Photo: Tianna Franks

Guitar. Vocals. Stacked vocals. Lead Guitar. Female Harmonies. Fiddle. Harmonica. Pedal Steel. Piano. Organ. Synths. Drums and bass holding it down. Listening to the new Bob Sumner album, ‘Someplace To Rest Easy,’ I find myself playing that favorite game—what is inside this sound so atmospheric? The textures lay like a finely loomed rug; the single fibers are no longer seeable; they are but part of a larger picture. It’s a masterclass in mixing and a studio wunderkind of an album, free from genre or easy description beyond the kaleidoscope of Sumner’s life of love and loss, of bottles and bibles, of hard living and soft songwriting. This is a preacher’s yarn, after that preacher done thrown it all away but the love, and is free to share the wisdom.

After more than twenty years in music (and cowboying, and delivering Chinese food, and film production work), Sumner has learned a few things. What was clear on an early August evening at Portland, Oregon’s Mississippi Studios, is that he just recently learned how long it can take for his band to get work visas. Sumner is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, but he was born and raised in British Columbia, and most of his band are Canadians. As hard as it is for burgeoning acts to tour with their bands economically, this is another obstacle no one wanted. All in stride for the seasoned veteran, however, whose character can be judged by how quickly the Portland community and his friend’s jumped in to help. A local seven-piece band quickly took shape around Sumner and his lead guitarist, Etienne Tremblay. To new ears and new songs, and to the credit of all the musicians on stage that night, the audience was none the wiser until Sumner’s profuse kindness let it be known from the stage.

The next morning, I scooped Sumner at a mutual friend’s house and headed to a nearby coffee spot to figure out how I only recently learned of this profound artist and his spiritual sound.

Saddle Mountain Post: I have so many questions. Mostly around why the hell I didn’t know about you until just a couple of months ago, and there’s not a ton on you online. So let’s start with some facts. Where were you born and raised?

Bob Sumner:  When you take I-5 up from Washington, and you go through this border town called Blaine. I grew up in the town directly across the line in Canada, called White Rock.

SMP: Okay. And a little beach town there on the bay?

BS: Not really. It was suburbia.

SMP: What was the vibe? What are you doing as a kid?

BS: The vibe was full suburbia whatever. And the town, the town was kind of just starting to grow up and really start booming. So suburb kids, ya know. The vibe was drugs and alcohol. Bored kids in suburbia but with nice access to the outdoors, like the beach, you know, some adventuring to do.

SMP: This all sounds familiar; suburbs in Atlanta was my youth. Let’s compare notes from the corners of the continent. What kind of drugs we’re talking about?

BS: (laughing) You want all this on the record?

SMP: If you’re cool with it. Let’s dig into those suburbs that are supposedly this bucolic American dream but well, yeah, maybe we have a different version of that telling.

BS: So you know what it was like; we’re talking about acid mostly. Other than maybe the effects on brain development as a child, acid is a wonderful drug for kids.

SMP: My childhood would agree with you.

BS: I just think it’s the right time, teenagers, because you don’t have all the anxieties of life yet. So it’s just like being in a cartoon, yes, a hundred percent turning on a cartoon.

SMP: That’s such a big point to me. Like I sometimes struggle with them now, thanks to all the anxiety I live and struggle with. Now, I’ll partake occasionally, but the anxiety of adult responsibility and all life’s stuff just kind of gets in the way of it. Back then it was most every weekend, sometimes at school.

BS: Ok, yeah, we’re the same (laughing).

SMP: Teachers hands leaving color trails across the chalk board. I grew up in North Atlanta, the white flight suburbs. There was zero culture, as far as I could tell. Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, suburb culture was TV culture. MTV, VH1. Maybe the lack of any real culture around me sent me heavier into music as my escape at least if not my cultural hub.

BS: Yep. Yep. Same years. I’m 43.

SMP: 46 here.

BS: Yeah so that makes sense. I had an older brother—three years older. So he led me around age 12 to smoking weed; acid at 13, and acid hard, but then quit acid by the time I was 14, 15 maybe, and then to cocaine, and everything else. But it was a riot. And then I became a Christian for, okay, when I was 18.

SMP: Like, born again? How would you describe it?

