In SWT’s Sequential Listening series, we sit down with artists to examine their albums track by track, exactly as intended. We previously went in-depth with Chicago’s MV Wells and alt-rock band ME.
Today, we’re excited to revisit an artist longtime SWT readers will be very familiar with: Podge Lane. The Ireland-born, New York-based singer-songwriter is back with his new album Ebb And Flow And The Great Unknown. It’s his first album on vinyl, which we’re very excited about and have copies of our own.
“I’m a nerd for vinyl records, so finally getting my own album on vinyl is going to be amazing,” Lane told SWT during a recent Zoom interview.
You can purchase it here.
The album marks a literal, lyrical, and sonic return to Lane’s roots, as he wrote and recorded the album during a recent trip back to Ireland to see family. He didn’t intend to make a stripped-back, acoustic-leaning album, or any album for that matter, while he was there. But the songs felt urgent and needed to be recorded quickly.
While past releases featured songs with outward looking lyrics, the new release features his most personal to date. He drew much of his inspiration from his grandfather, a fisherman and storyteller, on the west coast of Ireland. You can hear his native country in the recordings as it was recorded live to tape in an old fishing shed. Traditional Irish folk songwriting meshes with modern Americana to create an engaging release.
Also adding the charm is that it’s purely live and unpolished. With Lane recording the songs live in the moment, the raw, spirited atmosphere of the recording sessions really shines through. There are mistakes and a false start or two, but we think it adds to the personal and vulnerable nature of the songs.
“I made this album with the idea of it later becoming something else. And when it was finished, I was just like, ‘Oh no, this is a story of where I am now.’ But it also feels like almost found footage in a way where it’s just like it’s a document that’s washed up on scene and you’re like, ‘Okay, I think I understand what he’s talking about in this,’” says Lane.
“It’s an amalgamation of all my favorite musical stylings that was recorded this way by accidents, just like all my favorite albums seemed to be for some reason.”
SWT caught up with Lane recently to discuss the album and do a deep dive into its tracklist.
For this new album, it sounds like you decided to take a much more stripped-back, back-to-basics approach to it. What led you towards that path?
I kind of saw myself going down this path. I think the first time we actually worked together was for Multiple Dead Ends, which was my third album. That was very maximalist. I wanted this album to feel big and to be all this. And when I came to America for the first time right after that album, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I was kind of traveling more, and so I had less equipment. So Less Of Me became more stripped back based on having less equipment. But then with this album, this wasn’t supposed to be an album. I was actually down in Kerry visiting my grandparents after we’d (Podge and his girlfriend) come back to Ireland. I was writing a completely different album that was going to go back then to a bit more maximalism. And I was just hanging out with my grandparents, and I was hanging out with family.
My parents were down there, and I just was writing these story songs and just wanted to get them down as quickly as possible. So recorded them all, just acoustic guitar and vocals because they all came within a one-week space. And in my mind, making it, I was like, “This is going to be demos for an album that’s coming at a later point.” And then about three songs in, I started listening back, and I was like, “Oh no, there’s a record here. There’s something to be told. These stories, I can’t see more instruments coming on it.” There are mistakes that certain lines I had written down a different way, but performed and was like, “I guess that’s the line now because that’s how it was recorded.” It was kind of more, while the last album was out of necessity, this one was completely out of accident.
I made this album with the idea of it later becoming something else. And when it was finished, I was just like, “Oh no, this is a story of where I am now.” But it also feels like almost found footage in a way where it’s just like it’s a document that’s washed up on scene and you’re like, “Okay, I think I understand what he’s talking about in this.” And that just gave me such a thrill because all my favorite records, even though I’m in folk music, punk music is something I look up to, and I look up to acts. Even though I know it’s not punk, but kind of the early White Stripes albums where it was like, “We’re not recording it this way because we like the sonics. We’re recording it this way because we have a set amount of time and we have to get this recording. Did we mess up the solo? Tough luck. This is the only way to get the album out this month.”
So that’s kind of where this came from. It’s an amalgamation of all my favorite musical stylings that was recorded this way by accidents, just like all my favorite albums seemed to be for some reason.
