Lee DeWyze was itching for a change of scenery, which came as an unexpected invitation.
Last summer, when the singer/songwriter was beginning to work on his next album, his buddy and cellist Dave Eggar invited him to perform at the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion festival in September. Upon arriving at the small mountain town straddling the borders of both Tennessee and Virginia, DeWyze eagerly embraced the collective creative energy that swarmed around the slew of like-minded musicians. A few days later, he attended a recording session with some of the other festival performers at a nearby studio. The instant chemistry amongst the artists confirmed to DeWyze that he was in the right place.
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“I was just sitting there, taking it all in,” DeWyze recalls of the realization that Bristol was where he wanted to record. “It was very clear in that moment that I was gonna spend a lot of time here. No one else knew that, but I did.”
DeWyze’s sixth studio album, Gone For Days, which is out on Sept. 13, is the result of and a love letter to the two months he spent writing, recording, and living in Bristol. Filled with references to the area’s lush nature and endearing small-town offerings, which invoked memories of his upbringing in the Midwest and contemplation of his road ahead as a songwriter, Gone For Days is an introspective look at DeWyze’s past, present, and future.
“It’s almost as if I told my mind and my heart literally to wander, like, ‘I don’t want to see you for a month. Come back, and tell me what you found.’ That’s how it felt,” he says. “It felt like nothing was off limits.”
DeWyze wrote 85% of the material on the front porch of the small house he rented in Bristol. Everyday, he’d look out at the twin city’s only funeral home directly across the street. He’d hear the singing birds fly by, the annoying wind chime dangling from the front door frame, and the creaks of the house’s floorboards. He’d smell his daily cup of coffee from the shop down the road and the surrounding trees’ earthy scent when it had rained the night before. When it didn’t, he’d feel the warmth of the sunshine pouring down on him. That front porch became his sacred songwriting spot, and every last feeling, good and bad, was welcomed.
“I was so in the moment and feeling everything, and I think it just bled into the music,” DeWyze says. “It just did.”
With shades of his idol Cat Stevens, the profound yet frank “Reminds Me” was directly influenced by the animal kingdom. “A lyric literally came from listening to the birds and realizing that the bird never worries about what they’re singing,” he says. “They’re never thinking about it – they’re just doing it. Whether it’s instinct or what they do, somehow, it’s always beautiful. And what does that mean?”
Each night, DeWyze would sleep next to his guitar in bed in case inspiration struck. At 2:30 one morning, he awoke from a slumber missing his wife and home in Los Angeles and wrote the album’s nostalgic closer, “Butterfly Effect.”
“It was towards the end of my experience, and I just was feeling this emotional wave of everything,” he admits. “I just started saying the things I was feeling. I think [my songwriting] was just fueled by all the experiences I was having.”
Indeed, if DeWyze was Joni Mitchell, then Bristol was his Laurel Canyon. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have another experience making a record the way I did there,” he says. “I’m sure I’ll chase that for the rest of my life. But the chain of events that led to me going there, and how it all just kind of worked out, it’s something that can’t be replicated. It was just unbelievable.”
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