BS: Okay. So I would describe it as I was raised Christian but we didn’t really go to church a whole lot; they didn’t really even have a denomination; my dad grew up catholic; my mom grew up in southern California as an evangelical, quite Christian, like that evangelical youth group kind of Christian. But she was thrown to the wolves with my dad’s family, who was like jazz musicians and you know, a lot of drinking. His dad, my grandpa, was an alcoholic. All that to say we weren’t really like practicing, church-going Christians, but it was always, always there. I can recall, like, you know, praying that I wasn’t gonna get suspended, or the cops weren’t gonna call my mom, or, you know, it’s like a weird thing I believed in. But then when I really started getting into trouble, they started taking us back to church. So I was doing coke all night, then going to youth group in the morning, and then going to camps. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Christian camps.

SMP: I was raised Roman Catholic—Sunday school, alter boy, the whole shebang—and saw all the evil stereotypes. At my confirmation retreat an adult started taking kids into a dark room and speaking in tongues. That became a mini controversy. At my catholic high school, one of the priests molested boys at the school. After all that I knew religion wasn’t for me, but I don’t think I’ve ever stopped the quest for what fills that space. Music honestly. Soul music, which for me goes way wider as a term—from Marvin Gaye to folks like you. All about feelings. Drugs, music, church. All to make you feel better, right? And I sometimes wish that there was something beyond it all right, but, I don’t know.

BS: Man, we’re the same person; I feel exactly the same, and anyways these camps they really get you.

SMP: This is like Young Life I imagine.

BS: Exactly. It wasn’t Young Life that sort of turned me, but then I became pretty heavily involved in online groups for a few years.

SMP: Was it the community? What was it about it that brought you back to the church?

BS: I think I was so destroyed. It was just so stressful the way I was living. Constantly suspended or expelled from every school, just constantly in trouble. It was just stressful. And then I was at this camp; this emotional music was being made, and all these wonderful people asking you how you’re doing, asking me about your life, and it just broke me. I just went for it

SMP: Right on. It’s important, right? I mean, whether it’s religion or something, right? That community that, especially in those moments of nearing transition, where you like, kind of, even if it’s unconsciously know that, hey, I probably need to make a change at some point.

BS Exactly. In retrospect, I often am kind of embarrassed about those years, but you’re entirely right. I just needed community and the nourishment of their love. And it was incredible. I got that for a while. And then quite quickly was, this is fucked.

SMP: (laughing) What’s that period; how long?

BS: Five years maybe. Okay, I went to Bible College, Adam. Okay, and this is where I really started to think this is crazy. This is, this is, this is wrong. And then, it was kind of slow, like, you know, it’s hard to lose your religion as well.

SMP: Again, the community. Often so tight knit those religious groups, right? So ok, what else then? So what else was it for you then? Where did you turn?

BS: I guess, music, maybe.

SMP: I think that’s what we’re supposed to be talking about! Nice, now take me back with music. You mentioned your dad’s family in jazz scenes. What was your musical upbringing like?

BS: It wasn’t an overly musical home, though my mom’s dad, my grandpa from California, was a church pianist, wonderful player. They always had in his home in California an organ, and a piano. So anytime we got together, him and my mom would play together.

SMP: So she could play as well?

BS: She plays quite beautifully, all by ear. And I can recall, we always had a piano in the house.  I can remember a moment of them playing together on one piano, and me walking outside just weeping it was so beautiful.

SMP: How old are you there?

BS: I was an adult, like a teenager. And on my Dad’s side –  then my grandfather died when I was one. But he was like Django Reinhardt. He modeled himself at Django and even looked just like the man.

SMP: And shredded guitar.

BS: Shredded guitar! And led big bands, but he was a janitor at night and played jazz music on the side.

SMP: So, I mean, you had music in your life. This is where I get super fascinated with how talented people make the move to start making and doing music for life and work and how that plays out for each of y’all. And where things start, and where they grow or don’t. Because, right, as I told you, I didn’t even know who you were Bob, until a couple months ago thanks to the then new single, Motel Room, that someone posted on Instagram and I was immediately taken by sound, which is just slightly askew from everything that’s out there right now. I love all the genre bending work that creates magic but also headaches for the industry. Singer-songwriter, folk, country, rock, Americana, soul music, all of it. I had to learn more. Who is this guy and how don’t I know who he is! so that ramble done, tell me how you got into the profession or industry, if you will. You’re out of bible school and like 21-years-old. What now?