It seems like performing the song stripped back seemed like a natural next step for you.
Yeah, it felt like a next step because again, I’m a live performer, true and true. I love writing songs, and I love recording them, but my favorite thing is to take a song I’ve written and play it in front of an audience. So, with a lot of the records, I would play the songs out in front of people before recording. And with Less Of Me more than any of my albums, I played all the songs and fine-tuned them out in front of people. This was really different because no one other than my family who were there heard the songs before they were recorded. So, I didn’t get to have that feedback I usually have in the audience. I had to trust my gut in a lot of instances with these tracks. And I’m glad I did because there are lines in there that maybe if I got a second or third pass on them, I might change them.
But also, there was a free nature to not having a click track or a drum track where if I slowed down the tempo slightly, I didn’t have to start all over again. I got to keep the performance as is. There’s even the end of one of the songs, “The Coast”, is at the end, I just start doing this thing where I hit the chord. That was by accident because I literally hit the chord and my hands slipped. And I was just like, “I guess I’m doing an outro for this song now.” So, the last 15 seconds of that were me going, “Ah, this is just a demo. It’s just to show what’s going to happen later.” And now I’m looking at it being like, I would’ve never kept that in if I had editing tools.
(All credits and rights to Podge Lane)
Your last album was influenced by your travels in America, and this one goes back to your roots in Ireland. What prompted you to return to Ireland?
I was coming back to visit family anyways. I had just gotten engaged, and we were just like, “Let’s go back to Ireland, see family.” And we’d just done a year of travel and over 150 shows. So, I was like, “It will be nice to just hang out with family for a while.” And we did a little tour of Ireland where I was playing some small venues, some churches. I played my hometown for the first time ever, which I think might’ve also influenced this. With Less Of Me, I was looking at myself through other people, whereas this album was me looking at other people through myself. So, I was writing these story songs where they’re not about me, but at the same time I was getting out the feelings I was feeling, being home, seeing friends, seeing old friends.
And also, let’s be real, we all have this when we go back somewhere: seeing old people that I didn’t really get on with when I first went there, and seeing old friends and hearing stories about other people. I was kind of taking what I could and writing these songs. So, the first song, “Rising Tide”, is literally about me leaving Ireland. And I didn’t realize that until I finished writing it. I was writing it being like, this is going to be my Bruce Springsteen opening moment for this album. It’s going to be about “we have to get out of this place.” And then when I finished it, I was like, “Oh no, that one was about me. That’s a me song.” And there’s so many on it where I’m like, “Oh, this is completely fictional.” And then when we were mastering the album, I was like, “Oh, that’s what I was going through in 2024. That was what I was going through in 2025.”
So, I think being home and hearing other people’s stories kind of allows you to tell your own story as well. It’s like you’re much more comfortable talking to your family than you would be with a stranger. I think recording in a space near my family gave me that comfort that I allowed myself to just say what I had to say.
Many of the songs are focused on your family and the sea. What was it like visiting with your grandparents and realizing that connection between your grandfather and the sea?
Well, my grandfather, he’s 80 years old, and he’s a fisherman in Ireland. He’s been a fisherman his whole life. He grew up in a family of fishermen. But with that, we’ve always been close, me and my grandparents. And going down to visit them, I think it was because I had left for the first time; I wasn’t in Ireland, and I had gone out and done my own thing independently. There were a lot of stories he would tell me where I wouldn’t understand this. Not that I wouldn’t get it, I’d revere him, but I wouldn’t understand the stuff he had been through. Whereas leaving for the first time, I was like, “Oh, I get what you mean about this story.” Because he lived in America as well for a while. And when he came back, he had similar things. And being a fisherman in 2026 is very similar to being a musician in 2026, mainly that people are like, “That can’t be your real job. What do you do for money?”
