Reno towards Portland and putting on Courtney Barnets Depreston for the first time. We all went from whatever animosity was between us to suddenly living inside the song for it’s four and a half minute runtime, as if all of our lives had lead to that cinematic moment.

I am writing about this now because this past tour was lucky enough to have had a few Tiny Dancer moments. Notably as we drove away from Chicago, watching the skyline get smaller in the rear view after our great show at The Metro. We listened to Chicago artists; Chance The Rapper, Twin Peaks, Whitney, Kanye, etc. But it was Jesus, Etc. that took the crown. When Jesus, etc. came on we all sorta just stopped talking, locked in, and started singing along. Again, as if all of life had lead to that moment.

My favorite moment, though, and maybe the most Tiny Dancer of the Tiny Dancer moments — at least on this tour — was as we drove out of New Orleans after hitting the bars after playing the iconic Tipitina’s.

Erin Rae had just joined the band for our final week and one thing I know about Erin, amongst the many great things, is her depth and knowledge of music. Hand that girl an aux cord and she’ll blow your mind. So as we drove outta the swamp and towards Beaumont, Texas at two in the morning, we put the windows down in the front lounge of the bus, turned the lights down low, and got into some more beers and a muffaletta my friend Andrew had given us for the ride.

Erin put on banger after banger but it wasn’t until Lucinda Williams Jackson came on that we all fell silent and sorta drifted into the song. Something about listening to Lucinda in Louisiana, man. It hits like nothing else. And that song, that recording, the arrangement. It’s just untouchable magic. Proof that magic exists and that magic is music.

At one point I opened my eyes to see everyone else with their eyes closed, singing the song, the thick humid wind blowing through the bus. Erin next to me, eyes closed like all the rest, sang harmony to Lucinda, bringing the song into the third dimension. Liam snapped a pic of me and Erin during this moment. It’s really so sweet.

Hold me closer Tony Danza!

More moments like these to come I hope, up ahead, when we set off to tour Europe next week. Tickets here.

xoxo km

I set out for my tour of North America on May 4th, and returned home yesterday morning on June 21st. It was a long one, just how I like them.

I usually don’t enjoy tours on top of an album release. All the press and the pressure of launching something new out in the world on top of a tour make it almost impossible to enjoy. But this one defied all the odds. My team, crew, band and all of you who came to the shows made it impossible not to love. I can’t thank you all enough. This one was an all timer.

There was also something extra special about traveling North America on an album that was inspired by doing just that. Little Wide Opens initial conception was writing the song Bible Belt in the back of my tour bus in 2021, so it was special to know that that tour lead to this tour. Traveling and songs are magical and reciprocal like that.

It will never cease to amaze me how I continue to be enamored and so incredibly inspired by traveling. It’s the greatest thing in the world, watching these landscapes / accents / food / people change. One minute you’re eating bagels in Montreal and the next you’re two-stepping in Texas. One moment you’re looking out at the Rockies and suddenly, it seems, you’re driving through Times Square on a party bus the night the Knicks pulled off a historic win. It fucking rules and it will never ever get old.

I mentioned this before but I had some real moments of feeling at home in this world on this trip. Little life affirming moments while brushing my teeth in a parking lot or walking around a city half awake where I felt truly at peace with my place in the universe. Moments that are easy to take for granted but I made it a point to write them down and not let them go.

Then there were the big moments, too, which were the shows; Crowd surfing in Montreal, the crowd singing the words back at us in Vancouver, getting to play Modern Girl with Carrie Brownstein in Portland, etc. These are real life moments that dreams are made of and proof that dreams do indeed come true.

Anyways, I’m sad this tour is over. But still so much more ahead. Europe begins in a little over a week and i’m sure i’ll be playing these songs for as long as you all will have me.

I miss my tour family but am happy to be home with my lil (and expanding) family for a sec.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to each and everyone of you who came out to these shows and made them so special.

Also,

Since it’s on topic - I thought I’d parlay today’s post into a demo about my song Field Guide For The Butterflies, the last on the album.

This song, and this demo, for the longest time was my goto demo to show people when I told them I was working on a new album. In my mind this song summed up every theme of the record I was working on and was the obvious opening track. It felt like the album opening its eyes. We would later decide it best to have it be the last song on the album, like tying all the albums themes into a bow.

