Features

Pete Mancini: The Daily Vault Interview (2025)

by Jason Warburg

(Artist photos by Kitty Williams)

“Hold on tiiiiiiight” sings Pete Mancini over the final bars of “American Equator,” the title track and lead single from his new album, out March 7—and he means it. The song, a big-boned anthem with classic rock overtones, sounds an emphatic alarm for anyone concerned about political division in America and the future of our country.

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Mancini has been part of the fertile NYC/Long Island music scene for more than a decade now, working the New York-New Jersey circuit first as frontman for rock quartet Butchers Blind, and since 2017 as a solo artist who’s gradually built a national following with his punchy brand of Americana power pop. Sometime between his first two albums (2017’s Foothill Freeway and 2019’s Flying First Class) and his third (2022’s Killing The Old Ways) he connected with, and became a sort of aide-de-camp to, iconic songwriter Jimmy Webb. In between his own headlining gigs, Mancini can often be found opening shows for Webb.

In addition to making records and keeping a busy live schedule (both solo and fronting his live band The Hillside Airmen), Mancini juggles multiple other musical endeavors, which just lately include: releasing a collaborative EP with Delaney Hafener of The Belle Curves; playing guitar with music-making pals like Sarah Gross; fronting Full Circle, a Byrds tribute band; and finishing the album his close friend and fellow singer-songwriter Travis McKeveny was about to make when he passed away unexpectedly in 2021.

American Equator is Mancini’s strongest work to date, a chronicle of a tumultuous time for both Mancini and his country, rendered with compelling honesty by an artist who just keeps getting better. Recording once again at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi, Mancini and producer Matt Patton (of the Drive-By Truckers) assembled a terrific studio band that infuses every one of these absorbing tracks with power, depth and shine.

All of the above left us with plenty to talk about in my third conversation with Pete Mancini. Sure, we spent a good chunk of time walking through American Equator track by track, but we also managed to revisit the importance of Woody Guthrie and Tom Petty, discover our shared love for Fountains Of Wayne, and consider why America right now feels like a comic book. In the end, it all served as a reminder of a point that came up early on: making art still matters, and always will.

THE DAILY VAULT: The first time we talked was in 2017, four months into Trump's first term. The second time was in early 2022, when we were just coming out of the pandemic and were in the middle of prosecuting people for January 6th. Apparently we’re destined to have these chats in interesting times.

PETE MANCINI: Yeah, “May you live in interesting times” feels like more of a curse than a blessing right now. Things aren’t looking good and I’ve been having a hard time watching it all go down, because I was sounding the alarm. I was volunteering and really pulling for Kamala Harris and I just can’t believe that people chose this. After everything that’s happened, after everything we’ve been through, people chose it. I still can’t wrap my head around it because I used to think good ideas won. I used to think that in the end, good people would say “We can’t go back to this.” But here we are.

I don’t want to be cynical or bury my head in the sand, but I’m not surprised by anything that’s going on right now. Everything I hear in the news, I’m like, “Yep. They said they were gonna do that.” They wrote a book with all their plans in it [Project 2025].

So, this is all going on right now, but I’m resolved—we have to keep making art, and at the community level, we have to organize and, as Jimmy [Webb] told me, we have to live to tell the truth one day.

Yes, indeed. The new album feels like it’s both personal and political, and at a time when the political has become so personal, it feels almost impossible to separate the two.

Yeah, it’s like everything is political now. There’s no separation anymore. It’s become so embedded in our daily lives with smartphones. It’s a lot; I don’t think the human brain was meant to process 24/7 real-time news. Right now I’m rethinking my relationship with things like cable news, which is more like entertainment than actual news.

Obviously we have to stay informed in a democracy, but I really feel like the legacy media let us down big time in this election, because they refused to call a spade a spade. They wouldn’t say “January 6th, that was fascism, that was a mob trying to overturn an election.” We all saw it on TV! But then we’re being told to not believe our eyes. “It was a riot” and “allegedly” and all that. Clearly one guy was responsible for organizing and instigating it, but nothing happened to him.

Rolling Stone had a headline on Inauguration Day: “Everyone Who Was Supposed to Protect You From This Failed Miserably”.

The new album, American Equator, was written and recorded before the election, but did the results change anything in terms of how you wanted to present it and promote it?

I wrote the song “American Equator” in a different world, during the Biden presidency. At the time, I honestly didn't think we would backslide into this chaos and destruction. Now the song has a different meaning, of navigating that online 24/7 maelstrom of hurtful comments and outrage. It still stands up, but it hits a little differently now.