It is one of those jobs where if you said that 40 years ago, people would kind of go, “Okay.” Whereas now it’s looked at differently. So, I kind of just saw similarities, and they never came really obviously. “God Amongst the Waves”, the fifth song of the album, that was the centerpiece that when I wrote that, I was kind of writing about him and listened back to it and really saw myself in some of the lines. I was like, “We’re both chasing something that people think doesn’t exist.” And my grandmother will always say that everyone needs something to be chasing. And she always would say, “Your grandfather has his fishing, and you have your music. You have to be passionate about what you do.” And writing that song, I kind of realized, oh, I do have that passion.
And no matter what happens in our industries, we’re still going, “This is what I want to do.” So, I loved seeing that connection between us, because he’s a storyteller. You could sit with him for two hours and he could just tell you about everything you want to listen. So, I tried to take as much of that as I could with these songs without having to give him a songwriting credit and just tell these stories and pay homage to him, but also figure out stuff to do with myself. Why am I doing this? Why am I still pushing myself for a career that is being thwarted by big tech and closing venues and all that kind of stuff, in the same way fishing trawlers and stuff like that are stopping his business? So, it was just a connection that I really didn’t see myself finding in this music because this isn’t where the album was supposed to go, but I’m so happy it did.
You recorded in a makeshift studio. Can you describe what that was like?
Yeah, absolutely. So, I recorded it all in a small shed in my family’s home, just like this small outdoor shed. It’s not like a garage where it would be connected to the house. It’s over in the side, and the roof is tin, and you can hear the rain when it’s raining. It was so much fun, but I’m used to recording in weird places, but I’m at least used to having a mic stand. I had brought down microphones to record demos, thinking it was just going to be demos, and had completely forgotten to bring mic stands. So, I have videos, and people don’t believe me until I showed the videos, but the album was recorded with two microphones: a condenser, and then we had a vocal Shure SM7B. But they were both taped to the sitting exercise bike. There was an old one of those in the shed, and I was like, I took it down and taped with Gorilla tape the microphones to it so they would stay in spots.
And that’s again what led to the album being so, “Okay, we have seven days to record it.” Not just because I wanted it to have the spontaneity, but because I needed to be able to get it all done before the next time it was raining and I’d have to take down the mics in case there was a leak. So, it was all taped and perfectly in place that I was just like, “Song’s going to have to be what it’s going to be.” So, it definitely added to the spontaneity of the writing and just being like the performance is what matters in the moment. But it also kind of made me go, “All right, I’m not going to be able to do cool mic edits or move the harmonica way in post because it’s going to be bled into the guitar.” So, there’s so many takes where I would be playing the guitar and then just crank my head back to do the harmonica.
So, it sounded like it was low. We couldn’t go, “Oh, the harmonica was too high. Let’s just turn it down.” We had to go, “You’re going to have to crank your neck back even further for this take than the last one. So, it was just kind of modern problems, modern solutions, trying to figure out what would work when you didn’t have a lot of equipment. And it made it more fun. It’s kind of like you can do a load of jigsaws, and you can get really good at doing jigsaws, and then you can do really big jigsaws. And then once you bring it back to a small jigsaw, you kind of figure out why you were doing it in the first place, just putting the pieces together and going, “Okay, this is all the equipment I have. I don’t have a load of things to do this. We can figure it out from here.”
And without further ado, our track-by-track discussion:
“Rising Tide”
The production side was very minimal for the whole thing, so it’ll probably be similar things I’ll say for each. But starting with the first song, “Rising Tide”, that one, the minute I started writing, I just had these chords, and I knew whatever it was going to be, it was going to be the opening for the album because I just started writing these. And this was around the time it was three songs in, I realized, “Oh, there’s an album here that I want to be stripped back.” So, I started writing these chords, and I had the harmonica start to it. And I was like, “This is an album opener. This is how you open an album.” And with me sometimes I can wait so long to come up with an idea for a song or I can find one line that just gets me everything.
And if it’s a good pun or if it’s a good, just a vocal phrase I haven’t heard before. And I was just playing those chords for an hour, and I just went, “I’m getting out before the getting’s getting any worse.” And the minute I said that, I was like, “Oh, cool, that’s the song.” I was like, “That’s such a cool line.” And from there I was like, “So this song is about leaving. It’s the Bruce Springsteen moment to open the album. It’s my “Thunder Road” on this one where I’m like, “We need to leave.” So, I was like, “Let’s write about the experiences of people nowadays because there’s so many jobs being lost in fishing, in tech, in music, in all these places where you’re like, “Is my job the only important thing to me in my life?” And I think with a lot of us, we can get trapped in that situation.