BS: I picked up guitar late, but everything in my life goes back to my older brother, who is three years older. He led me down that path of partying and drugs, and then he also led me down the path of playing music. So he picked up guitar when he was about 16. And then a few years later, when I was 16, I picked up guitar, and then I started writing these Christian songs.

SMP: And what music are you guys listening to?

BS: All over the place. So we grew up, man, and my brother was always so influential, like, when I was at that young age of 13, doing a bunch of acid I was pulling all the records off the my folks shelf, and it was all classic rock, Zeppelin, the Doors, the Band. I would like make mixed tapes from the vinyl record, right?

SMP: My dad didn’t let us buy cassettes because he thought they were such shitty quality. He forced us to buy the vinyl, and then he’d make us a tape.

BS: Amazing, so cool, so much effort put into that. But then my brother one Christmas one year—I think elementary school—and he gave me Tom Waits,’ ‘Bone Machine,’ and Jane’s Addiction cassette tape, I think ‘Ritual de la Habitual.’ And I just played those out of control.

SMP: ‘Been Caught Stealin’’ in heavy rotation. I wasn’t a hard rock guy but some of Perry Ferrel’s magic got me, but just the pure volume some of the music my friends loved back then I couldn’t do.

BS: Man, we are so similar. That’s wild. We have so much in common. I love it because even with Zepplin, my favorite tracks were like, ‘California’ or whatever, like that on the mellower side.

Photo by: Zara Huntley

SMP: And this transferred to your playing and writing?

BS: So, you know, when I picked up guitar, I just started writing songs, which seems like what came naturally right away. Probably a lot of bad taste. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just what came naturally. Writing songs did but playing the guitar did not come natural. I’m not a great guitarist, I haven’t put the effort into the instrument that I have put into writing; maybe a bit of that laziness. But I love, I love to write.

SMP: So any out of the house playing? Or just for yourself and maybe friends?

BS: Well, again, my brother, when I was done with the Christian thing, he was always playing bands. And I start doing open mics, and then we start playing together. We started a band called the Sumner Brothers and played for 20 years.

SMP: Folks can still listen to all that?

BS: Yeah, it’s all on Spotify. My brother’s name is Brian, and he’s one of my all time favorite songwriters. Now he’s doing improvised jazz guitar mostly.

SMP: Fulltime or he’s got a day job?

BS: Teaching guitar. Online classes I think mostly. He went to music school. Classical guitar for years, and then jazz guitar. He’s my hero.

SMP: Solid match if you consider yourself a writer more than a player.

BS: I think he maybe cares a bit more about playing then writing songs like he used to when we were on tour, you know, with like Willie Tea Taylor, he’s an old, really old friend. And we’d always end up end of the night singing songs, passing a guitar around. Brian always thought that was so boring, he hated it. (laughing) but to me it was everything.

SMP: OK you’re in your early twenties, you’re out of Christianity…

BS: Out of Christianity. Into University of British Columbia. I thought I’d be a high school teacher. But, man, that was during a time. I was in college at the wrong time. I was getting back into drinking, smoking a lot of weed.

SMP: And during the Christian years, was it gone?

BS: All gone. So five years sober. One hundred percent. Didn’t touch a drop.

SMP: Did you find that hard? Or is it just be an obvious one at that point?

BS: Not hard. For some reason, to my mind, I just had to do that. So it was like, boom, I accept the Lord. And I’m throwing these drugs down the toilet. It was extreme.

SMP: I was/am always a drug addict, but I never did that. I always finished it as I told myself I was quitting. (both laughing) Mostly pills for me before alcohol in later life. I liked the opiates a lot. And was highly functioning. No one knew. Kept it all to myself, even the storms of withdrawal or trying to kick various things. Some days I’m proud of that weirdly and some days even more ashamed.

BS: Oh same. I love, oh, I love opiates. And too many friends who got in trouble there.

SMP: Yeah me too. I just have that personality where if I like something I go all in. Obsessive, addictive, anxiousness that made me happy to be alone. Just like when I found your music. (both laughing)

BS: Which can be superpower if it can be focused or it can kill you, right? So how long have you not been drinking for?