I did think about changing which songs were released as singles. The second single is “Technicolor Days,” which is as close to a hopeful, happy song as I have; a lot of my songs lean to the darker side of things. I was kind of hesitant to make “Technicolor Days” the second single because we’re headed towards some dark times. But in the end, that felt like capitulating, and I’m not changing, I’m going to keep doing what I do in spite of all this. We’re not going to be alone and afraid and isolated, we’re going to be out there making music like we have been. No matter how dark times get, they can’t take away your joy.

I had started thinking about making [the considerably darker] “Calamity People” the second single, but I’m glad we stuck to the original plan.

Back in 2017, we talked a lot about Woody Guthrie and what an important figure he was for a lot of your main influences. And then in 2022, we talked a lot about Tom Petty and what an influence he’s been. There’s one song in particular I’m going to call out later, but it actually feels like the whole album has threads of both of those artists running through it.

I have a pretty big record collection and a lot of influences and I’m always listening to different things. Each song has touchstones and inspirations.

Woody Guthrie is wound into the fabric of our nation’s history. The songs he wrote influenced everything that came after. And I love Tom Petty and had a really big Petty phase. There’s tons of other artists too, though, like Big Star and Wilco and Drive-By Truckers and Jimmy Webb.

A lot of different influences go into it, but it’s also cool to hear what people take from it too. When I play a solo acoustic show, I get a lot of “Oh, you sound like James Taylor.” And I’m like, “Really?” I don’t get that at all, but thank you. People mention Jackson Browne and James Taylor to me a lot, who are two amazing artists that I love, great writers and great singers, but I don’t think this record sounds like either of them. If someone’s like, “Oh, that kind of sounds like Freedy Johnston or Big Star or Drive-By Truckers or The Damnwells,” I’ll be like, “Yeah, right on, man, that’s what I was listening to.” So there you go.

Let’s talk about the songs on American Equator. The leadoff track, “Calamity People,” is one of the heavier tracks you’ve ever recorded. I was wondering first, is that you playing lead guitar? And second, were you intentionally trying to grab people’s attention with a different vibe to open the album?

Yeah, that is me playing guitar through a really cool Octave fuzz pedal at Dial Back. I believe the first track on an album should be kind of a mission statement. That was a co-write with my dear friend Travis McKeveny, who we lost during the pandemic. He helped me write that second verse, and came up with the modulation on the bridge.

And then I had this other song where I loved the riff, but I ended up getting rid of the rest of the song, thinking maybe the riff could end up in a completely different place. I took that riff and put it on the end of “Calamity People” and we had this big maelstrom of sound like a calamity at the end. I was so happy with how it came out.

It’s a very different kind of record and I’m happy that we got some new sounds on there. This was the perfect example of a song that’s more rocking and it’s got a message. It’s a track I wrote during the pandemic, but “When we lay these days to rest / The casket will be closed, it’s for the best” feels like it still applies right now.

For sure. Speaking of Tom Petty, the intro to the title track has a classic rock feel that wouldn’t have been out of place on Hard Promises or one of those early albums. Was that what you were going for?

There’s definitely a distinct Tom Petty feel to that track. When I’m writing songs, I’ll be arranging them in my head as I go, and those big chords with Jay Gonzalez’s B3 over the top definitely evokes Petty. People also said it also sounds like The Damnwells, which is a great band that I love. It maybe has a little bit of Drive-By Truckers, a little bit of Tom Petty, and a little bit of Damnwells.

I wrote that song when I was on tour down South. I was in Virginia playing a show and a friend of mine came to the show and she said “Welcome to the equator.” I think she meant the Mason-Dixon line, but I was like, “Welcome to the American equator” and everyone there went “Whoa.” So I wrote that down and then the song came out when I was in Oxford, Mississippi staying with friends. I wrote the song on this little electric guitar with an amp built in and it came out pretty much as is right there.

It’s not about North versus South, though. I pictured the American equator as the ideological fault line that runs through the country. If it was an actual physical place that you could visit, it would be a fucking war zone, you know? It would be this bombed-out, bloody massacre place. Think about the hate and the vitriol in the comments sections online that we’ve experienced. And when you see these people in person—you know, I’ve travelled the whole country playing shows and people are so nice when you talk to them, but for some reason when they’re behind the safety of a keyboard or a phone, people have no problem saying some pretty harsh, nasty things.

