2017 was an amazing year for me creatively. I wrote and recorded a ton of music with some real industry leaders. I pushed myself, I tried different things that I am used to, and I grew tremendously as a writer and a performer.
With the release of Gold you are going to start to see some of the fruits of all of my efforts. The plan is to release a series of EPs this year, each one different stylistically from the last. I have been pouring myself out in studios all over LA and San Francisco and the music is too good to keep to myself.
Gold is an exploration of me going big. Big sounds, big concepts, big heart. It features songs with different styles of production than I am used to, and I love that. Zachary Kibbee (who co-wrote The Drought with me) took a song that would have felt at home on any record I have made in the last ten years and turned it into a dark moving force. Gawain Mathews (who co-produced 'Before or After' and 'Some All Surrounding Sound') helped me to turn two songs that felt very introspective into rock songs with a HUGE sound. On 'Here We Go' (co-written with Douglas Allen), 'Wrong Side', and 'Sweet Relief' I went at the production solo. I started each song from scratch at home and played all of the parts my self to see how far I could take these songs on my own.
'Gold' takes its name from something that I believe deeply, and that I talk about in 'Before or After'. We are all gold, we are all precious, we are all the thing that is most desired and sought after... but that gold must be worked for and earned. It must be dug from the ground, or panned from the stream. It takes work for us to crawl out from the stone, but it is always there. This EP is a bit of me mining myself for that which I hold dear. I hope that you enjoy listening to it as much as I have enjoyed making it.
Big Love,
TR
p.s. This is the first release of 2018... there will be more, and they are coming soon!