SMP: Four and a half years. It was around my wife’s birthday and me and her brother got all lit up and the next day I just knew this couldn’t last if I wanted to stay around this planet. So in the last ten, twenty years I quit opiates, then cigarettes, then drinking. Weed and Diet Coke are my preferred vices these days. Keeps the devil at bay anyway. And the weed helps me sleep which I’m grateful for.

BS: Oh man I miss weed so bad. So here’s the thing with me. I’m really only sober because I found out I have a genetic heart disease two years ago in August. And we only discovered it because I had a blackout drinking night, and the next day I was fine because I was a daily drinker, so I was just chilling with my regular hangover, which just means I’m a little tired, fuzzy, driving and chatting with my sister on the phone. And my chest kind of started feeling as if it was falling asleep, like, around my heart got tingly, as if your foot’s falling asleep, but all around my heart and chest. And then it went up behind my throat, into my face, kind of behind my eyes. And I was like, all right, Deb, my sister, I’m gonna pull over, send you my pin where I am because I am having a fucking heart attack or something.

I got out of the car and walked around and it went away. So I carried on with my day. Went to this antique shop, went for lunch, got in the car again, and it happened again. Same thing. Got out of the car, went away, Back in the car, and it happened again. So I went to the emergency room and when you mention your heart, they give you every test available, and then it was this whole process where everything was looking fine, it looked good. And then they noticed a little blip in a stress test when I was running. And then they do this wild drug infusion test, whereby, if you have this disease, it will set it off and, well, I set it off. So we discovered I have this thing is called Brugada Syndrome, named for the brothers who discovered it. And this is the fun part. The nickname of the disease is “sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome.” Because people die in their sleep. And then my other favorite little tidbit is they say often that the first symptom is death. (laughing)

SMP: Thanks doc, super clear.

BS: It’s so good, it’s so dramatic. And then, it’s just one of those things where you go in, you do this test, and they basically hand you piece of paper saying, you have the dang thing, and send you on your way. I’m sitting in my truck in the parking lot, reading the thing being like, holy fuck and you start to Google it. And it’s like, average age of death is 40. It’s always the crazy shit, right? So I give this a quick Google, and it’s like a list of things you need to stay away from, and cocaine is number one and alcohol is number two.

Beyond that, it’s pretty new knowledge, like they’ve only known about it since the late nineties, so there is a lot of grey area. All to say, back to weed, because I’ve tried to do my research and do right by it, and you can find places where people say you should stay away from it, but it’s not unequivocal. I would love to smoke a joint and just watch a movie and eat popcorn, man.

SMP: But you would rather be alive.

BS: (laughing) well there’s also the anxiety with old age when you smoke weed. I feel like I could spiral also, so for now, it’s no weed. My wife—I woke up one night and she had her fingers under chin checking my pulse. But anyways, I think I’m gonna live forever. But who knows, but if I don’t, I don’t. But while I’m healthier than I’ve ever been . I’m jogging, and all that to say, I needed to quit. I had had talks with my wife. She was great. She’s pretty non-judgmental and pretty chill. But you know, I need to be better. So I was pretty similar to you. I was very controlled, very functional. I have a job that takes up a lot of time and effort; I’m never late for work, nothing like that. But I drink every day, every single day. And I have no problem drinking.

SMP: Sounds familiar. Just me alone every night on the couch.

BS: I prefer drinking alone. I’d go to bed every night, completely inebriated. It was useless. It was dumb. It was sick.

SMP: which is what you have to learn right?

BS: So thankful for it. I don’t know if I would have got here without it. So I’m pretty thankful as long as I don’t kick the bucket I’m pumped.

SMP: Well fuck dude. All right. Let’s talk about music. Flash me back; you’re starting to write songs with your brother. Turns into a 20 years band. Do you have a full time job throughout all of this time on top?

BS: Well we were like bums. Everything was about the band, absolutely everything. There were years where we both lived with my parents at home. We had a garage. We would jam every single night for hours, hours and hours, drinking shitty beers and getting high and jamming, and then just working. We both delivered Chinese food for ten years. I had my Car-tar; I could write songs while I was delivering Chinese food. It’s chill, putting money in my pocket. Just bums, absolutely bums. And then going to school, both of us him taking jazz and myself just really kind of failing in school because the band was everything. And, and then we just like self-recorded and produced the records. You’ll be shocked to hear some pretty, like garage metal sounding stuff. But right around the time, like Johnny Cash was coming on with American Recordings, I was really into Bonnie Prince Billy, like, you know, songwriters. So it’s really songwriter forward, Americana, but also with a lot of indie stuff. So there’s a lot of, you know, big delayed guitars, and be interesting to see what you think.

