In the spring of 2020, with the COVID pandemic keeping us indoors and away from in-person social life, I began writing songs for what I thought would become the third Love In The Ruins album. But when I brought the in-progress songs to my bandmate, Dana, the feedback I kept getting was “I think you should sing this one.” After this happened multiple times I began to envision a new project - one that terrified me because I have never considered myself a singer.
Once I began to think about the songs as being sung by me though, I began to write differently, and began to focus more on the deep domesticity of pandemic lockdown, of being in a little New York City apartment with one’s beloved, and then about my life with my wife, Mahira, the ways in which I’ve grown & changed, how we’ve grown together, how we’ve slowly moved over the years from being two people living together to being one married couple caring for & supporting & enjoying each other in the midst of so many crises and apocalypses.
As I began to record the final versions of the songs, lockdown was ending, and then I began to imagine a project that included as many of my musician friends as possible - “a room with all my friends in it,” was how I put it to Mahira. So I began inviting my friends to collaborate and contribute and I am blessed that so many of them wanted to, and did.
On the one hand, then, this project is a collection of love songs written in & about the solitude of a couple in love living together, & on the other hand, it’s an ode to friendship & community. Of course, one needs both the intimacy of loving partnership & the joyous gathering of community. You can hear both in the songs. I know I can hear both, like notes in a chord, ringing in my life.