The song is about being an entertainer and taking your show on the road no matter the expense. It’s second verse was born out of a poem that I wrote after a tour in Europe in 2023. The poem went like this:

where there are my friends

there are happy times

where there is the wind

there are happy chimes

But the first verse I wrote after a solo trip through Missouri and Arkansas. I noticed dozens of Butterflies kept crossing the highway while I drove down Interstate 49. I felt awful killing all these butterflies, watching them splatter all over the grill of my truck. Ever since writing This Is A Photograph I’ve felt a kinship with the butterfly.

I know this is all low hanging fruit. Everyone loves butterflies and for good reason. It’s hard not to see them as a colorful metaphor. But especially for us traveling artists.

I couldn’t help but see the through line between these butterflies getting killed while flying over the highway to the friends I’ve lost on the road. Beautiful winged creatures gone too soon. But also those butterflies who didn’t end up on my windshield represent those of us still out here fluttering. Doing our best to evolve and grow alongside the highway.

About a year after the solo drive down I-49 I did the same drive with my friend Justin to play him my new demos I was working on, including Field Guide which at the time was untitled. Afterwards we stopped in Fayetteville to visit the amazing Dickson Street Books - truly one of the best used book stores in America.

And of course, the first thing I saw was an old paperback book with a beautiful and colorful cover that said; Field Guide For The North American Butterfly. And there was my song title.

You go out to meet the universe and you’ll find that the universe is already out there waiting for you.

*

I was talking with Liam on a day off last week. We were bonding over how much we still love touring this deep in the game and Liam put it best;

“you gotta do something with your time on this earth and we picked a good one”

and so, again, I reiterate;

where there are my friends

there are happy times

where there is the wind

there are happy chimes

xoxoxox km

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But for Javelin, I distinctly remember this one being something I only ever really worked on in Kansas City, at home, alone, between tours. I’d pick the song up and put it back down and not touch it until I had returned back to my living room where I’d left it sitting on the neck of my guitar.

I have two distinct places in mind when I think of writing this song; my couch, and sitting on top of my picnic table on our front porch. It’s there that I remember holding my Waterloo and workshopping Javelin. From the picnic bench it would either be freezing or very hot, season depending, but always, Javelin.

I had wanted to write something that captured the feeling of whiplash and culture shock that comes from circling the globe and returning home to the Midwest. For the longest time I couldn’t tell if this song was any good and it’s one of the last we recorded for the album.

I remember distinctly feeling cringe around the lyric “am I a has been, or am I a husband?” to the point where I almost left it out of the song. Ironically it’s the line that’s probably been praised the most since releasing the album. It be that way sometimes!

Anyways, I’d say this is my favorite demo of all. After finishing the song at home I took it to my lil studio and fleshed it out. It’s much different than what ended up on the album. It’s sad and longing and made on my piano and a mellotron. Once in the studio we decided to make the song much more uplifting and happy, which was the right move, but i’ll always cherish this demo.

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Remembering moments at the beginning of this tour feel like a different lifetime - a different season - a different person.

It’s been an amazing one. An all timer. Every show has gone off in its own way and a few have been some of the best shows of my life. I am incredibly grateful to my unbelievably talented band and incredibly hard working and talented crew. And to all of you, for showing up and being so great. For dancing, laughing, crying, and singing along. All the good stuff!

Also it has been a tour of gifts. Baby gifts, adult gifts. Clothes, flowers, treats, letters. Gifts! A very kind couple even handed me a vintage briefcase with my initials on it, full of its own labyrinth of gifts. To all of you providing theses treasures - I greatly appreciate and cherish them all. Thank you so much.

We’re in Mississippi on a day off currently and I am writing you from a Hard Rock Cafe where out my hotel room window I can see a very stormy Gulf. It has been a wildly busy and eventful past week full of triumph and comedic errors.

After our wonderful New York show at Brooklyn Steel, the Knicks pulled off the greatest comeback in NBA finals history. We then drove to Times Square where our hotel was, since we needed to be close to the CBS Studios to film the next morning, which was where all the Knicks fans were celebrating. Tour has a way of placing you in the cultural action. We of course couldn’t keep from walking through Times Square to be a part of the festivities. It was celebratory and wonderful in a specifically NYC kind of way.

