I tell this story sometimes, about how at some point during the making of Let the Bloody Moon Rise (an album that not enough people heard because everything else going on with me at that time was amplified much, much louder than anything I could write or sing), Kurt Bloch told me his only real professional ambition was to “make cool shit with his friends.” Now that I think about it, it might’ve actually been Andrew McKeag who said that but my memory wasn’t great to begin with and it isn’t getting any better with age. At any rate, someone said it and even if I can’t remember the source, the sentiment stuck with me. I thought about it a lot while I was writing the songs that make up To the Places We Lived, which I knew would be my last record. I thought about the time that had passed since Nowhere Nights (my last proper solo record, before the Honkies and Hawks and Doves albums), and about everyone who had been woven into my life, musically and otherwise, during that time. While I wanted To the Places We Lived to be a solo record — to have my name on it, because I was no longer ashamed or embarrassed to have it on something I made — I also wanted to make room in the songs for all of those people with whom I had been intertwined. I wanted them as present in the songs as they’d been in my life. We got together, some of us, at Jackpot! in Portland (where we made Nowhere Nights), the week before Easter, 2019. Andrew McKeag was there. Jordan Richter, of course. Jesse Moffat. Will Moore, who had been a traveling member of the Honkies during our last summer together. Casey Neill, who I somehow had never been in a band with despite numerous intersections. That group put down the basic tracks and then I started to call in other friends who lived nearby. Jenny Conlee-Drizos, Joy and Rebecca from Lenore. Emily Overstreet. Dave Jorgensen. Kyleen King. Once the record felt done to me, I put things on pause for what I thought would be just a few months to help look after my dad, but then he was gone, and then we learned my wife was pregnant, and then a few weeks later everyone was stuck inside their homes sanitizing their groceries and wondering if we’d ever get back together again. When we finally did get back together again, the record no longer felt done to me and so, following Kurt’s line of thinking (or Andrew’s, whatever), I decided to just keep making cool shit with my friends until it did feel done. Billy Mercer, who played on my first record twenty years ago, played bass on a couple tracks. Mike Grigoni, who I met before I ever made a record, played dobro and lap steel. Sadler Vaden and Steve Selvidge played some guitar. Eric Ambel and Kurt Bloch did, too. I kept asking friends to play on the record, and they kept saying yes. We made room for everyone, and nothing felt crowded. It was Eric and Kurt, though, who really saved the record; kind of took it away from me after I’d been tinkering with it for years, for way too long. Long after my daughter was born and all the places that hadn’t closed for good opened back up again. They made this record as much as I did. I’m forever grateful. 

I’m forever grateful, too, to Hanif Abdurraqib, who let me borrow a few lines for “Leave an Echo” (you’ll hear Matthew Ryan  singing alongside me on that one) and then wrote an essay for this record’s liner notes. That essay sits alongside a new poem by Kaveh Akbar who, like Hanif, has helped me stay alive over the last several years. I don’t take that for granted, being alive.

I said I wrote To the Places We Lived to be my last record, and it is. That’s another reason I wanted my own name on it. I thought a lot about Nowhere Nights while we were making To the Places We Lived because this record picks up where Nowhere Nights left off; a sort of spiritual sequel, I suppose. That’s my voice, those two records. That’s my life. I’m proud of everything I’ve written but there’s a lot of songs of mine I listen back to now and I can’t hear myself; can’t find myself. That’s not the case here. One of the privileges of being a writer is I get to decide how and when any given story ends. I’m glad I hung around long enough to finish this one.

Kasey Anderson
Portland, Oregon
July 7, 2024