Southern California-bred and -based Americana/folk band Moonsville Collective release its new album, A Hundred Highways, via Rock Ridge Music with distribution through Warner/ADA. Six years after their last releases and following a lineup change, the band feels a renewed connection to its roots in old-time music circles, bolstered by the sharpened musical and songwriting skills that come with more experience. On the album, they explore themes of intimate friendships lost and found, trials of love and marriage, fatherhood, family expectations and vice.
Q&A with Corey Adams
Moonsville Collective’s new album, “A Hundred Highways,” is essential listening. Lyrically, it explores change and the growth that can come from that, the importance of family, love, and how life can throw challenges at us in all ways and forms, and how we deal with those things can be the trait that defines us. Musically, the album is an Americana dream, full of old-time, bluegrass, roots, and folk goodness. It’s a glorious listen from start to finish, through the ebb and flow of emotions the songs examine. It’s a fireside chat, in musical form. We sat down to talk with band co-founder Corey Adams recently about this amazing album.
Hi, Corey! You have a terrific new album out in April called “A Hundred Highways.” How did these songs come together and what broad strokes can you tell us about the collection?
Hey there, thanks for having me! The songs all came together in the wake of a reset for the band. We’d released our EP Series, Moonsville I-V, in 2017, played a hundred shows in 2018, and in 2019, kind of fell into a new space full of change and growth. There were even some moments when we considered if Moonsville would continue or not.
In time, the choice was very clear – and we began drawing with a new set of pencils. Around this time, Philip Glenn joined the band as well, lending a heavy hand of fiddle and banjo, which reinvigorated us all to go back to our roots, while also exploring new sounds and structure in the songs we began to write. There was an immediate closure to some old feelings and thoughts regarding the band and our personal lives, and the new songs began to flow unbothered. Ultimately, the batch of songs really catches us reflecting on our past as a band and as people, while also wrestling through the challenges of our current phase of life as fathers, husbands, and musicians.
One of the songs on your new album, “You Go Your Way,” is really great and stood out to me. What can you tell us about this song? What inspired you to write it and what is it about?
That’s nice of you to say, thank you. “You Go Your Way” is about a time in my life when I made some decisions that ultimately had me leave a life I had created for many years, and forge into the unknown a bit in search of a new one. Goodbyes are not always of the nostalgic sort, and this one caught me having to hold my head high and with some triumphant resentment, perhaps as a fuel to move forward in confidence. I spent a lot of time alone during this period of restructuring my life, and the lyrics to this one all kind of came out of that place of aloneness. Luckily, I was able to lean into the characters in the song a bit – my family, some old friends. Ironically, it was in this period when Seth caught me and asked me to come play music in his backyard. The rest is history.
What was it like recording this album overall? What was the vibe in the studio, and how did this song, in particular, come together?
Recording was a dream. We began recording some demos in March of 2020, and because of the pandemic and the space that was created, we ended up having a lot more time to see how it would all come together. We really got to know the songs and how we played together again as a purely acoustic act – a divergence from all of our previous material. So when we hit the studio, the songs felt lived-in. The band recorded live on every song – no scratch track, no click, no breaks, no redos. We saved the vocals for later on some of the tracks, which made us all really play to each other, reading each other’s cues of who’s going to lean in more or not – it felt so connected.
“You Go Your Way” has a sense of urgency to it. Capturing the sense of urgency in a studio can be tough, but since we did it live, it adds that boost of adrenaline. I think Phil, Matt, Dan, and Seth really nailed that, and we hope it comes across that way.
What do you hope this album conveys to those who listen to it?
The truth, maybe? I don’t know. We’re a pretty simple band, trying to write songs that we enjoy and feel like us. No large production value or visual aesthetic. Being a fan of folk music, and country, and everything under the Americana umbrella, all I ever hope for in a record is to find someone who can blend the raw and honest truth with a moving melody. When that happens, it casts light on a little part of your heart that hasn’t been attended to yet, for me at least. The good, the bad, the funny, and the ugly. We hope some people find these songs as a part of the universality of country music in that regard.
Since you started out, how has your songwriting changed — both musically and lyrically? Do different things inspire you now? Where do you tend to get your biggest inspiration from these days?
I think when I first started out, I put together a record that was purely autobiographical. I was young, it was loaded, and I had no fears. Seth and Dan played on it. When I found Moonsville, I was a little lost, and kind of channeled everything I admired at the time and kind of lost touch with some of that authenticity for a season. I don’t think I was ready, or knew how to tell the truth of the things I was experiencing at the time. I think as I’ve grown out of that phase over the years, I have begun to write better songs. I hope so, at least. I think my biggest inspiration these days is in themes of healing or growth. Those ideas keep bubbling to the surface when I’m up late writing. I think I’ll be here a while, and we’ll see what comes up next.
Songwriting can be a really personal endeavor. Is it tough to share that stuff that usually might be private if you weren’t writing a song about it? Does unveiling the songs publicly, when you release a single or an EP or album, make you anxious or is it cathartic to have the songs out there?
I think it is tough to write about the very private things. And there are quite a few songs on this record that come from very sacred, or private, places. It is extremely cathartic, though. We carry the weight of our experiences and emotions, and if they go unprocessed, they can wreak havoc on our mental and physical health, our relationships, etc. It’s never even a choice to me whether I’m going to write about a personal thing, it’s more a matter of when the song comes, when you’ve thought about it enough to have it say all it needs to say. There’s always a bit of anxiety in releasing the song for me, but it’s absolutely cathartic. You can finally let it go, and let some others carry the weight of it as well, make up their own interpretation, and it kind of eases the energy of it all.
It’s not uncommon for an artist or band to be working on something new while promoting an album. Do you have anything in the pipeline to follow this album? What’s next from Moonsville Collective?
Indeed, ha ha. I think I have a little ledger book with about ten working songs in it. Three or so I know will make the cut, a few that are exploring the space, and a couple lines or ideas for a type of song I know we’ll want on the next album. I think once the dust settles this summer, we’ll start working on the new ones, and maybe jump into the studio sooner than later to keep things flowing. Besides that, we’ll be playing shows all year trying to hit all of our favorite areas. You can catch our current dates at MoonsvilleCollective.com. Next on the agenda is the central California Coast, Yucca Valley, and the eastern Sierra towns.
Thanks, guys!
