And he knows he’s not alone in feeling this way, highlighting fellow New England-born singer-songwriters like Anaïs Mitchell, Ray LaMontagne, James Taylor, Grace Potter and Phish.
“Making it in New England is hard,” the Busyhead Project founder noted. “There’s not a lot of access to live music, depending on where you’re from. You can be from a really small town, and knowing people that have made it kind of out of the scene and have represented New England so well is really cool. I try to keep in touch with those folks as much as I can.”
Although his musical journey has earned him Grammy nominations and taken him on global arena tours, he’s as connected to his roots as ever (just drink in his partnership with New England-born Culture Pop Soda). And that’ll remain an important part of his musical path forward.
“I’m in my 11th, 12th year almost of being a professional recording artist, and I’ve never really felt like I had a purpose in the way that I do when it comes to writing about where I’m from,” he explained. “The well is so deep in New England. There’s so much lore and history and emotion—not just in my own life, but in the states themselves. That it’s just really exciting to kind of keep drawing on that, and I’ll never really get tired of writing about New England.”