We’re not each other’s enemy, we’re just being pitted against each other onto different teams. It’s the broligarchs and fascists that deserve our anger and our contempt because they’re not helping people, they’re just enriching themselves and making everything worse. That’s what that song is about: the great divide, the American equator of the mind.

                

The chorus, “This is the American Equator / Just ride the faders / ’Til you can’t hear the other side” is about the way people on either side just tune each other out.

Yep, and that’s kind of what we saw happen with this last election. Depending on which media bubble you live in, that’s the reality you live in now. If you watch Fox News, you’d think the “Biden crime family” is destroying America, which is ridiculous, and if you watch a different channel you’re gonna think something completely different. We live in different realities now. I’ve heard it described as Earth-1 and Earth-2.

I’m laughing because I grew up reading comics and there was a whole thing in DC Comics where they had Earth-1 and Earth-2.

It’s starting to get a little cartoonish out there, isn’t it?

It is.

Yeah, not in a good way.

Now we get to a bright spot: “Technicolor Days.” It’s a sunny, nostalgic tune, but it also feels like there’s an undercurrent there about how we remember the past, versus how it actually was.

Yep, it’s subtle, but I’m glad you heard it. The game was weighted, like the carnival games you played as a kid where you try to get the ball in the hoop, but the hoop is oval shaped so it won’t fit unless you hit it just right. Back in those days we didn’t understand that our whole system is set up to benefit the super wealthy. It’s a carnival game that’s rigged against us.

But that’s not what the song is about. I think a lot of joy comes from your inner child. I read a great book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It's like a 12-week course in reconnecting with your inner child because that’s where creativity comes from. I think that’s where joy comes from, too. When you get older, you get jaded and bogged down in the routine of life, but you remember being happy as a kid, and you can tap into that feeling. Life hasn’t become any less of a miracle or an amazing thing, it’s just that we’ve changed, and that’s what the song is about—getting that joy back. It’s one of my more hopeful tunes.

All right. We’ve been talking about Woody and Tom and now we get to “Skid Row Skyline.” First of all, I love the song, but it also hit me at a certain point that it sounds like a Woody Guthrie - Tom Petty co-write, a folk song about being trapped in poverty, framed in this driving melodic rock arrangement.

“Skid Row Skyline” and the song after it, “Spy Rock Road,” were both written during the pandemic when we didn't have a whole lot to do but watch TV. I watched a documentary about the Cecil Hotel on Skid Row in Los Angeles and there was one guy who, everything he said was just amazing. And that song came out and I always pictured it kind of like a Social Distortion, punk rock kind of thing. But yeah, there’s some of that Woody Guthrie consciousness too, especially in that last verse.

When I was rounding up songs to include on the album, I had around 30 songs, and I wanted to have some rock’n’roll on the record. That’s John Smith from The Dexateens on the lead guitar and Jay Gonzalez on the B3. I was very happy with this one. It’s a fun one to play live.

“Spy Rock Road” is an interesting song about some mountain-man weed farmers, that also felt like it had a Drive-By Truckers (DBT) influence.

“Spy Rock Road” is another one that came from a documentary I saw. It was about Mendocino pot farmers and it’s called Sasquatch. It's a great documentary about a guy who thinks he saw Sasquatch and they try to get to the bottom of that mystery, but it turns out the real monsters are the men they meet. It was a great documentary, and there was another guy in it who inspired the song. Sometimes just a certain turn of phrase will turn on the songwriting tap.

This was a lot of fun to record because to me it sounds like if Doug Sahm recorded with the Heartbreakers. There’s definitely heavy Petty and DBT influence on this one. It’s so great to have Matt Patton and Jay Gonzalez [of DBT] on board. Matt is such a great producer to work with, and I’m a huge fan of Jay, who just elevated all the tunes with his parts. And that’s Joe Leone on drums, who actually plays keys in my band, the Hillside Airmen. He picked up the sticks and we went down to Mississippi and it was a blast.

“Paris Hotel” is a nice break in the middle of some heavier songs. I have to ask, did you write it before or after you started playing shows with Jimmy Webb? Because I could sure feel his influence there.

[Laughter] Yeah, there’s a lot of his influence there. We were driving to a gig in New Jersey and we passed the Paris Hotel on 495 in Queens, and there’s a huge Eiffel Tower statue on it. Jimmy was joking around, saying “Man, I want to steal that thing.” And then he says “Someone should write a song about that place.” And I was driving and I’m like, “Challenge accepted!” [laughter]

So I wrote two verses, hoping we would co-write the song together, but Jimmy is a lone wolf. He doesn’t really co-write; that’s his thing and I totally respect that. He’s one of the greatest songwriters to ever pick up the pen. I’m just so grateful to know the guy, let alone be friends with him.

