When we began recording Fellow Travelers a year ago, we’d already started working on Jet Plane and Oxbow, and it was strange to return to it after the Fellow Travelers tours of the US and Europe. Since then, we’ve been working on the new album in a way I never have before, in regular sessions of a week or two every month. In between, I haven’t let myself listen to rough mixes of the songs.

The result’s been really interesting. Every time we’ve gone back to the record, we’ve been able to approach it with something like fresh ears, and I’ve made large-scale changes and revisions that I never would have considered on our previous records. Some songs have come and gone. Others have suddenly been rescued from the ‘demo’ pile. Some are more or less first-take performances of songs we’d never played at all before that moment; some have been re-tracked from the ground up two or three times.

The good news is that they’ve all come around beautifully and cohesively, and I’m as happy with the record as a whole as I’ve ever been with a SW album. It’s big, it’s bold, and it goes all kinds of places we haven’t been before.

I left Texas three days ago for the last break before the final push, and I’m heading back in a little less than two weeks. We’ll have a lot more information about the record in the next few months, but you can expect that we’ll be touring extensively in 2015. Looking forward to seeing you again soon.

JM/Shearwater

16 April. Snow (the last of the year, I hope) last night; it’s mostly melted away this afternoon, but there are still a few traces of it in the shadows. I’ve just packed up the last of my things for our only Europe tour of 2014, which starts in a few days; as usual, I’m mostly hauling gear and merchandise (including screen-printed posters and the tour-only Missing Islands disc), with a little room left for a change of clothes and a few books (which include Yashar Kemal’s Memed, My Hawk and William Stolzenburg’s Rat Island).

We’re playing 18 dates in a row on this tour—a record for us, I think—and I’m looking forward to revisiting some of our favorite places, and hoping for good weather and good audiences, especially since I have no idea when we’ll be back.

These are the last shows of the Fellow Travelers tour, meaning (probably) the last shows of this year and this lineup, and though these have been some of the shorter tours we’ve done they’ve also been some of my favorites; our runs on the east and west coasts of the US might have been the most enjoyable runs of dates I’ve done, thanks in no small part to the kind and attentive audiences who turned up everywhere. (After spending most of 2012 playing in front of other bands’ friends, it was a shot in the arm to finally see and meet our own.)

But as for the upcoming shows: if you’re in Europe/UK and haven’t seen us, or haven’t seen us in a while, this would be a really good time to come. As in the US, we’ll be playing a mixture of older songs (some of them for the first time in years), along with a few selections from Fellow Travelers and a surprise or two.

We’re honored to have Jesca Hoop onstage as part of the band on these dates; she’s also opening the shows in all except the UK dates, where we’ll be joined by My Sad Captains. The dates are on the website.

In the coming months we’ll be hard at work on the new album, which I’m pretty sure will be called Jet Plane and Oxbow. It’s a wild record so far; we’re partway through it already, and it’s safe to say it’s unlike Fellow Travelers; maybe unlike anything we’ve ever done. So far the album’s included work by me, Lucas, Danny, Cully Symington, Brian Reitzell, and Howard Draper (who last appeared in the Palo Santo and Rook days). I’m sure there’ll be more names on that list (including Jesca’s) before it’s done.

– JM/Shearwater

(P.S.: here are some stories from the road you might not have heard before.)