1 - FROM A WINDOW SEAT

Alright. Our first proper Substack post. Here we go.

I’m glad we’re launching this with some focus on Stories Don’t End. It’s given me a chance to revisit the songs and all the memories around writing it and recording it, bringing so much back that I didn’t even know I still had stashed away - on my computer or in my own recollections. I’ll start at the beginning. I’m going to try to carry us through the whole experience one demo at a time. 

The Nothing Is Wrong touring cycle started with a lot of opening slots - Edward Sharpe, Langhorne Slim, Allison Krauss, Brett Dennan, Bright Eyes to name a few - and ended with our first official headline tour (co-headlining with Blitzen Trapper). Especially official because it was our first tour on a bus. When anyone asks me “when did you know that you made it?” I always say that we still don’t quite feel like we have but the introduction of the bus into our operation was the first time we felt professional. On top of a blessedly busy year, we also were going through some lineup changes: our keyboardist Alex Casnoff had departed and original member Tay Strathairn was back after being gone a year or so (and therefore missing the Nothing Is Wrong sessions - but that is a story for another day). 

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t writing very much. We were just too busy and by the time I thought about it it had been so long that I got a little freaked out. To this day the time between finishing the last song for Nothing Is Wrong and the first for Stories Don’t End is my longest stretch of zero output. 10 months. And then the first thing that came out was From A Window Seat. It showed up all at once. It started on a plane (no surprise there) and was finished in dressing rooms and busses on a little run we were on. I distinctly remember thinking “this is what is coming out after so many months of not writing anything??” It was a bit more specific than I was used to at that time. It also ventured into some off-limits observations insofar as lyrics are concerned. I was used to singing about “distant mountain ranges” and “you as a sunset and I as a wildfire.” Much more well worn territories for a lyricist for better or for worse. From a Window Seat was anything but that. But you know what?….and I’m coming to these observations in real time so bear with me…but maybe it makes perfect sense that this was the first song written after A Little Bit Of Everything, which was my last offering to Nothing Is Wrong. Between mentioning things like “chicken wings” and “daily dosages”, I was paving the way for taking things a little further out. Maybe the relationship between these two songs is kind of a turning point for the band. Who knows. But thanks for indulging that thought.

Taylor