Anyway, I wrote two verses and we were at soundcheck for a gig and I played it for him and he’s looking at me, stroking his chin. And then he says “Needs a third verse” and walks off and I was like, okay… he didn’t say it was bad! [laughter] So that’s a start.

The music and the arrangement is a homage to Jimmy and Glen Campbell and their whole thing. The story in the song is about a guy who’s up to no good at this crummy hotel. It’s really funny because when I’m writing a character song, in my mind I’m writing about someone else. But then I’ll be playing it and one day a line like “Stuck in my mind, repeating” will hit me and I’ll be like “Oh man. I do that!” [laughter] There’s more of me in the song than I intended there to be. It always creeps in!

So it’s a character study, but also about longing; it’s a torch song in the sense that this guy is pining after someone—maybe an ex, maybe an escort or something like that. And I actually wasn’t going to record this, but then I was listening to a lot of Fountains Of Wayne and I love that band and I was thinking they would definitely cut a song like that. I heard they’re back together again and I’m pretty psyched. I hope I can see them.

Me too. I still can’t believe Adam Schlesinger is gone.

Yeah, that one hurt a lot. Welcome Interstate Managers, you know that album?

One of my favorite albums of all time!

It’s so good. I kind of missed them when they were happening. And then eventually I got the first album—“Radiation Vibe” is my favorite. My dear friends Sarah Gross and Delaney Hafener were into Fountains Of Wayne and said “You’ve got to get this one! You’ve got to get Welcome Interstate Managers!” And I got it and I’m like, “Oh my God!” It’s just so much great power pop. And now I’ve got all of them.

Great band. Happy they’re back and keeping those songs alive, even though we lost Adam.

Yep, awesome. Alright, back to the track list. “Leaving For Raleigh” continues that thread of Americana. Lyrically, it reminded me a little bit of Jason Isbell's song “Last Of My Kind”—the narrator is a country guy feeling out of place in the city.

Back when I was working on the song “Back In Bakersfield,” for my second album, I asked my friend Travis McKeveny for a city. So then when I was working on this song a few years ago, I asked Trav for a city, and he says “Raleigh.” Okay… so, I’ve been to Raleigh, I’ve played gigs there, so I’m not a total fraud, I could write a song about that place.

It ended up becoming a story song. Clearly the guy is struggling with addiction and making his way back home from a place he doesn’t belong. It was when I was reworking the last verse that I decided this one might make the record.

And yeah, I’m leaning more towards power pop and rock on this album, but this song keeps a bit of Americana in there and I was very happy with how everything came out. Schaefer Llana sang harmonies, I played the lap steel, and Jay did all the beautiful keyboards and that cool, low-register baritone guitar.

It feels like “Stomping Grounds” made a lot of sense as the next track.

It does, but it’s interesting—we originally weren’t going to record that one. I had another song in mind that’s going to be on my next album that wasn’t really working at the sessions, we just couldn’t get it right. So Patton goes, “Hey, you got anything else, man?” And I was like “Shit. I don’t know if I do.” And then I played “Stomping Grounds” for him and he goes “Hell yeah! Let’s do this one.” [laughter]

When I go into the studio, I have everything planned out and mapped in my head. This was a total audible, when we were already in the studio, but I trust Patton. We cut it and it came out great and it really works narrative-wise where this guy’s leaving for Raleigh, going home, and then in the next track he’s in his old stomping grounds. So that worked out really well.

When I first got sober seven years ago, I didn’t want all my songs to be about that. It is a big part of my life, but I didn’t want to be the guy who quits and then every song is “I’m sober now!” This was one where I was out walking around and pondering things and it just came out, thinking about how it’s funny that some things don’t change and others do. It’s been a journey, but it’s been really good. I owe everything I have now to being sober.

I was just getting sober when we first spoke in 2017. It was actually 2018 when I totally quit. The journey from then ’til now, I wouldn't change it for anything. It’s been life unfiltered. It felt really good to think about the totality of it, and that’s where “Stomping Grounds” comes from.

