Album Notes

It’s a Tuesday afternoon on a hot summer day in South Dakota (July 22, 2008). Our trusty VW Eurovan now has 316,000 miles on the odometer, and we are longing for our new home town of Minneapolis and a night in our own bed. In our imaginations, the scenes that correspond to this sense of longing are the landscapes of the Dakotas. This set of songs, based on the readings and themes of the Advent season (those 40 days before Christmas now obscured and somehow intensified by the culture of commerce in the country of our birth), is the most complex work we’ve ever attempted. The tension that is explicit in the season of Advent forced us to write in new ways and re-address who we are and why we make music.

These songs were written and recorded all across the country, but a majority of it was conceived and completed in South Dakota. Special thanks to all of the folks who let us record in their homes and lodges over the last couple years, the staff at Outlaw Ranch and Camp NeSoDak, the Rohr family in South Dakota, our parents in Ohio and Wisconsin, The Stevens family in Washington, the Johnson’s in Texas, and St. Luke’s in Manhattan, KS.

Thank you for supporting us and the music we make by buying this CD and bringing us to your town to perform. Without you this music would not exist, we would not have crisscrossed the country many times (a journey we genuinely love), and we would not be able to start this new adventure known as “home ownership”. Your generosity continually moves us, thank you!

Under the Mercy
Aimée and Joel
info@tangledblue.com