Feature in Yankee Magazine, new song out today, upcoming shows, and other updates!

Hi everybody!

There's much to get to in this email, but first of all: I'm very grateful to the fine people at Yankee Magazine for featuring a really nice profile of me in their latest issue! The writer Joe Keohane and I went for a few hikes last summer during which I told him basically everything there is to know about me, and now that’s all available to read in print, right here. As someone who’s been aware of Yankee since before I even knew how to read, I was a bit nervous about how this article would turn out, but it’s a long, beautiful piece and includes one of the most generous descriptions of my music that I’ve ever read. It also features some fabulous photography from the wonderful Corey Hendrickson. A link to the online version, once again, is here, but the hard copy is really beautifully laid out and I urge you to grab one of those if you can.

Thanks again to everyone involved for being so nice to work with throughout the whole process of planning and reporting the piece, and to Yankee for permanently guaranteeing my New Englander bonafides by featuring me in their pages.

I'm also pleased to report that "Refuge," the final Topograph single before the album comes out in two weeks, is available on all platforms today! "Refuge" had a funny journey to its final form: I wrote an early version of it several years ago for the wedding of two friends, and then, finding some overlapping themes in the music and concept, was able to rework it substantially into a new song during my residency with the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife & Fish Refuge last year. It's inspired by something I talk about a lot: how the sudden feeling of finding yourself surrounded and embraced by rolling hills rather than wide, open flatness can carry with it such a sense of comfort and orientation. I recorded the piano with the engineer Jacob Reske at his studio in Montpelier, VT, and then fleshed it out with some other instruments with Dan Cardinal at Dimension Sound Studios in Boston last summer. The great Hamilton Belk appears here again too, and as with “Paper Birch,” his gentle pedal steel lines really glue the song together for me.

Listen to "Refuge" now on Spotify, on Bandcamp, on Apple Music, or on any other platform here!

Finally, we are cruising toward the full album release on January 30th. Please don't forget to pre-order Topograph on CD or vinyl here, or as a digital download here. (As a side note, I'm delighted to report that I've already started packing pre-orders from 28 states, ranging from Alabama to Oregon, Kansas to Florida, Texas to Minnesota, and Maine to Hawaii, which for a map guy like me is very satisfying.) I also went on the news here in Portland the other day to play a couple songs and talk a little about the album, which you are welcome to watch if interested.

I'll be playing two album release shows -- one in Portland, ME, and one in Cambridge, MA -- I hope you can come to one of those (the 1/30 show, which is at the beautiful Portland Museum of Art on my birthday, will be especially fun). But if those cities are a bit too far for you, here are some other places I'll be playing in the next month or so. You can click through to each venue to get more information about each concert:

1/15 OSSIPEE, NH - Sap House Meadery

1/22 BELFAST, ME - Underground Lounge

1/23 PORTLAND, ME - "The Note" (not a concert, but a dinner event with each course inspired by and paired to a different song of mine!)

1/30 PORTLAND, ME - Portland Museum of Art (album release concert)

2/3 CAMBRIDGE, MA - Lilypad (album release concert)

2/12 GULFPORT, FL - WonderWorks Gulfport

2/13 HIGH SPRINGS, FL - Florida Springs Institute

2/14 GAINESVILLE, FL - Theatre of Memory

2/15 WAKULLA SPRINGS, FL - The Lodge at Wakulla Springs

2/19 DURHAM, NC - House Concert

2/21 ESSEX, CT - Connecticut River Museum

2/26 CONCORD, NH - Bank of NH Stage (supporting Sons of Town Hall)