If anyone out there is struggling like I was, just know that things can get better and things will get better if you’re willing. That’s really half the battle, just to figure out that “Okay, this is kicking my ass” and be willing to make a change. Once you’re willing, though, beautiful things start to happen. Anthony Bourdain, in a documentary I saw about him, talked about why he sobered up. He said he looked in the mirror one day and said “That’s somebody worth saving.”

Wow.

Yeah—heavy, but ultimately good stuff. I’m happy more people are making that decision now.

Congrats on seven years. That’s awesome.

Thank you so much, man. That means a lot.

Let’s talk some more about Travis. Both “Calamity People” and the album closer “Sun Came Up” are co-writes with Travis. “The Signal,” which is right before “Sun Came Up,” feels like it’s a message that you’re sending back to him. Please talk about Travis and his contributions to this album.

I’d be happy to. Trav was like a brother to me, a close friend and ally and we wrote a lot of great music together. These are the last co-writes I was able to do with him. For “Sun Came Up,” he wrote the chorus and we intended it to be just like a small thing at the end of his third album From Dublin To Duluth and he ended up scrapping that idea. After he left us, that chorus was just sitting around and things started coming to me and I felt connected with him still even though he wasn’t with us anymore.

And that’s what “The Signal” is about—still feeling connected to someone after they’re gone. I just felt like I was being guided towards finishing “Sun Came Up.” I wrote those verses and it felt like we were still co-writing it together. I was happy to record it and get another song of his over the finish line.

Those two last songs on the album are directly inspired by the grief of losing Travis. Trav struggled and went through some dark stuff like we all do in life—but the sun always came up, so it is a hopeful song. I’m glad we had a message of hope to end the album, and that we had the chance to bracket the record with two Trav co-writes. I’m really proud of the songs I got to write with him and it’s a cool thing.

Please tell us more about finishing Travis’s album.

The whole community, we’re still grieving him and finishing his album From Dublin To Duluth and keeping the music alive is very important to me. He inspired a lot of people and there’s so much love there that came out after he passed. Everyone was like, “He’s my best friend.” “He always checked in on me.” He was a truly good person and I aspire to live my life like he did. Travis is one of the greatest songwriters I’ve ever known, and he was a great friend.

Travis’s third album From Dublin to Duluth is the best group of songs he ever wrote. Trav released two albums, Last Year’s Leaves (2012) and October Porches & Second-Hand Fears (2018) which are both fantastic records. He was a great songwriter and a great player and a great singer, but this new group of tunes was easily his best.

He was really pushing himself. He wanted to be better, he wanted to outdo himself, and he did. Every song that he wrote for that album, that he brought to the band, raised the bar. It started with “Sligo Girl,” which is a great song, and “Get Into Trouble” and “Sloane.” There’s so many amazing tunes on this record, and stylistically it’s the most diverse thing that he ever wrote.

Before he passed, we basically produced the album together. We had it all planned out and were about to go into the studio when I got the call. So he wasn’t with us for the process of recording, but he left everything in place. There weren’t any moments of “Why don’t we try this on this song?” It was like, no, Trav wanted it this way. I think if he could hear it—and I know he can hear it—he’d be very proud of what we were able to do.

I just wish he was here. Getting [McKeveny’s live band] The Famous Doctor Scanlon Band off the ground again was pretty challenging emotionally. But we all had kind of a steely determination to keep his music and his legacy alive, because his songs were everything. He wasn’t a part-time songwriter, it wasn’t a hobby for him. He was all in artistically—you can hear it when you listen to his music.

We’re really happy that we finally finished tracking—now we just have to mix it. We’ve been recording at a great studio called Ian London Productions with Ken Wallace. It’s sounding huge, so there’s not a whole lot to do in terms of mixing. We’ll just go in there and polish it up and get it out to the people. We’re excited and we’ll be making a big noise about it when it’s ready.

Absolutely–thanks for sharing that. Now back to American Equator. The last time you recorded at Dial Back was summer 2020, in the middle of the lockdowns and the George Floyd protests. I’m guessing the recording experience was different this time.

It was very different. It was nice, we got to go out and eat in restaurants. It was definitely more relaxed and good to be making a record and not feeling like the world was ending. We had Henry Barbe engineering, and he did a great job and we just had good vibes going in the studio.

I wanted to keep the good vibes going from the last record because I was very happy with Killing The Old Ways and we felt like a family making that record. I wanted to do that again, and I think we did. I’m really happy with this group of songs and people seem to really like it so far, which is great.

As you said, there’s a lot of folks who played on the previous record who are also on this one. But there are also some new folks in the mix, like Joe Leone. Tell us a little more about the players on the album.

