My friends, it’s been too long and that is entirely my doing. I hope all is well in your world. How was your summer? Mine went by so, so fast but it was good. Now the kids are back in school, and (checks notes in disbelief) apparently they’re seniors!? Unreal.

You, being the amazing folks who have backed this project are due an update. This one is just for you, and not being sent out to the whole Halflight Dispatch list. Let me start with a simple thank you. Everything that follows was enabled by your generosity. Also...there are many things left to do: vinyl & CDs to manufacture, videos to make, and if you wanted to send an end of the year donation in time for the close of the tax year, that would be welcome.

The album is done

Recorded. Mixed. Sequenced. Mastered. Done. The musical part is done. We’ve been listening. It feels really good to be at this stage. At first it was disorienting. Studio nights became such a part of our weekly rhythms that when we didn’t have them anymore we weren’t sure what to do with the time. I felt restless. There was no need to spend Tuesday or Wednesday night planning out what we’d do on Thursday night. I suddenly had all this time and had no idea what to do with it. It’s been an adjustment.

NOW: Album art

It has been a bigger challenge than I imagined it would be. All this time I’ve been imagining the album art for Wilderness would be color. Halflight was black & white and was dealing with trauma and loss, so that made sense. Wilderness felt like it should be color since it’s dealing with curiosity, and coming to terms with big questions. It’s literally a line in the song Watching, Waiting:

I caught a glimpse of a monochrome world turned to color
And where the desert was barren
The most beautiful bloom took hold

But then I took a trip to central Oregon with Jeff Morrow. Jeff is the bass player in my old band Mindhead, is one of the funniest people I know, and has a keen, intuitive artistic vision. It was Labor Day. The alarm rung at 3:30am and we left Sisters, OR at 4:00am headed for Lake Abert, OR via highway 31. I’ve fantasized about doing a photography trip here for years as it is a common route we drive when heading to and from California to visit family. Rugged. Remote. Stunning.

We worked our way down and back shooting a combination of film and digital, listening to music, catching up on life, and trying not to run out of gas which, if you’ve been here a minute, you know can be a real struggle for me on these kinds of trips. We saw SO much of Oregon by the time we drove back into Bend around 1pm for lunch and a beer at Monkless.

We weren’t done.

Post-lunch naps at Jeff’s place in Sisters before basically driving out his back yard up to the Sisters Lava Flow for the second shoot of the day. We shot until it was dark. More rolls of film. Hundreds of digital shots. We stopped on our way home and picked up a bottle of Broken Top Rye (I’m sipping the last drops of this bottle as I type) to celebrate the day. It was such an amazing day.

The photos turned out great. So many options.

The return of black & white

All my original concepts were color. I wanted something that felt heavy, but not overwhelming. Familiar, but not instantly identifiable. Colorful, but not whimsical. Textural, but not artificial. Of the fifteen or so concepts I tried, I thought three or four of them were really strong.

Then I tried one of them in black & white and it just felt like the cover.

Enter Matt Novak.

Matt is an incredible designer and an old friend of Daniel’s. We started working on album design together, and on his own he’d come to the conclusion that “black & white is going to serve this project better”. Validation.

Enter Jason Griffith.

Jason is an old friend from The Gathering. Jason is a climber, backcountry skier, and photographer. When he was more active on social media, well known outdoor photographers liked and commented on the stuff he posted. His photography is incredible. I had an idea for the back cover of the vinyl and asked him if he had anything laying around that might fit. Oh, did he. LOTS of things. I combined one of his photos with a concept local photographer Scott Rinckenberger did for a poster of Alpental Backcountry that he made a couple years ago.

Where it’s at right now

Since you’re the backers, you get to see the in-progress version. We’re not done yet. Matt & I are still working on some of the graphical elements, but this will give you a sense of the direction we’re headed in. As you can see...it’s Wilderness in all its forms.

This is the current state of things. In the next week, we'll wrap up the album art, select a manufacturer for vinyl and CDs and ship off the files for production. Then we wait.

In the meantime

There will be a few fun things happening starting with a show I'm playing with my good friends Anna Palfreeman and Shay Carlucci at the Yellow Wall studio where we made Wilderness on November 13th. Want come hear the songs in the room where they were recorded? There are only 20 tickets available. Don't sleep on it.

Talk soon...