Hey friends,
For a year that has brought so much turmoil and difficulty to so many of us, Julie and I are happy to be able to bring you this film, revealing a bit of the silver lining of our summer during Covid. With no gigs (aside from our backyard live streams, and a couple WYO Theater live streams), we found ourselves with more time to explore our backyard, and we found ourselves happy to do so. We took our kids on their very first backpacking trips, and explored all new places for us in the nearby Cloud Peak Wilderness including this 7 day trip along the Solitude Trail. We also got out in our camper (aka Isolation Pod) and found some wonderful new places to get away and reconnect with the wild landscape that surrounds Sheridan. Afterall, these wild places are why we live here, and at times over the past few years we've caught ourselves getting almost too busy to fully appreciate them.
So mid-summer, as the release date of our new album Cheers to Solitude drew close, and we would've normally been headed out on the road to play as many shows as possible to promote it, Julie and I instead lit out for 7 days on the Solitude Trail — a rugged 64 mile loop through the high country of the Cloud Peak Wilderness. Julie had never gone on a hike this long, but had spent a good deal of her life hiking for archeology survey work, and based on the previous overnighters and shorter trips we'd done, I knew she could handle it no problem. In a past life, I was mostly a backcountry bum, spending weeks out on the trail, so I was excited to get "back out there" so to speak and feel the delight of 7 days living out of a backpack.
This film project started with the simple idea of bringing along my backpacker guitar and a few harmonicas, and recording songs off the new album from each camp along the way. I borrowed an extra camera battery and figured we could add in some other footage and photos from each days hike to help illustrate the journey, but focus mostly on the songs. The truth was this trip was about getting away, leaving behind the nagging worry of social media promotion, or new album promo, and just giving ourselves a chance to directly reconnect these songs with the wildness that inspires them.
We're excited for you to see the film, and to travel along with us this Friday Dec. 4 at 7pm MST, live on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram TV. I think we'll be able to exchange comments with you live during the premieres on Facebook and YouTube.
Thank you all for the support you've shown our band this past year, we're hopeful that we might be able to see you all again by Summer 2021, kicking up dust at a festival. Let's keep our fingers crossed, and our masks tight.
See ya on Friday.
- Dave
PS)
Scroll down for a few pictures from the trip.
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