Patton always brings in great players. He brought in Tim Lee who played on “Technicolor Days,” Kell Kellum on “Spy Rock Road,” and John Smith from The Dexateens on “Skid Row Skyline.” It was all good vibes in Water Valley, which is a nice town and a good setting to make a record. I was very happy that just like the last record, everything kind of fit. Patton would make a call and then we’d get the perfect part on that song.

I have to give a shout to Jay Gonzalez of DBT because I think he’s a genius part maker. I remember thinking when I heard what he did on “Madison Avenue Blues”—“Wow, it doesn’t get better than that, to be in the studio and hear a part like that on your song, that just couldn’t have been more perfect. Jay plays on every track this time and he really elevated the music to another level. It was great working with him.

Joe Leone from my live band The Hillside Airmen played drums on the whole album, even though he usually plays keys with us live, which is a funny story. We played a gig in Patchogue and he was on drums and he said “You know what? I want to play keys.” And I said “You play keys?” “Yeah.” So we played another gig and he played keys and he had learned all the parts—all the synth parts, all the piano parts, he had them all down cold. And I was “All right, man—you're on keys now!”

Every once in a while he’ll pick up the sticks again for a show if we need a drummer, and for this album I wanted to combine the Airmen and the DBT/Dial Back crew, sort of a little bit of the home team and a little bit of the away team, to keep the vibes from both settings. And it worked—I’m very, very happy with the results on this album.

That’s great. One thing I wanted to ask you about—last time we talked, you had just released Killing The Old Ways, and you said you had a bunch of new songs already written. And one you were excited about and said might be the title track for the next album was called “If Heaven Was A Train.” So I kind of did a double take when I looked at the track list for the new album and… it’s not there. Which got me interested in the process for deciding which songs make it on an album.

It’s always changing. I still feel really good about that track, but it’s the one I mentioned before that wasn’t working during the sessions, so we recorded “Stomping Grounds” instead. And honestly, now that I look back on it and listen to the finished record, I don’t think that song fit.

I still think it’s a great song and I'm excited to record it, but it’s just one of those things—you start amassing songs and it’s really hard to pick. You’re looking through the songs looking for ones with similar themes or ideas in them, but that are also different enough to stand on their own. And then you get two that are a lot alike and you have to choose which one wins. Otherwise you’re looking at a double album! [laughter]

It’s hard to self-edit, and that’s something Patton has helped me with, putting his producer hat on. I’m glad he did, because we ended up somewhere good as a result. That song will see the light of day eventually, and maybe there’s a new set of songs that will grow up around it for the next album.

In the meantime, I already have enough for another volume of The Commonwealth Sessions, which I’m gonna start recording soon.

                

Speaking of EPs, I wanted to ask about the one you did recently with Delaney Hafener, The Quiet Part. Could you tell us a little about how that came about?

I’m a big fan of The Belle Curves and Delaney is a great songwriter, creative ally, and friend. One day we had a couple of extra songs kicking around and I think it happened when we were hanging at her old house in Brookhaven, where Silo Recordings was. And Bill Hafener, her dad, was working the board and one night we started putting down some tracks. I think we did two and they came out really well. So we did two more, and then Delaney suggested we do the Jackson C. Frank tune “Blues Run The Game.

It was just a snapshot of a cool time. We definitely want to do another one, we just don’t know when. We’re thinking about it and we’ve got some songs kicking. I was happy with how it came out because it’s a different vibe from either of our projects.

You also have a Byrds tribute band called Full Circle. Tell us about that.

My buddy Rich Lanahan and I did a record of Gene Clark tunes called Silent Troubadour and the band came out of that. We did a release show and ended up playing some Byrds and Gene Clark and Gram Parsons tunes. So every once in a while now, we just get together and make some Byrds noises and get jangly and a little country. I love The Byrds—they’re a foundational band for me, Gene Clark and Gram Parsons are heroes to me and that music means a lot to me still. So it’s always fun to get together with those guys and do a show.

And finally: what’s next on the horizon for you?

American Equator comes out March 7th, and on March 27th I’ll be playing a record release show at Mercury Lounge in New York City. After that I have a few tour dates and I’ll be adding to those. I’ll be touring with Jimmy again in May and possibly in the fall as well.

So, more tour dates behind this record and then just making more records and playing and traveling and doing this thing—this life in music, which is rich in friendship and good times. I’m grateful to be doing it.