The next day, after sleeping three hours, when I got up to walk to the bathroom I had a sharp pain in the bottom of my foot and noticed a splinter of some kind. We made our way to the CBS Studios and throughout the day the pain grew and grew. The taping was great (and airs soon) but after I got back to the bus in Brooklyn and went walking to find lunch I - at Katies insistence - found an urgent care and went in. The very kind doctor gasped as she pulled an actual tiny nail out of my foot.

That night we drove through the night to D.C. and played Washington, Charlotte and then Atlanta all in a row. All wonderful shows, but after our big New York experience we were running on fumes.

The point is that tour never provides a dull moment. It’s exciting, in whatever capacity it chooses to be, at all times. Often it’s good excitement but it’s full of its bad excitements, too. You can’t control it and are best to never resist it but instead just ride its ebbs and flows. That’s the secret code of being on the road.

I’ve had some real moments of transcendant happiness and freedom on this run. Brushing my teeth in a Loves parking lot at 2 in the morning under a full moon. Going for a walk along a canal in Montreal a few minutes before taking the stage. Laying in some grass in Boston in the afterglow and the amazing show the night before. Those feelings of being nowhere, but somehow everywhere, all at once. It’s hard to sum up these experiences but I will say that never do I feel most a part of the world, and happy with my place in it, than I do during these beautiful little moments on tour. I feel so lucky.

Anyways, there’s still more to go! We have New Orleans tonight and then three shows in Texas in front of us. Our dear Camellia Hartman has parted ways with us til Europe and we are now joined by best bud Erin Rae to do some sangin.

After Texas we get a small break, then a few weeks in Europe. Then I have a baby.

tix to all of the above here.

Love you all!!!!

PS: I am already becoming nostalgic for the beginning of this run, which began in NYC with a promo week. While I was there I recorded a little demo of me singing my favorite Cameron Winter song in my room at the Chelsea Hotel. It’s unreleased and has no official title that I know of, and exists only on Youtube in a few different forms. I saw him play it live and have become mildly obsessed with it since. Truly incredible lyrics. My version beneath the paywall.

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it’s so hot around

and the schools let out

so the pools will flood

write my name in mud

I always loved these little lines, written over the very chords you hear on LWO, and sang just the same. Over the past two deacades since I wrote this little line I had tried to use it countless times, until it finally lead me to writing Cowtown.

Little Wide Open, I feel, is all told from my perspective. It may be nostalgic, sure, but the narrorator is always me, singing directly to you. I went out of my way for this album to try and not sing from any other character perspective, as I often have, but instead have it be a direct channel into the person (me) who is singing the song.

And I succeeded in this, except for Cowtown. Like many of my songs I wasn’t exactly sure why I was writing this song until many months later it dawned on me that Cowtown is told from the perspective of myself, had I never left the midwest. It’s a character stuck in the claustrophobic wide open, and doesn’t see an escape anywhere in sight.

It was a journey with this song. I love it a lot but it, along with Bible Belt, almost got cut from the album a few different times, but in the end, I am so glad they remain. A lot of people bring this song up to me, how it’s a secret banger of the record, and I hate thinking that at one point in time this almost got shoved aside.

One of my brightest north stars for this album is the Tom Petty song Square One. I was chasing that energy in a lot of these songs, but especially with this one. A song you have to commit to, but once you do, it has a powerful payoff. Something so quiet that it’s somehow loud.

I love knowing that this little tune traveled with me for so long. Sometimes a it takes twenty years to finish a song and sometimes it’s worth the wait xoxo

Two demos from beneath the paywall. One from Long Pond as I messed around on a Nashville tuned guitar, and one from 2023, when I was completing it.

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It was there that I crossed paths with a friend I hadn’t seen since middle school, a lifetime to a teenager, named John. John, like myself was - and still is - a musician. We bonded, as many teenagers do, purely over the fact that we both enjoyed guitar music even if our tastes were actually pretty different.

