It is said that a sequel rarely stands up to the original. Kasey Anderson shoots holes in that theory.
Listening to Kasey Anderson for the first time, informed that this record will be the last of his career, feels like meeting someone new and alluring after you’ve been married. Even though you weren’t looking to stray, there is undoubtedly an attraction that compels you to think, why didn’t this person come along years ago. You were unattached, swiping to the right through Tinder’s exhausting database of potential matches, looking for keepers among the hundreds of musicians putting themselves out there, all of them hoping you’d buy a CD or vinyl, download digital files or as a last resort, stream a song.
Hanif Abdurraqib, the American poet, essayist and cultural critic, knows all about Anderson. “What I love about Kasey Anderson is what you will undoubtedly grow to love about Kasey Anderson as you sink into the world of this record. There is a world within “To the Places We Lived,” and the magic of that world is that it is already yours, in a spiritual sense, at least.”
Anderson is an unpretentious, alt-rock musician, who spent the forty minutes of his final record getting into the nitty gritty side of America while sprinkling in some philosophical musings along the way like toppings on a succulent honey-glazed doughnut. His time in Nashville is an account of the messy side of Music City where characters like John the Gambler gave him a piece of advice: You fooled ‘em for a while but it takes a thief to catch a thief and I don’t care where you go, boy, just get out of Tennessee. He ain’t going ‘Back to Nashville’ and in a gravelly voice repeats the refrain of the song’s title several times for maximum effect.
Anderson’s career includes a range of solo recordings and band efforts. His solo discography is: “Dead Roses” (2004), “Reckoning” (2007), “Nowhere Nights” (2010), “Daytrotter Sessions” (2021), and “To the Places We Lived” (2024). His work with The Honkies includes two records: “Heart of a Dog” (2011) and “Let the Bloody Moon Rise” (2012). Hawks & Doves did one record, “From a White Hotel” (2018). Anderson observes, “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 the record because it is a sort of spiritual sequel, I suppose. That’s my voice, those two records. That’s my life.”
As for his reasons for designating this his swan song, Anderson urges listeners to care less about the negativity he’s experienced through the exploitive impact of the music industry to his personal demons than hearing the joy and freedom he experienced making the album.
“I tell this story sometimes,” Anderson began, “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 (producer) 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 (guitarist with The Honkies) 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.”
In a manner reminiscent of Steve Earle, Anderson weaves memories and experiences into an album filled with stories that describe bleak landscapes brimming with snapshots of all he has encountered. His rootsy country-rock evokes a warm campfire on a crisp autumn night, where soulful stories crackle and pop against a backdrop of twinkling stars, blending the heart of the countryside with a spirit that bends but doesn’t break. A tale about the town of Ellensburg at the foot of the Cascade Range in Washington state takes up the difficulty of living as an outsider in an upscale arts community. Sunday nights you’d walk downtown, and stand in the circle with your arms held out, reaching for something to keep you around, it was working for a while but it ain’t working now.
Yet, even with putting a lid on a 20-year career, Anderson keeps finding new ways to explore the whys and hows of the path his life took pursuing a muse that stayed just out of reach, one that led to bouts of wild substance abuse and a stretch in the penitentiary for bilking investors out of hundreds of thousands through a non-existent benefit album for the West Memphis Three. In his defence, a person makes bad decisions when their brain is scrambled on drugs, He was released from prison sober and with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. The sordid mess is detailed in the title track of the Hawks & Doves album: And they sent me off to prison, for tellin’ half a million lies, and livin’ all around the world, on bread that wasn’t mine.
In the track ‘Paint It Gold’ on the new album, he could be working through the fall-out: You can’t sleep at night, been having bad dreams, is there poison in your mind? Is it as wicked as it seems? The fools stopped believing, everything they’d been told, and you can’t sell your silver, so you paint it gold. The album’s first track, ‘Believers,’ paints a clear picture of what his next step should be. Lately I’ve been learning how to live, the first time that we kissed, you took the poison from my mouth, now I thank God that I had something more to give you and me. An ending becomes a beginning, the summation found in ‘Start Again,’ where Anderson puts the past in the rear-view mirror: Somewhere up around the bend, we can start again.
That Anderson managed to come out unbroken is a testament to his belief in himself through the darkest of times. “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.” And move on to the next chapter.
To the Places We Lived by Kasey Anderson