So, the song all came from the idea of a rising tide lifts all boats. I’m rising mine. Please let me float. Which is essentially just: I’m going to try to do something that makes me happy. And if I do, I’m going to pull everyone else I love to that same level. I’m going to try to help everyone, but you got to let me try first. And so that was the whole impetus for that song. And the minute I finished it, I was just like, “This is the way the album must open.” It was the most fun song to write and the absolute worst one to record. I don’t know why. It’s not a difficult song. The chords are some of the easiest on the album, and the lyrics aren’t necessarily too; other than the opening line, they’re not too complex.
There’s a two-hour cut of me. The final version is the version we use, and there’s two hours of me cursing, screaming, getting angry, recording this. And we showed it to my mom, who now refers to that person as “recording Podge”. She’s like, “Am I getting happy Podge or am I getting recording Podge right now?” So, it’s become a family joke now that they’re like, “Oh, so that’s what you’re like in the studio. You’re so angry.” So that was a good moment to share with them, but I have since deleted and set fire to all the other takes so no one else can hear me giving out and screaming at myself. And then the last take, literally I was like, “Are you ready?” And Rebecca, my fiancé, was outside and she was like, “Yep.” And I just kept that in because I was like, I needed a reminder of the feeling of frustration and then getting a full take done.
So that opens the album as kind of like a, “Okay, this is the album, we’re getting straight into it.”
(All credits and rights to Podge Lane)
“The Dregs”
So, the second song, “The Dregs”, that’s the only one where I had it started before we even got the idea for the album. I wrote the starting lyrics. I’m 90% sure I wrote the first verse two days after we did the interview for Less of Me, because I was sitting down in Savannah, Georgia. And I don’t know, again, lyrics can come from anywhere, but when I was like, “I can’t feel my legs, feels like I’m swimming in the dregs.” The minute I said dregs, I was like, “That’s really interesting because the dregs is basically the bottom of something. It’s just the leftover.” And the image of swimming in the dregs, you’re trying to pull yourself through something that’s physically…Imagine watching someone in a puddle trying to physically swim.
It’s frustration and all that. So, I kind of just had that lyric in my back pocket for a while. And when I wrote the first song for this record where I was like, “Ooh, there’s a water theme here, maybe I can make an album out of it.” I was like, “Ooh, take this from my back pocket.” And that song probably came the easiest. It took maybe 15 minutes to write, and it took maybe an hour to record because I was just like, “I know what this is. This is the low moment. This is the rock bottom of the album. This is the person who’s just under so much stress and in such a tough position that he just needs to try.” Because “Rising Tide” is them leaving, and then “The Dregs” is remembering the moment that led to the leaving.
So, it was just the minute I had it done, I was like, “This is the first single. This is perfect to introduce people to this sound because it is very that modern folk singer sound.” And I was just so proud of that harmonic opening that I was like, “This has to come out first as like, Hey, I’m doing a fully acoustic album. This is your first taste. This will tell you what the album will be.” But that song was, I have the least amount of notes on recording because it came so quickly.
(All credits and rights to Podge Lane)
“The Coast”
The third song, “The Coast”, that’s the first song where I don’t see a lot of myself in it. When I’m making an album, if I’m trying to cover a theme, I do like to study a bit. I am a nerd. I was always a nerd in school because I love music to a fault, and I love learning about the history of it. So, with that, I was looking at old folk albums, and I was listening to modern ones like Zach Bryan and Sam Barber, people like that. And I realized that something I don’t hit a lot is the lost-love kind of situations. I was like, “If I’m making an album about water, there’s so many songs where it’s like one person looking at the water being like, ‘I miss this person.’” But I wanted to give my own twist to it, which is why this song’s kind of two self-destructive people who want different things in life and lose themselves from it.