Guitar music to me meant The Mountain Goats and Bob Dylan, and to John it meant, if memory serves, Led Zeppelin and Nirvana. On our venn diagram however, our circles overlapped with our mutual love for one band that was very important to both of us; The Pixies.

Just as John and I had reunited that year in 2005, so did The Pixies - and Kansas City was on their tour routing where they would be playing at the Uptown Theatre. A concert of this caliber coming to our mid sized city in the early 2000s was a big deal. But the show sold out quick and we didn’t get tickets in time for whatever reason. It was like the plot to Detroit Rock City except we never had tickets to get burned in the first place.

But when the night eventually came John and I, along with our friend Grant, as if by fate, ended up driving past the Uptown where the marquee illuminated PIXIES SOLD OUT. Who knows what we were up to that night. Just cruising the strip, as teenagers do.

I had completely forgotten that the Pixies were even in town when I turned to John and asked - man why aren’t you at that show, they’re you’re FAVORITE band? - I then remembered John explaining that he had actually tried - but by the time he did it was already sold out. That and when he attempted to get tickets through our local radio station, 96.5 The Buzz, he was told he wasn’t a certified “Rockoholic” and thus he wasn’t eligible. I have no idea what this even means but I do remember him explaining it as the issue.

Whatever the case, we were ticketless, and needed to find a way in. In a moment of inspiration I instructed Grant to pull the car over as I declared I was going to somehow get us in. Grant pulled over and I jumped out of the vehicle and ran to the ticket booth. I remember purposely gassing myself for dramatic effect and my plan was to play dumb and hope the person in the ticket window took pity on me.

Out of breath I made my way to the booth and asked for three tickets please. The person behind the glass looked at me like I was crazy and responded by telling me two things; that it was sold out, and that the show was nearly over anyways.

But me and my friends just drove from Omaha! I lied, looking back and notioning for Grant and John. The man behind the glass then gave me some sort of look somewhere between pity and scepticism and said I can give you *two* tickets as he pushed two paper tickets across the counter.

Good enough! I took the tickets and turned around to show Grant and John. I did it! I told them, explaining that Grant wouldn’t be able to go in. Sorry Grant! My logic was that it was John’s favorite band, and I got us the tickets so we should go in. Plus, Grant had the car, and could drive himself home, and John and I would find a different way. Again, sorry Grant.

But once again, as if by fate, in that moment, some kinda rock n roll guardian angel, a man who at the time seemed old but in reality was probably in his late twenties saw us discussing who got to go in and who didn’t and asked if we wanted his extra ticket, nonchalantly handing it over to Grant.

Why was this man also getting to the show so late? And why did he have an extra ticket? Miracles don’t need logic.

As I type this I know it sounds like I’m making all of this up - but I’m not. It was just one of those magical nights that happens because you’re young and fearless and the universe, sometimes, abides. Sometimes you go out to greet the universe and you find that the universe is already out there, waiting for you to shake its hand.

My memory’s hazy, as this was 22 years ago, but I believe we ran into the venue during their encore as they were halfway through their song Hey, which according to the internet was their second to last song, followed by and ending the show with Gigantic - my favorite Pixies song. I still remember how god-like Kim Deal looked, playing the bass and singing the lines “and this I know, his teeth as white as snow…”. I also remember the elated look on John’s face as he sang along.

The show was over in a matter of minutes but it didn’t matter. We had actually SEEN the Pixies, and that was all that mattered.

I would recount this story to Kim Deal backstage at the Sydney Opera House in Australia 12 years later. I’ve shared a few backstages with Kim over the years and she’s one of the best examples of why one should absolutely meet their heroes.

But the whole point of this story is that the Uptown Theatre in Kansas City has long been my favorite venue in my hometown. It’s big but somehow intimate and beautiful and the sight of many of my favorite memories, like this one, during my formative years.

Besides the Pixies I also saw the Get Up Kids at their peak, buying my first ever vinyl 7” from their opener, the legendary Super Chunk. I also saw Bright Eyes at the Uptown during his world take over after I’m Wide Awake came out, and so on.

I have also performed there as part of Thundergong a few times over the years but headlining my own show there two weeks ago was an honor and a career, and life, highlight.