SMP: Oh word. I hear a bit of that even more so on your first solo album than I do on the new one. Some fuzzy heavier guitar tones, but I love how all the music appears to be honing in on the same journey where we find you now. There’s other influences working here, for sure, besides just pure country.

BS: Again, my brother, he’s so influential on me, and he’s such a singularly focused, heavily opinionated person, which I am as well, but I feel like I got a lot of that for him. And throughout those years, he had no patience for what he called museum piece music. So just anything that anybody was doing that’s just already been done. And I still think because of that, those years of being influenced by him in that band, I do feel the same way.

SMP: We talk about this a lot. There’s some really great songwriting but the sound is just nostalgia, or real nostalgia, you see cover bands now just everywhere.

BS: Yeah, I have a really hard time if something is just a carbon copy of something that’s been done. I always feel like all of all of our heroes that we might look up to always were bringing something new to the table without needing to be intentional about. No matter their age, it was just like they were excited about something new, you know. I find it’s worst in for lack of a better term, this americana folk country scene. If you go to the hip hop world it’s so exciting. I don’t listen to ton of hip hop, but it’s so exciting and all over the place.

I’m really into this guy, Phosphorescent. He put out that record years and years ago now called, ‘to Willie,’ which is all Willie Nelson cover songs. But while he’s got a great reverence for the music, then he just makes it his own.

SMP: Which is what drew me into your music originally. So I’m a huge Terry Allen fan, and he talks a lot about atmospheres as people and art come together. Creating atmospheres that stand in for unattainable truth. A fleeting home if you will for a story. So I am obsessed with how some music or art does this but others don’t. It’s a really special thing, perhaps what people mean when you “have your own sound,” When I listen to your music, both your solo albums, I feel that atmosphere between the guitar and drums, lets say, the rest of the instruments—steel, fiddle, keys—they lay back and push up the rest of the sound like the tide, giving texture and presence. It’s a big sound without being loud. I love that. It’s really something recognizable within, again, your sound. Doesn’t take long to recognize a Sumner song.

BS: Damn that’s nice to hear.

SMP: Are you thoughtful about that – conscious to it as you’re creating it.

BS: So two things. Etienne and I are a unit. We spend a lot of time together, writing together and just listening to music and thinking about music, and we’re pretty obsessive about listening to music. It’s all we fucking care about, and all we do. So, you know what I mean, it’s it, oh, that that kick drum sound. It’s an obsession. For example, I have a playlist I called Wasted Rhythms or something. So when I was thinking about just drum patterns and sounds, it was just me and this growing list obsessing over tracks that I thought were really interesting or cool. So it’s a big part of it is just obsessing for however many number of years before the next record, which is often like a couple of years, obsessing over sounds that I love. And then we go into the studio. Basically I have just these folk songs, me and my guitar. They’re all written on an acoustic guitar, and can be played that way. Like what you said last night about how the merit of a song is, when you hear it played totally just singer and guitar, and I agree. That has to hold up because that’s the way I write songs.

SMP: Oh yes. And you take that into the studio?

BS: Yep. then when we get in studio with my bass player, Erik Neilson, and my producer, one of my best friends. Then we get weird and fun, you know what I mean, the studios such a fun place, and maybe it won’t always be that way, but right now we’re really into getting deep and thick into the production process. So like I said, it’s obsessing over a kick drum sounds and of course a guitar tone and every note that’s played, and then we have our secret weapon we’ve used on both records. It’s almost not even fair, because he has such an enormous, important role in these records. His name is Chris Gestrin. I don’t even know if he likes the music he’s just the most incredible keyboard player—anything, piano, Hammond, synths; he has an incredible synths collection. And he comes in when typically, most of the record is already outlined and recorded. And he just slays, right. And not just backgrounds or vibes; he writes hooks on the spot, where once he writes them, they’re fully and forever attached to that song. They’re really, really important to the song. And then he also makes it impossible for a band to recreate live. (laughing)

SMP: And how it lands on the record too. The mixing of all of it. I feel like my ear is decent, but, like, I don’t know, is that the steel, is that fiddle, is that a synth chord or an organ purring? It’s so well blended, creating that atmosphere, that bed to snuggle up in.