It’s one guy who’s desperate to get to the water. It’s this other person who has always grown up near the water. And by the end of the song, the first person is a hundred miles away from the coast. So, it’s just showing how you can lose who you are in a relationship if you’re not a hundred percent and honest with yourself. But that song, I was really proud of the kind of lyrics because they were so away from who I am as a person. And when I went to record, I was like, “This song will be really good, really fun.” And like I said earlier, when I got to the end bit of it, I hit a chord, and my hand moved or whatever, and I palm-muted. And then I just created this exit bit for it where I’m just kind of playing guitar very unlike what I would normally do.
And this is my only rockstar moment of the whole recording of this album. But when I finished, I hit the last chord, saw recording was done, looked at my hand, and I was bleeding all down my hand because I was pulling at this chord. I had just cut open my finger. And I was just like, “I really hope this sounds good because I want to leave in the song where I had my hand covered in blood because that’s a really cool moment for me.” And luckily, I was so proud of how it sounded. And there were a couple of moments in it where I’m like, “Oh, that line went a bit flat or that thing needs to be done again.” And I tried six more takes, and I was like, “No, it has to be that one because that one got the energy exactly like I wanted it.” So that’s what I mean about the spontaneity of recording live. You get a sound that you’re not going to get if you have time to edit.
“Bleed Out Spot”
And then the final song of side A on the vinyl is “Bleed Out Spot”. It’s very funny to be making an album that’s very steeped in folk tradition and steeped in the ideas of old mythology and Ireland and stuff like that. And then to tell you that this song was completely based on TikTok. So, there was a trend on TikTok a couple of months ago, I’m not sure if you saw it, but it was people playing ’90s rock music in front of really picturesque scenes and being like, “This is a 10 out of 10 bleed out spot.” So basically in a movie when the action hero is like, “Oh my God, this is my last breath.” And they’re looking out at a beautiful sunset, and you just watch their eyes fade.
There were people doing that trend, and they were just calling it a 10 out of 10 bleed-out spot. And I was just scrolling through that. And I don’t like to be. I really find myself doom-scrolling a lot of the time. So, I try to, if I’m going to go online, I have to get something out of it. So, when I started going to them, I was like, “All right, I’m going to watch these 10 out of 10 bleed-out spot videos, but I’m going to mute them, and I’m going to turn off the music that’s on them, and I’m going to write a song based on them.” I just made up this character that’s kind of sitting by the ocean and being like, “Well, this is my final hours. Life is ending, but there’s some stuff I regret, and there’s some stuff I love.” And it’s quite funny that I made an album two albums ago, which is all centered around death and my fear of death and fear of aging.
And then this song came so naturally, and I was like, “Oh, this said everything I said in that album, but more mature.” So, it felt like a partner piece of that, but also was just a story sign about this old worn-out cowboy sitting by the ocean. And that one, that’s where whatever “Rising Tide” was the hardest song, and it was the opener to side A. This is the final song on side A. And second take, I was like, “Oh, that’s it. It’s perfectly done.” I just loved the way it sounded, the lyrics and everything like that. And I was like, “Yeah, that’s definitely the end to that side.”
“God Amongst The Waves”
So, then we get to side B, which starts on “God Amongst the Waves”, that’s kind of the cornerstone of the album. It’s not the song that made me want to make the album; that’s coming later.
But it was the song where I went, “Okay, if I’m going to make an album about the ocean, there has to be a song about my grandfather and his relationship with the ocean.” And now there are some characters mixed into it, but really what it is is we’re all looking for something, and we’re looking for hope in the world, and as a musician or as a fisherman or as someone in a world that’s got a lot of turmoil, it’s got a lot of stuff going wrong, you have to believe in something. And I don’t know, have you ever watched Community, the TV show? There’s a great scene in it, and I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about it so much, where Dean Craig Pelton does an improv rap, and when he finishes the rap, he drops the microphone, and he is like, “I don’t know what that was. I don’t know what that was.”
