I never learned how to swim. In years of sailing, I never let the
water touch me. The ocean was an abstract dread, an obliterating void
as untenable as outer space. In January 2018 we went on tour. After
years of scraping by, we found our footing with our fourth record
Yours Conditionally. It was a commercial success that set us up to to
play the biggest rooms of our career. But three shows in, I developed
a raging case of influenza. Each night I dragged myself onstage and
croaked out the set in a delirium. After a particularly bad
soundcheck, Patrick asked me if we should cancel the show. I
couldn’t imagine giving up the thing we’d work so hard to achieve.
“I’ll be on stage even if you have to mic my coffin,” I joked.
The next morning I fainted and had a seizure while grocery shopping
for breakfast. Patrick carried me through the check-out lanes
screaming for a doctor. I woke later in a hospital bed. Patrick leaned
over me, crying. “That’s it,” he said. “I’m canceling the
tour. I thought you were dead. We’re quitting the band. I’m going
to be an accountant.” But I was on the mend. We missed two shows and
pressed on. During sound check at the 930 club, Patrick stepped out to
take a phone call. His father had been in the hospital all week, but
he had cancer and brief hospitalizations were routine. Back at the
hotel that night, Patrick poured two shots of whiskey and handed me
one. “I’d like to toast my dad.” He said. “The doctors offered
to put him on life-support to give me a chance to fly out there, but I
didn’t want him to suffer. Instead I said goodbye.” Patrick went
home to grieve with his family and rejoined us on the road two days
later. I couldn’t believe how quickly our lives had unraveled in the
midst of what was supposed to be a milestone in our career. As the
tour continued, we found refuge in playing music together. Songwriting
had always been an extension of our inner-world. Now we retreated to
that world every time we stepped onstage. After the final show of our
tour in Austin, we received another phone call. Patrick’s mother
Karen was in the hospital on the brink of a stroke. We got on a plane
and went straight to her bedside. Her recovery took weeks. In the
hospital waiting room, I wrote the opening line of “Matrimony II”:
I only have certainty when you hold my hand. On a hot July day, after
Karen’s return to good health, we sailed as a family into the
Pacific and scattered Edward’s ashes at sea. I marked our position
on the chart with a small x. The album was already well under way. In
that moment, I realized what I wanted to call it. Swimmer is a tour of
the darkest time in our lives. But it is not a dark record. Named for
the feeling of suspension and upendedness that characterized this
period, it is the story of deep-rooted companionship strengthened by
pain and loss. These songs carried us through our grief. It is us at
our most vulnerable, so we kept a small footprint, recording
everything ourselves in our home studio. I set out to describe the
love I have come to know after ten years of marriage, when you can no
longer remember your life before that person, when the spark of early
attraction has been replaced by a gravitational pull. Swimmer is
available everywhere February 14, 2020. - See upcoming events +
giveaways at The Fillmore -
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04/04/2020 Last update