BS: Sweet. Beautiful.

SMP: It’s like some new new Nashville Sound coming from Canada (laughing). And your voice meets the music in similar mixed fashion, even live. Your sight goes distant and emotionless as you enter the fray and add the lyrics to match the flow. It’s interesting to me now because one of the words I wrote down after the show last night was ‘Preacher.’ And I didn’t have any idea of all this Christian background, but I could watch you go to a different place up there, holding a serious presence and weight amid the beauty of the music, which clicks when you get down into the lyrics. It feels like wise music, perhaps a man younger than you and without your experience couldn’t produce.

BS: that’s awesome to hear. To speak about the band a minute. While all the players last night are heroes of mine, I was just crushed to not be able to bring my Canadian band down with me. We missed some Visa windows and it just didn’t work out. I’m so thankful for Jason Montgomery for pulling the band together and Matt Mitchell and everyone who had to quickly learn the songs and then played their hearts out. But I was just so sad, becaue I wanted to present this music the way we made it, and especially because I know I won’t get to do it all that often. It’s just too expensive in this economy to tour like that for me.

Usually, it’ll be Mango (nickname of lead guitarist Etienne Tremblay) and I, which I do love, and the songs will come across, but not the way we produced them. So the show you caught at Mississippi Studios was really special.

SMP: this is one of my favorite topics; where the economics run into the art. When did you start understanding all of it, and when did you really decide to go all in on the music.

BS: It didn’t ever seem like we even considered anything else, my brother and I. It was like, we both quit college, which, by the way, Bob Dylan, he ruined me. (laughing) Scorsese’s documentary came out, and it’s so vivid to me, because I feel like I watched it over like a week or so. I had my laptop out on the bus on the way to university. It just overtook everything. I don’t think I’ve watched it since, but I quit school—I have to do this. It crushed me. We quit school together, and then it was for the next 20 years we never looked back. Slogging it out up and down the West coast of the U.S. and Western Canada a lot. We did get out to New York and the Eastern Seaboard a little bit. Did a Day Trotter session back in the day, which was a big deal to us. But never made a dime. Never, you know, it was always a slog. Coming home more poor. We broke even if we were lucky. And we didn’t have any money, so we kind of had to break even. We did not have any money. We’d busk during the day, play every night of the week if you could. If it’s a Monday, and you just can play for a hundred bucks, you do it. And that’s just kind of the way it was.

SMP: Just like Dylan

BS: (laughing) Except, him with a bit more success.

SMP: But that’s the thing. I mean, like, that’s where I struggle with the economy side of it, because I’m like, yes, it’s Dylan, bad example here maybe, but, it’s a different time now, the industry is different, there’s more art and less curation so discovery becomes more difficult. While it’s always been million to one odds of making it to super stardom, I do think it’s harder now to have a small sustainable life doing art.

BS: I agree. I feel like most of the people we’re into, all we want is to just subsist, make enough money to be able to not work a day job, and so that we can work harder at our craft and do it and just keep doing it.

SMP: Have you been able to dip into the government assistance and grants that Canada and other countries offer artists?

BS: Yes, and we’ve been very lucky, not everybody is able to tap into this. it’s quite different figuring that out and honestly, it was probably the 20 years with the Sumner Brothers that taught me all of that. We applied for every grant available. And there’s one, there’s a big one called Factor, okay, which is a government grant. And we would just get used to being denied over and over and over again. You put in all this work into the grant writing, and it’s a lot of pretty heavy lifting on the on the backend in paperwork and applications. And you just get denied. I remember vividly, we were on tour somewhere in Alberta, driving somewhere and my brother opened the email. We just got $10,000 to make a record. It felt life changing, incredible. And once you’re sort of in with them, often you can tap back into getting the grants again. I got a grant for this lates album. And they help with the marketing as well. Honestly, I don’t know how I’d be doing what I’m doing without it.

SMP: such little money in the grand scheme of things can make a big impact for an artist.