Thank you to everyone who came out to the Uptown. We pulled it off and I hope it’s the first of many xoxo.

My friend Rachel Kushner said to me recently that a highway is like a waiting room and that’s really stuck with me as I relate to this sentiment, but really only when I’m on tour. On tour, you just want to get there at all times. So sitting in a sprinter or trying to sleep on a bus for eight hours at a time does feel like a waiting room. But on a solo drive, where I get to make my own rules, I try my best to treat the highway as a sort of choose-your-own-adventure board game, where each highway exit is a different reality.

I make it a point to stop into towns I’ve never been to and wander around; Odessa, Amarillo, Salina, Coffeyville, Dodge City, etc. Towns that make a mid-sized American city look like Oz. I find a lot of comfort in these towns as they remind me of the small towns I grew up visiting my extended family in in Nebraska. Christmas was always spent in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, population 15,000 and summer trips spent in Petersburg, population a staggering 320 by the 2020 census! Though at the time of my childhood it was around 70, if memory serves.

If the highway is a waiting room, then the billboards are the stacks of magazines collecting in the corner of the room. And in the waiting room that is America, the stack of magazines is mainly filled with propaganda; GUNS AND AMMO, JESUS LOVES ALL BABIES, GOD IS WATCHING. All these alongside roadside attraction advertisements; FANTASTIC CAVERNS and LIVE TIGERS, etc.

Sometimes the billboards themselves become their own kind of poetry and I can’t tell you how many times i’ve passed certain billboards and noted to myself how it would make a good band name.

I daydream about the lives being lived in these small towns constantly. What’s going on there? Who lives there? Will they ever leave? Where will they go? What do they dream about?

In not wanting to repeat myself, I won’t go through all the details of how 100,000 came to be that I mentioned in my other post. But what I will say is that this song wore a few different hats before we finally found the one that fit it best. Below are two demos. One of me showing the song to Meg in their bedroom and them playing along with me as we sorta shape the song, and the other is the song as I wrote it before taking it to Meg.

Meg and I have a different version of this song that i’ll certainly release on it’s own, that’s very Meg-forward. I can’t wait to show you that someday, but in the meantime, enjoy these two demos! xoxo

PS: We have just reached the halfway point of our tour! 15 shows down, 15 to go on our North American run. The shows have been absolutely wonderful. Thank you all.

Come see us, tickets here.

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A few years ago Katie and I bought a mid century ranch style house, that feels somewhat like living inside an aquarium. Before we closed we lead my parents through a walk through and my mom protested the buying of the house, saying it was unsafe, as it did not have a basement and was built on a slab.

I did my best to explain to my mom that we didn’t need a basement as I reminded her of all the close calls we’ve had with tornados over the years and how no matter how scary, we were never in the direct path of one.

All this just to say that two weeks after we bought the basementless house I had just arrived back home from a European tour and was very jet lagged. On one of my first nights back in the new house Katie and I were woken up by tornado sirens at three in the morning.

I was so jetlagged that I actually believed, for a moment, that I was still in France, and although I was aware that the sirens were going off in Kansas City, I felt we were safe since we were somehow in Paris. But once I snapped out of this delirium I realized the gravity of our situation; being inside a glass house that has no basement with a tornado headed our direction.

I had remembered my mom during the walk through telling Katie and I that if ever a tornado should appear we should hide in the closet in the guest room, and so I told Katie to go there, as I turned the TV on in the living room.

Through the screen came the live broadcast of a weatherman shouting to seek cover immediately as the tornado was moving east, headed right for our neck of the woods. Feeling so panicked I didn’t know what to do I began flickering our living room lights. I’m still not exactly sure what I hoped this might accomplish. Maybe that a new neighbor would see it as a distress signal and come save us? No one came to our rescue.

But in the end the sirens turned off and we went back to bed, a little shaken up. Turns out the tornado did touch-down though, stripping the rooftop of a church only a few blocks south of us.

Months later I was doom scrolling when I came across a repost of a video that was going viral of a teenage kid walking around his neighborhood as multiple tornado sirens accidentally began harmonizing with one another. I still don’t know the credibility or how real this video even is, but the idea was incredibly moving and beautiful to me; harmonizing tornado sirens. A harmonious warning, like the sound one might here right before the earth is swallowed by the sun.

