Dave in his newsletter:
"Tim and I were inspired by Taylor Swift's ferocity in re-recording her past work to retain control of her intellectual property, but I didn't have a whole lot of interest in re-recording Keep Your Heart, Build & Burn, Distractions and the self-titled EP in the same fashion they already existed. Those are well recorded snapshots of where we were at the time, and you can always go back to those if they've made their way into your life. I wanted to give those old songs a new life, and record them in a way that allowed the songs to shine on their own, played in a way that felt like a new, more intimate offering. I also wanted to organize the songs differently after I noticed three major lyrical themes that emerged when I re-examined the work. The songs on Versus are all borne of struggle, and involve the three classic forms of conflict in literature; "man against man", "man against nature", and "man against self". ...
We started this project at the start of 2022 when the Omicron variant forced us to postpone our European tour for the third time, and Tim and I wanted to stay productive in the unexpected downtime. Plus, we love coming to Nashville to record with Will Hoge and David Axelrod. We did the principle tracking of all 30 songs in about 5 days in Nashville, and then added various other elements to the songs along the way.
Eighteen or so months later, we present the first twelve songs of our efforts:
Versus "
Versus red vinyl is limited to 1000 copies
expected to be released in November 2023
a purchase comes with a digital download
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I'm gonna chase the mermaid and let her take me to the deep