That’s how I felt with that song because I didn’t write a single word down. I literally started playing the chords, and I was like, “I found God amongst the waves, and then I just found the devil in the detail.” And I recorded the first take, which I think there’s only two lines that I changed in the whole thing. But the minute I finished it, I just looked at Rebecca, and I was like, “I don’t know what that was. I don’t know what that was.” And I was like, “That’s a perfect song.” So, I changed those two lyrics, went in to record it, and it’s the only time this has ever happened, and I can’t believe I’m giving him credit because he’ll be so happy about this. But I don’t usually get feedback on my songs.
But when I finished this song, I recorded it with a harmonica solo in the middle, and I took it into my family. My parents were down as well, and they all listened to it, and they were all so emotional about it. They were like, “This is stunning. This is beautiful.” And they looked at my dad, and they were like, “What do you think?” And he was like, “Get rid of the harmonica.” And I was like, “My family has no musical input.” No one plays. My grandfather played a bit of accordion, but none of them are musicians. They’ve never written or anything like that. And my dad was like, “There’s no need for harmonica in this.” He was like, “You know that plucky thing you do sometimes that’s really cool. That sounds like a couple of guitars? Do that instead.” And I remember just being in the room being like, “What are you talking about? You’re not a musician.” And I went into the shed, and again, Recording Podge came out.
I was really angry. I was like, “Fine, I’ll do one more take.” And I recorded it, and I was like, “Oh, I’m just going to improv a guitar bit for the middle part.” And then I listened back and the whole time I’m listening back, I’m like, “Oh no, he’s right.” And when I showed it to him again, he just had the biggest smile of like, “I told you.” And I was like, ” Oh no, he’s right.” Because there’s no one worse in my family to be right than him, because he doesn’t even gloat about it. He’s just like, “I told you.” And you’re like, “That’s worse.” So, the solo in that can be completely traced back to my dad. But I’m really proud of that song.
“The Sea!”
The next song was “The Sea!”, and that one has the least amount of story, basically. While I was coming up with the album, I started reading poetry just to get inspiration. And there was this poem called “The Sea” by Barry Cornwall. I was reading it a lot, and I found a lot of myself in that because my grandfather’s a fisherman. I grew up in this town. I lived here when I was a small kid, so I feel such connection to it. And this poem is about a sailor, someone who’s looking for this thing, but has grown up all the time near the sea. And I was like, “This is a beautiful poem.” And I had a guitar line, which I’ve had since Multiple Dead Ends, that I was just like, “Didn’t fit on Multiple Dead Ends.” Then I tried to write something over on Less Of Me, and I was like, “I can’t write any lyrics over it.” It was the first time in so long that I couldn’t write lyrics over something.
And I was just playing it one day, and I was reading the poem, and I just started singing the poem over it. And literally 15 minutes took me to get all the lyrics to fit inside the melody, and then I recorded. So that’s a collaboration between me and an 1800s poet, which I never thought would happen, and gives a cool different side to the album.
“The Great Northern Diver”
Then “Great Northern Diver”, that’s actually the first song I wrote for this album because I was down making the demos and I went out, my grandfather was like, “I’m going out on the boat. Do you want to come?” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” And Rebecca, my fiancé, came out as well, and she was like, “Oh, you should bring your guitar, get some photos out on the boat.” And I was like, “Oh, that sounds cool. Press photos are always good when you can get them.” We went out on the boat anyways, and we were just kind of sailing around.
It’s just a little old boat, and we were just going through the water. And my grandfather is a better storyteller than me. I’ve always said that if he learned acoustic guitar, I’d be screwed. I’d be out of a job because he’d be the most famous of our family. But he’s a great storyteller. And we were just sitting there, and this bird came by, which is called The Loom [aka loon] in Ireland, but it’s called the Great Northern Diver in America, in the US, in Canada, and in Greenland. But he just started telling me the story of this bird. And he was like, “It goes to the US, and then it goes back to Ireland and takes its time going between both.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of like what I’m doing right now with being back.” And he was just telling me facts about the bird, and I was sitting there playing the guitar.
