Grief & Praise by The Whiskey Priest

“Grief is praise of those we have lost. Our own souls who have loved and are now heartbroken would turn to stone and hate us if we did not show such praise.”

- Martín Prechtel

I started working on these recordings as far back as 2017. I was writing with a frequency I hadn't seen in years, and was simultaneously recording as I went, a discipline I haven't always kept up. It soon was evident that something in me, or something in these songs, wanted to live beyond the guitar-playing singer-songwriter camp I've always leaned towards. Two decisions were made in quick succession: I would keep the guitar as far out of reach as possible on these tunes, and that I needed Alex Dupree to help make this happen.

Alex and I met up with drummer Parker Law in Austin, Texas over new years, January 2018, at Michael Landon's Estuary Recording. Working off of demos I had made, Parker laid down drum tracks to 15 songs in the course of two days. We also made use of the studio's baby grand piano, Moog synthesizers, vintage amplifiers, and a hammered dulcimer, amongst other things. Back home in Albuquerque, I continued recording and playing with new sounds, samples, equipment, and ideas. Alex would chime in on progress and keep me from losing my way, sometimes remotely and sometimes in person.

The shutdown of 2020 slowed progress while at the same time expanding opportunities for collaboration. Aisha Burns (from Balmorhea, Thor and Friends, and too many others to list) and Chris Simpson (lead singer of Mineral, The Gloria Record, and Mountain Time) both lent their voices to "The Lotus," and Emily Cross (who records as Cross Record, and as the lead singer of Loma) traded lead vocals with me on "The Last Word." Albuquerque drummer and percussionist Luke Phillips rounded out the band with new rhythmic elements.

Broadly speaking, these songs are wrapped in the dual world of love and loss. Specifically, they take place and are rooted in the American South West: Big Bend and the Rio Grande, The Sandia Mountains, Taos Mesa, the South Valley of Albuquerque. Grief & Praise represents a decade of living in New Mexico, a decade of love received and friends lost, long drives and quiet nights, all soaked through with beauty and heartache and sung back out to you and whomever will listen.

Thanks for letting me knock on your doors,
Seth (twp)

The Whiskey Priest is song-writer Seth Woods. He sings about horses, oceans, trains, mountains, deities, hands, science fiction, sex, vegetation, drinking games, deserts, depression, party people, seagulls, death, monks, memory, autumn, driving, and breakfast. He has never met a drum machine he didn't like.

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