We are always working on new songs – writing, developing, trying them out, playing them live, seeing how they land with an audience. Since our 2022 album ‘What We Call Forever’ was released, we have been gathering songs for our follow-up record. This cycle seems to take a couple years which feels right – not too rushed.

Starting early in 2024 we gathered made a list of songs already complete, those in process, and others fully on the drawing board, and started to work on them more intensely. We were approached by friend and veteran songwriter/performer Deborah Holland produce the record. 

Pre-production rehearsals in February lead to a three-day session at Vancouver’s Rain City Recorders (engineered by the talented Emily Ryan) to record ‘bed tracks’ (drums, bass, rhythm guitars) for 11 new original songs. Over the spring and summer, our bassist Mark Henning – also a deeply-experienced recording engineer – lead the recording of vocals and instrument parts (violin, mandolin, banjo, more guitars, percussion, keyboard/piano parts) at our own home studio (Boutique Empire). After that, Mark mixed the record (an artform in itself) and each song was mastered (a finish engineering process) by the aforementioned Emily Ryan. 

We are very pleased to tell everyone our new 11-song record is finished. It will be released in March 2025 and will be titled Creatures of Habit. As for our What We Call Forever, our drummer Matt Brain is completing the cover artwork. The record will be posted to streaming services but – given the dismal compensation artists receive from streaming! – it will also be available for purchase (download and CD) via headlonghearts1.bandcamp.com.