And as a joke, I just started singing what he was saying. All the story stuff that he was saying, I just started singing, and he was getting a good kick out of it. And about five minutes later, we got back to land, and we went to see my grandmother, and I was like, “Oh, I wrote this song.” And I showed both of them the song. And they were like, “How did you write that on the boat while he was talking?” I was like, “I just got the idea for it.” And their reaction to that made me go, “What if I did do something to do with the water?” And that was the impetus for the whole album. So, before I knew what I was doing, that song came. And it’s very funny because usually with an album, you get the big centerpiece song like a “God Amongst The Waves”, and that starts you off.
This is a one-minute and 45-second song about a bird. And I was so happy to get it. I went into the shed to record it. I messed up the first line and then went again. I was just like, “I need to keep that as a reminder of how much fun it was playing the song for them the first time.” So, I literally started by going, “dun, doom, do the oceans. The water’s getting high.” And I just left it in because I was like, I need to remind myself of the joy of music and the laughter that we had making this song. So that was where the whole album came from.
“Sea Of Crowded Faces”
And then finally, it’s kind of funny that that’s the first song that was written for it because the next song is the last song that I wrote for it because I thought this album was going to be a seven-song album.
And when I was hanging out with my family, I realized I had to go back to America for some shows. So, I was actually going to be away from my fiancé for three months. And I love her. She’s the most amazing person on earth. And we were just kind of sitting down talking about it and we were like, “Yeah, this sucks.” And I was like, “I’m just going to write a song for you.” And she was like, “What?” I was like, “Yeah.” And I started writing this, and it was the day before we left to go back on tour. And I was like, “Oh no, this has to go on the album.’ It’s “Sea of Crowded Faces”. The lyrics were just about her. This was kind of the most America-focused one because it was about us being in America, us getting engaged, the travels we did from Savannah to New York, and me being like, “Look, I’m going to be gone for three months, but it doesn’t matter how many people are in New York. I can’t wait to see you again. Your smile, I can always place it even in a sea of crowded faces.”
And literally the day before we left, ran into the shed to record it, did three takes, and didn’t realize the gain was up a bit higher than normal. So, when we went to listen back to it, I was like, “Oh, it’s a little bit distorted and a little bit fuzzy.” And I was like, “That’s just how it has to be left because this is the final song on the album, and we don’t get another take of this. This is my reminder that I’m coming back, basically.” So, I kind of love the fact that it almost sounds like the album is starting to get waterlogged. Like I said, it feels like a piece of something that you took from the ocean. So that last song was me going, okay, you’ve heard the whole story, and we just made it.
The album’s just about to get soaked, but we just made it to the end. So having her be the only other voice you hear on the album, that start when I’m ready, and she’s like, “Yeah.” And then for the last song to be about her was kind of just perfect symmetry. I was like, “Yep, that’s the album.”
What are your future plans?
Well, I’m going back to Ireland now to promote the album, which I’m very excited for. We’re going to be doing some shows in small seaside towns. We’re going to be doing it in intimate pubs and small venues just around Ireland. And I’m really happy to say I’m partnering with Anthem Vinyl in Ireland who will be releasing this album on vinyl record, which this is my first album on vinyl. And it just felt like the one that needed to be on record for people because it’s so steeped in folk tradition. It’s so steeped by the influencers like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Conor Oberst. They were all artists that I was looking to while creating this. So, I’m very happy that we’ll be bringing that out on vinyl. September 11th, the album comes out, we’ll be touring it in Ireland for about two and a half months.
And then later in the year we’ll be announcing the U.S. tour for Ebb and Flow, which will be going on for all of next year as well. And knowing me, there’ll be some more albums in between that, because I think if I give myself more than 13 months without releasing an album, I might spontaneously combust. But I feel like at this point there’s a timer on me at all points, but I’m just happy to be touring this around the place now.
You can connect with Podge Lane at the links below:
- Website: Podgelane.com
- Instagram: Instagram.com/podgelanemusic
- Facebook: Facebook.com/PodgeLaneMusic
- YouTube: Podge Lane on YouTube
- Bandcamp: Podgelane.bandcamp.com
- Apple Music: Podge Lane on Apple Music
- Spotify: Podge Lane on Spotify
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