BS: totally, I’m so grateful. But the thing we don’t have in Canada… is anything else, you you know what I mean? I’m so fortunate to have John and Fluff & Gravy put this record out, but it’s pretty scarce in Canada. Toronto is a bit better than Vancouver, but there’s nobody gonna see you at your show and say, “I want to be your agent. I want to manage you, or I want to put you on our label. It just doesn’t exist. So we are fortunate to have a bit of help from the government. But beyond that, Canada’s tough. It’s a bit of a wasteland.

SMP: How do you see that playing out? You have dual citizenship. Do you move to the States or keep an address in Canada for the grants? Do you think about it like that?

BS: Here’s my secret, I think that I’m gonna attempt. There’s this manager in Vancouver who manages like Ry Cooder and Elvis Costello. The big Canadian agency called Feldman. And there’s this rad guy. He plays mandolin in a couple of bands, and he just heard the music from ‘Wasted Love Songs,’ and from that time he has been really supportive. So I just asked him if we could have lunch. He’s not gonna work with me, but he agreed to lunch, and we just had a great chat. The thing he said that really solidified what I’ve been thinking for a long time. He was like, we see Canada as a beautiful wasteland. Basically: get out. And because I’m a US citizen I can. He told me this story about a kid he was working with, an artist who was Canadian, but was going down to LA and doing a bunch songwriting and gigs. He would go down for one week every six weeks or something, to the point where everyone in the communities kind of thought he was living there, right? You’re seeing where I’m going I can tell. (laughing) So I love Nashville. I love it to death. Just so much good music all the time. I think it’s nuts. Like I saw Emmylou play Honky Tonk Tuesday night. Well it was Rodney Crowell’s show, but Emmylou came up and sang a few songs. And Vince Gill was just over on the side of stage wearing sweat pants playing guitar. It was a free show! I love Nashville.

SMP: Emmylou is an all-timer for me.

BS: Me too. Listen to her almost every day. And there’s people there in Nashville, right. Big industry in what feels like a relatively small town. It’s not New York.

SMP: I’ve said before it’s the only town I’d leave Portland for if I had to go.

BS: But we don’t drink (laughing) although joking aside I’m discovering more and more people who don’t.

SMP: Speaking of drinking and not drinking, we should probably talk more about the new record. Where was your head making it? Some heavy stories in there. How do we go from Sumner Brothers to your solo career?

BS: So with Sumner Brothers, I would say that my brother had a big part in the direction of the music. You’ll hear it is pretty, I don’t know, progressive, borders on indie rock a lot of the time, which I love. And actually that band’s not done, but he’s got three kids, and he doesn’t live super close. But man you would love our drummer and bass player. They come from a free, improvised music world, and they’re fucking mind blowing in their own right. So the music is really, really fun to play, but I’m like you were. All I ever want to listen to is, like, you know, ballads, pretty music. So I just kind of felt like I had to make the record that I want to really listen to, and that became ‘Wasted Love Songs.’ I really wanted it to be a vibe, and you don’t skip a song. So that’s kind of why I stepped away to do these albums.

SMP: I love hearing you say that, because they feel a bit like concept records. These aren’t groupings of singles. The new record especially feels like a very coherent thought throughout. Is there a narrative that you see through the record, or is it more through the sound?

BS: More through the sound, except this one, the new one, Someplace To Rest Easy. Some of this stuff we’ve been talking about. I lost three people in the exact same fashion to I would say their disease was depression and anxiety, but their medicine was alcohol, and they drank themselves to death. One was my best friend for many, many years, and that’s what ‘Motel Room’ is about. And “Bridges”—both written while he was still alive. ‘Motel Room’ was about the good times that we had with drinking. We had was so much fun. We were just, you know, it was pretty normal stuff, but we were just wild and drinking and having a good time. But then I would notice very specifically crashing at his couch and seeing into his bedroom and seeing a bottle of vodka by the bed. And thinking well that’s different. And then you’d notice him in the middle of the night take a swig. And then in the morning, take a swig. And then it just got to the point where he would just hole up for weeks, you know, maybe at first was a week, and then it would be a couple weeks, and he’d be in a motel room, or he’d be in his van, and he just couldn’t figure it out. But lost him. Lost an ex’s mom. And then another, another close friend from work, who just all the exact same fashion. So there’s that in three songs, ‘Motel Room’ ‘Bridges,’ and then the third single is ‘Is It Really Any Wonder,’ for the work friend while he was still alive actually. Then the rest of the record, I feel like is infused with my own struggle with alcoholism and relation to it affecting also my relationship of the last six years. It’s a lot of life struggle that I feel was exasperated by daily drinking.

