"Salt" Announcement and First Single

Hi everyone,

I’m happy to announce that I’ve got a new record coming out later this spring. It’s called Salt, it’s a bit shorter and quieter than my other albums, and all the music on it is about liminal landscapes — places at the edge of things, where the relationship between water and land is sometimes ambiguous. I wrote the bulk of these songs a while ago, during a fairly rough and disorienting time, and I found it helpful and (ironically) grounding to be working on music about places where instability and flux are normal, and where the ground tends to come and go. So these songs are about ice roads, tidal estuaries, salt marshes, floodplains, places where earthquakes happen, ocean travel, and that kind of thing. In one sense the record is all about a very specific type of landscape, but in a broader one, it’s really about finding ballast in difficult situations, which I think just about everyone has had to do at some point.

The first single from Salt is called “Champlain,” and starting today, you can hear it for freeexclusively at Junction Magazine, a great publication based in the Upper Valley of NH/VT. It’s one of my favorite songs on the record, and I hope you’ll like it too:

http://junctionmagazine.com/first-listen-champlain/

You can also preorder a digital download of the whole record here. I can’t wait for you to hear the rest of Salt. I’ve been playing a few of these songs for a long time now and I’m happy that they’ll finally have a home.

Also — if you live in northern New England, please know that I’ve got a few shows up here on the immediate horizon in the next week or two:

4/6 NASHUA, NH – Riverwalk Cafe & Music Hall (opening for Ian Ethan Case), 8pm
4/7 WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, VT – Open Door, 7:30pm
4/8 BURLINGTON, VT – Light Club Lamp Shop, 8pm
4/9 PORTLAND, ME – Blue (with Jamie Kallestad), 7pm
4/15 CRAWFORD NOTCH, NH – AMC Highland Center, 5pm (talk/Q&A) & 7:30pm (show)

Thanks for your support, everyone. I’m excited for you to hear this thing. Talk to you very soon.

Ben