Hiss Golden Messenger (SOLO) w/ RO Shapiro opening

I walked from Gospel Flat to Bolinas Beach in the dark of dawn, feeling like a pot
imperfectly mended, leaking light. Some call that beautiful but that morning I wasn’t so
sure. I thought if I looked out at the water for long enough, let the sun rise and arc over me,
something would break loose, some sort of divining might occur. I have chased all manner
of being free, and here I was: At the end of a long, long trip—I'm not talking about a music
tour here, but something bigger and more existential and more treacherous—that had my
spirit ragged and tired and aching.
...
When I arrived at the farmhouse on the edge of that bay, my intention was to sleep and if I
was lucky maybe begin to recover something I felt like I had lost, some kind of life. If I was
lucky. The family that owned the farm gave me use of a high-ceilinged art studio
overlooking muddy fields stretching off into the distance; a chicken coop of clucking hens
stood outside the door. The room was full of paintings, wild canvasses of oranges and
pomegranates, teapots, skulls, clocks, and children. There was a bed, and a small kitchen,
and I was alone, and I slept. When I awoke on that first day, it was evening, and I walked
down the dusty main street into town to watch a parade. A Mexican restaurant gave out
food, and a Mariachi band played. People were happy. Could I be loved like that?
When I walked back to my room, night had fallen, and I wrote one line: Truth, lies, magic,
faith—I've been trying to find the missing link in the chain. I woke the next morning and sat
at the water's edge until the sun shone down on me.
...
Some of the songs that eventually coalesced into the album called I'm People were written
during that lost moment in Bolinas, California. Others were written in my orange-carpeted
studio in the North Carolina Piedmont looking out on a lone dogwood. And still others in a
motel room and around the mezcal bars of Santa Fe, NM, amidst the thrum of vihuelas and
fiddle whine. That's a lot of American geography, a lot of poetry, and a lot of tragedy. I
spent a long time on the words, trying to make them feel like I spent no time at all on them,
and endless hours on the choruses. How to sing them. What phrasing they wanted, and
needed. What they were to be used for.
The songs on I'm People are about running towards and away from things, about reasonable
and realistic hope and expectations, about having babies, getting older, love and lust and
luck and music. They are songs about solitude and heartbreak and poverty of the spirit, and
maybe community as some kind of antidote for these particular types of sicknesses.
Shedding old skin. Mystery as a beautiful necessity. My grandmother Lucy's Cadillac, filled
with cigarette smoke, Conway Twitty singing “Slow Hand.” The lightning fields outside
Santa Rosa, NM, midnight. Late nights drinking wine, running wild, bondage, fealty,
devotion, seeing and being seen, owning and being owned. My wife, my children,
summertime in the mountains, wild roses climbing the fence, a peaceful mind, rummaging
through scrap heaps of the heart, breaking and making and breaking again. To dust. Truth,
lies, magic, faith.
...
I'm People was produced by my friend Josh Kaufman and myself at Dreamland, a
decommissioned church outside of Woodstock, NY. I wanted the record to feel the way that
upstate place feels, deep in the pocket, a place of poetry, earth and sky and mountains. A
place where a lot of my favorite music has come from. The light that came down through
the stained glass was a filter through which the music passed. Our gang during our time at
Dreamland was small: Myself and Josh on various stringed instruments, plus JT Bates
playing drums and percussion, and Cameron Ralston playing electric and upright bass. My
longtime running buddy Chris Boerner engineered the album, with assistance from Gillian
Pelkonen, who also sometimes sang harmony. We played and sang live in a loose circle,
watching each other. It was very cold outside and the music was our peculiar heat.

Later, we added parts from friends like Bruce Hornsby, Sam Beam, Marcus King, Sara
Watkins, Amy Helm, Matt Douglas, Eric D. Johnson, and Griff and Taylor Goldsmith. They
all contributed to the weave, and I'm thankful to them, and especially thankful to Josh
Kaufman, who had a vision for I'm People that we saw through to the very end. In that way,
it was very emotional. D. James Goodwin mixed and mastered the album. Graham Tolbert
took the photograph of me on the cover.
…
I'm People is an intensely human record, and so one that needed to feel immediate,
vulnerable, and full of spirit; something you could touch, sing along to, dance with, know
about, recognize, relate. I know what the record is to me and I bet it's not so dissimilar from
what it's about to you, at least in the broad strokes: The heartbreak and exhilaration, the
absolute black comedy of being a person on this razor's edge, this lion’s jaw, that is America
circa 2025. What other choice do we have than to be hopeful?