SMP: Talk to me about, ‘You Can Stay Here.’

BS: I didn’t write it! Nope, but I’ll tell you all about it, okay, that’s my favorite. Love it so much.

SMP: Interesting; because the atmosphere, the texture, the tone; sure made it your own. And at the show you played ‘1000 Horses’ off of ‘Wasted Love Songs’  and introduced it as everyone’s favorite song off that LP but you didn’t write it.

BS: So that one that I played at Mississippi, ‘1000 Horses,” sure enough I send my sister the record and she’s like “ I love it all; my favorite song on the record is ‘1000 Horses.’” And I’m like, thanks Deb (laughing) that’s the one I didn’t write. But is the best. It’s such a good song. The writer’s name’s Ilya Zalubniak. I worked on a horse ranch, some of the best days of my life. It was 200 acres, and it was this guy who has 30 horses that he uses for movies; there is a lot of film industry, of course, in and around Vancouver. I lived in a room above a barn. Most days it was just me and the horses. I’d ride as much as I wanted to, but mostly a lot of shoveling shit and just taking care of the land. But there’s no money in that job. So I quit but helped hire a new guy. I hired Ilya, just randomly, off a Craig’s List ad, and he shows up in a Canadian tuxedo. There’s something about this guy. And sure enough, we start talking about Townes Van Sant and Guy Clark, and he’s a human juke box; plays any country; you name it, and he can just play it. And so for those weeks of training him and spending all day, every day with him, and then picking guitars at night, trading songs. And eventually I asked him if he ever writes any of his own songs. He was young; he’s like, probably 19-20-years-old. He bashfully pulls out the guitar and plays ‘Thousand Horses,’ which is one of the greatest. I just love that song so much. And you know, he’s still a close friend of mine. He’s a full cowboy, living middle of nowhere in British Columbia now, but still writing songs. So yeah ‘You Can Stay Here’ he wrote. I love it so much.

SMP: So he wrote both those, so he wrote that one too. Now you have to have one on every record I guess, for Deb if no one else.

BS: Exactly. Absolutely.

SMP: You’ve been far too kind with your time. We got to get you up to Seattle for the show tonight. But the hardest simplest question—what’s next; what’s the future hold? What do you want? Is this it? Playing music and keepin it moving? Twenty years on you’re a wise old man now.

BS: Yeah I don’t know. I don’t wanna say bluegrass, it gets people in a way, but you know, Steve Earle with the Del McCoury band, maybe something like that. But I’m me, and I can hardly play the guitar. So, you know, it’s so hard to get together, the whole band, with the keys and everything, but we’ve done a couple shows in Vancouver now. They’re like string band style, with mandolin, dobro, Mango playing lead on acoustic, but with electric bass, which I love. And it’s just feels great, and it’s easy. And then also, it would be something where we could go into the studio and probably record most of it live. So it would be a different. I think I’ll always want to continue doing what we’re doing with these records, but man they take time and money and effort, and it would be super fun to go in and just do a few days. I think I might do that.

SMP: New songs already in the bank?

BS: yep yep

SMP: Y’all recorded this one is like late 2022 I am guessing.

BS: Yeah, around Christmas ‘22.

SMP: Yeah damn, I’m always amazed at the length of time between recording and release. There’s gotta be some solution to squeeze that time window.

BS: The solution is just money.

SMP: Money and marketing and how quickly can all of that be pulled together by you or a producer. You ever get sick of playing songs?

BS: I don’t really suffer from that, which I’m thankful for. So many of my friends, they don’t want to play a song that they played live for a year. I mean ‘Turn You Into Stone.”  I think I wrote that song 15 years ago and I just started playing it live. We never did anything with it, never recorded it, and it fit here and now, and it’s become one of my favorite songs to play now. “Ticket to Ride” I think I have recorded three times. I just love that song.

SMP: Ticket to Ride. We got to get your riding out. As good a place to stop as any. Here’s to you sticking around for awhile before that big black train takes you into the spotted sky.