It’s easy to assume that hell may be a never ending storm. Terrifying claps of thunder throwing violent bolts of lightning through the blinding rain. But one could also imagine a thunderstorm in heaven, viewed from a porch, watching it flicker across the sky, the hands of god coming down. I’ve long loved watching storms in the distance across the open plains…the rain clouds look like jellyfish slowly moving through the sky.

The middle of the country can be very very ugly at times, but i’ve long felt that within that ugliness lives something very beautiful, as if almost unintentionally beautiful, and very distinctly American. It’s beauty may not be as immediate as other places, but it is there, if you search for it.

I put all of this into Badlands the best I could. It was maybe my favorite song to watch come to life in Aarons studio and the one I was most excited to take in. Here’s a few demos below of it’s evolution as a demo over the years before capturing it for good.

The two demos, beneath the paywall.

1. “Badlands electric” as it’s written in my files. From May 16 2023. This is me singing through a small amp and playing electric guitar while recording it on my phone in the living room of my studio.

2. “Badlands Piano” from Nov 23 2023. I like this one a lot as it reminds me of an old Microphones song.

LOVE U ALL! ENJOY!

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I write to you all from my bunk on my tour bus. It’s 5:30 in the morning and I’m unable to sleep, in part due to the fact that I am so excited for this upcoming day off. We been workin hard.

I am so thrilled with these shows and my incredible band. Getting to share the stage with Cochemea,Liam, Cole, Dom, and Camellia everynight is an incredible gift. They bring my songs to life in a way that I’ll forever be grateful for. Often while playing with them the John Prine lyric; how lucky can one man get? Pops into my head. I am blessed! And also behind the scenes, too. Brandon, Ollie, Alex and Abbey are the most incredible crew…again,…how lucky?

Tour never ceases to amaze me. Each one uniquely its own. You can never enter the same river twice and same is true of the highway. This is a great one so far. Its layers of exhaustion, triumph, banality. It is the best thing in the world.

We’ve properly launched. A week of promo shows in NYC straight into our first show in Aspen and we’ve already knocked out the West Coast and are headed east. God bless it! So many memories already created. The response from you all has been so overwhelming and seeing you all singing the new songs (and the old ones, too) warms my heart and makes me wanna keep going night after night.

• We’ve watched Dumb and Dumber, twice

• Pendleton Oregon was a highlight - a place I’d never been before and was pretty charmed by.

• We played a midnight set in SLC on my album release night, hours after I was in a medic tent from getting shocked on stage. Or maybe I pinched a nerve? I’ll never know.

• Carrie Brownstein joined us for her song Modern Girl in Portland. Uwade for Bittersweet, TN in San Fran. Tim Heidecker for The Man In Me in Los Angeles. More special guests to come…

• Got to do another KEXP, my 5th time, in Seattle.

May is a wonderful time to be out here

how lucky can one man get!

More to go here

Oh, and also, tomorrow I will properly begin rolling out the demos of the album for my paid subscribers, starting with Badlands xoxox

Pic by Anna St Louis

Here’s a post I wrote about 100,000, which is accompanied by a wonderful video made by the great Cody Duncum, who also made my Bittersweet, TN video a few years back. I was so inspired by his short film London, Kentucky, and he brought some of that same energy into the 100k video.

Anyways some words about 100k:

A few years ago, around the time Tom Verlaine passed away, I found myself wanting to write a sort of guitar-forward song in his style. In doing this I knew I’d have to tap in my guitar sibling Meg Duffy. Meg used to play in my live band and we’ve got this telepathic guitarmony shorthand with one another that I feel is heavily and unapologetically influenced by Television.

I wrote the initial riff sitting on my couch one day and then wrote a song around the riff, eventually taking it to Meg. We then tracked the song in LA with Tim Carr, who drums with Meg in Perfume Genius, and Phil Hartunian at his great studio Tropico Beauty in Los Angeles. It is the only song on the album not tracked with Aaron, and about a year later I took the song to Aaron and we, in his words, “Long Ponded it up”.

