Andrew Combs has signed to New West Records and is set to release his anticipated third album, Canyons Of My Mind, on April 7th, 2017. The 11-song set was co-produced by Skylar Wilson (Justin Townes Earle, Caitlin Rose) & Jordan Lehning (Rodney Crowell, Caitlin Rose) and recorded at Battle Tapes Studio in East Nashville, TN. After touring behind his sophomore album, All These Dreams, a record that earned him international accolades and comparisons to everyone from Leonard Cohen to Harry Nilsson to Mickey Newbury, Combs has returned with a new album that puts down stakes in fresh sonic terrain. Canyons Of My Mind – as its title suggests – is a landscape where the personal and pastoral converge. Drawing inspiration from the biographies of literary figures like Charles Wright and Jim Harrison, Combs has created an album that explores the notion of “sustainability” in its many facets – artistic, economic, spiritual, environmental. NPR Music’s Ann Powers previously stated, “His song-pictures are gorgeous, but he recognizes their impermanence as he sings.” This deeply felt sense of ecology, of the transient beauty within nature’s chaotic churn, lies at the heart of Combs’ approach to his art. NPR Music premiered the video for the album track “Dirty Rain” today, which can be seen HERE. Calling him “one of Nashville’s most poetically gifted young singer-songwriters,” they state “The subtle dissent Combs expresses in ‘Dirty Rain,’ and which surfaces throughout Canyons Of My Mind next to elegant love songs and mood pieces, speaks to his maturation as a songwriter. Andrew Combs possesses a voice that always provides a thrill; here, he makes sure it offers relevant substance, too.” He has also announced the initial tour dates in support of the album with an appearance at the SXSW Music Festival in March. Please see tour dates below, with more to be announced. Canyons Of My Mind will be available digitally, on compact disc, and 150g vinyl. There is also an extremely limited edition to 100 LP copies available on Butter Cream vinyl with the album available via PledgeMusic now.
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A Dallas native now living near the same Nashville airport immortalised in the opening sequence of Robert Altman’s country music odyssey, Andrew Combs is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and heir to that 1975 film’s idea of the Nashville troubadour as a kind of musical monk. Here in the twenty-first century whorl of digital narcissism, where identity can feel like a 24/7 social media soft-shoe performance, Combs makes music that does battle with the unsubtle. As a songwriter, Combs relies on meditative restraint rather than showy insistence to paint his canvases, a technique commensurate with his idea of nature as an overflowing spiritual wellspring.
“When I set out to record All These Dreams, I had a distinct vision of what I wanted the record to sound like. It was a cocktail of the Roy Orbison, Glen Campbell, Nilsson vibes that you can hear right there on the surface,” Combs says. “Canyons Of My Mind is much more personal. It’s a testament to my acceptance of who I am as a man, and who I am becoming.” The record’s sonic adventurousness bears witness to that evolution, as well as to some big changes in his personal life. Between All These Dreams and Canyons Of My Mind, Combs married his longtime girlfriend and honeymooned for six weeks in the Minnesota wilderness. The quiet struggles and satisfactions of carving out an identity in a world gone wrong are palpable throughout the album. Whether questing through the labyrinth of his own spiritual yearning (“Heart of Wonder”), recreating a rail rider’s full-body sensation of freedom beneath an azure Montana sky (“Rose Colored Blues”), imagining a near-future dystopia where the very idea of green spaces have been annihilated (“Dirty Rain”), or channeling the desire of a peeping Tom who has fallen in love with his sylvan quarry (“Hazel”), Combs refines the vulnerable vagabond persona he mastered on All These Dreams while pushing it beyond those boundaries, into a more pastoral realm aligned with artists like Nick Drake and Tim Buckley. The idea of the artist’s creative life as an ecosystem – one just as in need of cultivation and care as our own imperiled world – informs much of Canyons Of My Mind.
Canyons Of My Mind Track Listing:
1. Heart of Wonder
2. Sleepwalker
3. Dirty Rain
4. Hazel
5. Rose Colored Blues
6. Better Way
7. Lauralee
8. Blood Hunters
9. Silk Flowers
10. Bourgeois King
11. What It Means To You
Andrew Combs Tour Dates (More To Be Announced)
March 13 – Mobile, AL @ Callaghans
March 15 – Dallas, TX @ City Tavern
March 16 – Luck, TX @ Luck Reunion
March 17 – Austin, TX @ SXSW
April 1 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506
April 2 – Charlottesville, VA @ Southern
April 4 – Washington, DC @ Gypsy Sallys
April 5 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
April 6 – New York, NY @ Rough Trade
April 9 – Boston, MA @ Atwoods
April 29 & 30 – Kilkenny, Ireland @ Kilkenny Roots Festival
