No Depression Sessions at AMERICANAFEST 2024: Lee DeWyze

Singer-songwriter Lee DeWyze joined us on the back porch of Jaan’s House to kickoff the No Depression Sessions at AMERICANAFEST ’24, sharing four songs including the title track from his new album Gone For Days. The album is deeply influenced by the natural beauty and small town vibe of Bristol TN/VA, where DeWyze wrote and recorded most of the album. We decided that sunset on Jaan’s porch, sitting on the boundary between the relative civilization of Nashville and the wilderness of Harpeth River State Park beyond, would be the perfect setting to host DeWyze singing, “I found myself on the forest line, where the trail wanders off and the sunlight dies…I made music with the creatures and the wildlife.”

My audio engineer partner Juan Soria and I had coincidentally just wrapped a series of field recording sessions at the 2024 Bristol Rhythm & Roots Festival in Bristol, TN/VA the day before we met DeWyze in Nashville for this No Depression Session. While we were in Bristol, Juan and I recorded with cellist Dave Eggar, a catalyst for the East Tennessee creative community who composed the string arrangements on Gone For Days. When DeWyze played Bristol Rhythm & Roots in 2023, he gelled naturally with Eggar and other local musicians, and quickly decided to come back to Bristol a few months later to write and record Gone For Days.

In early 2024, DeWyze sat and wrote songs on the front porch of a creaky old house he’d rented in Bristol, across the street from a funeral home. With the distractions of Los Angeles out of the way, he was able to draw inspiration from his surroundings and pour them into the new album. When it came time to record, it made sense to twiddle the knobs at Classic Recording Studios in Bristol, VA/TN along with Eggar, Brooklyn-raised guitarist and Bristol transplant Phil Faconti, Bristol native mandolinist Blake Collins, Union Station member Barry Bales and alumnus Tim Stafford, along with at least a dozen more heavy hitters.

Please enjoy Lee’s solo acoustic performance of music from Gone For Days in this No Depression Session, and stay tuned for more than a dozen No Depression x AMERICANAFEST ’24 sessions in the pipeline.

Setlist:
“All Is Well”
“Devil”
“Wither”
“Gone for Days”