I was driving to a New Years Eve show in Alpine, Texas, thinking about what I wanted to do with the record that I was about to record two weeks into 2011 (the album that is hopefully now bouncing off of your eardrums). As the last sun of 2010 was making its way across the sky during my seven-hour drive I hatched a plan: I would write a novel. Now, I realize the term "novel" can sound pretty pretentious, so if it makes you feel any more comfortable, we can call it a book. It was the first word that popped into my head, however, so I'll stick with that for lack of a better one. I've done quite a bit of freelance writing in the past—things like biographies for other musicians and articles for BMI's trade magazine MusicWorld—but I've never attempted anything in long form. I knew that if I was going to do this it couldn't just be a passion project. I knew it had to somehow support what it is that I do best, which is writing songs and recording them.

So, with that thought in mind, and after recording what is in my opinion my strongest record by several miles, I sat down to write. Three months later I finished it.

Here's how it plays out, in the shortest explanation that I can muster:

Dan Murphy is a fictional songwriter. He heads out for a three-week tour of the west. You see the world through his eyes, hear it with his ears, experience it by way of his touch, taste, and feel. He picks up little bits of inspiration on his journey, and after every five or six chapters in the book you get to see what the songwriter has made of these inspirational nuggets through his craft in the form of the lyrics of a song. There are ten songs in this book. They are the same ten songs on the record. It will be released on the same day as (and shares the same title of) the album, and it will be available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.