ABOUT
“A Cross on a Gravel Road” is for people who like getting lost out on the back roads.

It’s about reaching that point in life when you know you need to leave home, about wanting to bring the parts of home you love with you, and about knowing you can’t.

It’s to be listened to loudly. Scream-sung along to. Out on the back roads, of course.

LINER NOTES
I fell in love with so much of the music that changed my life out on the country roads of Michigan. Out there, it felt like songs and I found each other.

As a kid, I fell in love with my first song via a Sony Disc Man on long road trips. That song (kiss whatever cool indie cred I could’ve maybe had goodbye) was The Wallflowers’ “One Headlight.” (It still slaps).

Much in the same way as a teenager, I fell in love those early, life-changing albums from Doves, Radiohead, Hey Rosetta, Sufjan Stevens.

Those songs are full of ghosts now. Some nights, when the moon’s just right and the roads are totally clear, I put on these songs, and those ghosts still speak to me in ways they did back then.

Sonically, I wanted to marry the ghostly-yet-grounded quality of the song I first fell in love with as a kid, with those sprawling, cinematic soundscapes of the albums I grew to love as a teenager.

Lyrically, I wanted to speak to that younger self who hasn’t yet realized they’ll never really lose themselves again. Of course… every time I play this song now, the ghost of that younger self, instead, speaks to me.

I hope it speaks to you, too. -JK