My intention with this song sonically was to have the feeling of being in a car on a highway that’s gradually gaining speed, going faster and faster, until it flies off a cliff. I think we did a good job achieving this, especially with Meg on lead guitar duty. They did what they do best, and created a whole guitar universe unlike any other.

In terms of what the songs about - I’m always on some long solo drive across America. It’s my favorite hobby and while doing so I’m always enamored in the small and somewhat nameless towns you pass off the side of the highway. Towns so small that it makes a mid sized midwestern city, like Kansas City, look like Oz.

I stop in these towns as often as possible. It reminds me a lot of my childhood, visiting extended family in Scottsbluff and Petersburg, Nebraska. I like to walk the desolate mainstrips and sit at bars and people watch and go on runs through the quiet neighborhoods that almost always stereotypically end up running alongside some train tracks. Salina, Kansas, Odessa and Amarillo, Texas, Jonesboro, Arkansas, etc. God bless you all. The glue that binds this crazy fucked up country together.

And so this is about those towns - the quiet lives taking place within and the nests of highways that tangle all around them, transporting people anywhere but there.

I hope you enjoy! This one is a blast.

Also we out here! I am on tour now and it’s off to such an amazing start. We had a big count down on stage in Denver for my album release and our double header in Salt Lake City was a blast. I have such a kick ass band and crew at the moment. Not sure how I got so lucky.

So much more soon xoxo

Liam Kazar, Dom Billett, Cochemea Gastelum, Cole Berggren, Camellia Hartman

Photos by Emilio Herce

Release days are always a little bittersweet and surreal. I feel both celebratory and introspective — where it feels at once like the death of something, but also the birth of something else. A funeral and a birthday, happening in tandem.

When I’m making an album, it’s like I’ve got this tiny secret flame that I carry with me always, tucked away where only me and a few others get to experience its glow. Even with the world unaware, I’ve got my candle, keeping me warm and helping guide my path.

Then release day comes and that little flame transforms into a campfire for others to gather around and stare into. This is thrilling of course, but I am going to mourn my little spark and miss the days of it illuminating my imagination.

But please come and gather around my fire! Feel its warmth. I’m tired of guarding my flame and am overjoyed to share it with you all. I worked hard on it. A lot of people did, and I love them all to death.

There are moments surrounding this album that play out in my memory like some kind of montage, and i’ll surely write about all those moments soon—I’ve definitely spoken them into the ground during the press cycle these past two months— but for now I will, at long last, let the album finally speak for itself.

For now all that’s left for me to do is tour, which has already begun, and bring these songs to life with my wonderful band.

For my paying subscribers, my song by song breakdown of the album with dozens of demos begins next week. We also released a video for my song 100,000 - but more on all that later.

I truly hope you all enjoy. May it bring you some joy in this ever complicated world. I love you all a lot, and you being interested in the music I make means everything to me.

Okay Little Wide Open, be free!

FLY HIGH!

like a butterfly,

or maybe an angel,

xo KM!

Like making a record, it’s always hard to imagine what the new songs will feel like to perform live until you simply put them into motion. Going into it, it somehow feels like an impossible feat, but then, like magic, you watch it quickly come to life. After only two shows the songs already feel worn in and comfortable. I can’t wait to dig deeper and deeper into them.

Lucky for me, I am blessed to play with such talented people. For the promo week the live band was made up of Cochemea Gastelum, Liam Kazar, Camellia Hartman, Cole Berggren, and Nick Kinsey (who played in my band for many years). For the tour Nick will swap out for our friend Dom Billet and the rest will remain.

We played a show, fittingly, at Lucinda’s Williams Bar in the East Village and then up at Levon Helms Barn in Woodstock. Two sacred spaces started by absolute icons. One of whom I am eternally blessed to say makes a cameo on the new record.

The shows were a BLAST. Lucinda’s atmosphere was absolutely perfect for these songs and getting to play a packed show in a smaller space was so so special and incredibly fun. Then up at Levons, it felt great to be back in the barn - such a wonderful experience, always. Couldn’t imagine two better spaces to launch this whole thing. Thank you all for coming!

Anyways, tour starts Wednesday, and the album is out Friday. Get tickets here.

So ready for both, see you soon

xoxo KM

Here’s some wonderful captures by Harper Pix