AFTER YOU LEFT ME

“After You Left Me” is out. This collection of music has danced around my mind for so many years now, so often and so longingly that I thought eventually it would get tired. It didn’t.

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It started with Halfway To Colorado. On the piano in a Berklee practice room, if you can believe it. It started as one story from the perspective of a man whose partner had just left him. He’s hurt and confused and angry and he’s finding any excuse not to take the blame.

 

Next came Smoke & Whiskey. I coined it the “sister song” of Halfway To Colorado as soon as I could feel the rage from the other person’s perspective boiling inside of me. This is from the perspective of the woman who leaves the man. “Leaving feels so good when the road is louder than your voice saying I fucked up and you couldn’t be prouder” is the lyric that I come back to the most. She’s free. And he isn’t blameless.

 

Last was Trying To Get Home (when you’re under the influence). I wrote this song in about ten minutes and it is still all a blur to me how I poured so much onto a piece of paper in such little time. The culmination of this anguish and heartbreak and anger and loss and freedom is all highlighted. It’s about the pleading of KNOWING that something is horrible and dangerous and ugly and the defeat of knowing that I still love this person with every fiber of my being and I will continue to until I too am taken by the Colorado smoke.

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This project would be nothing without my team: Jake and Liam, everything you do is with intention and ease- every part brought this whole story to life. Thank you.

I don’t know where to start on how much Charlie did for this project, because it’s insurmountable. I could not have done a sliver of this without his incredible talent and dedication. Words genuinely fail. I am just so grateful for your work.

Prod, mix, mastering, engineering, banjo, guitar: Charlie Burket

Bass: Jake Michne

Drums and percussion: Liam Fagan

Huge love to Jacob Kaplan and Elias Bell for all of the incredible photography.

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I hope that this story can do for you what it has done for me. I hope you take it with you when you run away, when you leave, or when you try to get home.