Ghost Songs by Jeremy Warden

From Jeremy:

“Ghost Songs” is, as you might have guessed, about feeling like a ghost, and in some ways they are like little ghosts to me. For 3 years now I never really knew what would become of them, if anything. But here they are now, fully realized and staring back at me just like a photograph you had maybe hoped to forget… or a ghost. I wrote these songs in the summer of 2017 while everything around me from my relationship to the nation felt like it was being ripped away. Looking back I now know I was hitting an emotional wall or turning point. The sort of bottom people say you need to hit before you get better. And in the chaotic fog of my depression I held onto my guitar, and these humble songs whispered their way into my room to help me cope.

I had wanted to work with Holly Hansen (Zoo Animal) for a long time at this point, and although we’d collaborated in some small ways, a start to finish project was my goal. So that Fall I reached out to pitch her this “country EP”. She had been stepping further into the world of producing, and so sure enough come spring we gathered in the studio for two relaxing afternoons having fun recording acoustic guitars and rain, singing, and drinking coffee. And then - we stopped. Like that photograph, we set the songs in a box and went on with our lives. We were two hard working musicians with very full calendars! This small batch of frightened melodies with no plans and nowhere to go simply couldn’t keep up with us that year.

Or most of the next year either.

But Holly kept hard at work, and now had her own studio, Salon. So come Fall of 2019 she reached out about finishing what we started. I had also been hard at work, largely on myself, and although the thought of revisiting these old ghosts initially gave me pause and brought back awkward fears, I decided that because they had helped me once, perhaps they could return to help someone else. So we laid out what was salvageable from that long gone spring day, and enlisted our extremely talented and kind friend Zack Warpinski to play what instruments remained to be tracked (a remarkable feat to witness). We left Holly, the new caretaker of the ghosts, to work her magic, and I am very happy to share what we all made.

My name is Jeremy Warden, I am a musician from Minnesota. Sometimes my "solo" music lives here, enjoy!