Revered Austin, TX singer-songwriter Darden Smith has shared the official music video for “Miles Between,” the latest single from Smith’s forthcoming album Western Skies, due March 25. The song was co-written with country star Jack Ingram, who recently welcomed Smith on The Jackin’ Around Show which is now available to watch/stream today.
Comprising a new studio record, a book of photography, lyrics, and essays, Western Skies is an immersive journey through a world both real and imagined, inspired by the west Texas landscape. Its visually striking companion book will be available to purchase on March 5. Pre-order the Western Skies album HERE, and the book HERE.
Watch the “Miles Between” Music Video HERE
“Jack and I have known each other for years, written songs together, spent hours talking. He’s the real deal,” says Smith. “The day we wrote this song, I was trying to think about his life and write the song from his perspective, but it wound up being as much about me as him. Sometimes that’s the way it is with songs. And though I didn’t know it at the time, when we wrote this one, it was really the beginning of Western Skies."
As showcased on “Miles Between” and lead single “Running Out of Time,” which quickly racked up over 200K views on YouTube, the songs on Western Skies are spare and deliberate, often marked by a distinct sense of motion and transience. The performances are similarly raw and intimate, reflecting the desolate beauty of the region that so captured Smith’s imagination as he crisscrossed it time and again.
It was those drives—a series of solo odysseys from Austin to southern Arizona and back—that would spark the entire Western Skies project. Born out of necessity, the trips began in early 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic made air travel a risky proposition and Smith needed to get himself across nearly 1,000 miles of flatlands and desert for writing projects with veterans through his SongwritingWith:Soldiers program, which he co-founded.
With a clear vision of Western Skies burning in his brain, Smith assembled an all-star band—guitarist Charlie Sexton (Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello), drummer Ramy Antoun (Seal, Pat Benatar), bassist Glen Fukunaga (Robert Plant, Shawn Colvin), and pedal steel guitarist Ricky Ray Jackson (Steve Earle, Phosphorescent)—to help flesh out his solo recordings, capturing the rest of the music back in Austin in a matter of days with the help of co-producers Michael Ramos and Stewart Lerman. With the basic tracking completed, Smith then dubbed much of his own harmonies along with help from acclaimed songwriter James House (“Ain’t That Lonely Yet,” “This Is Me Missing You”), who contributed additional vocals from Nashville.
“I showed everybody my photos and explained the vibe to them and they just got it immediately,” says Smith. “I kept telling them ‘Open and empty, open and empty.’” That spacious sound, at times reminiscent of Neil Young or JJ Cale, permeates the record, which finds Smith playing more piano than ever before.
Smith’s photographs document the moment through his eyes: stark, black and white, devoid of people, often with the straight line of the horizon looming somewhere in the distance. His essays, meanwhile, tap into something deeper about the American experience and our relationship with the West, locating “narrative gems hidden in plain sight,” as Rodney Crowell puts it in the book’s foreword. Written with rhythm and melody and line breaks that feel more like poetry than prose, the pieces can at times evoke Steinbeck or McCarthy, recognizing our smallness in the face of the geography and geology and mythology of a land that will go on existing long after humanity’s reign has ceased.
Read more about the project at Darden Smith’s website: https://www.dardensmith.com/bio/
Western Skies Tracklist:
1. Miles Between
2. Running Out Of Time
3. Western Skies
4. I Can’t Explain
5. Not Tomorrow Yet
6. Turn The Other Cheek
7. Perfect For A Little While
8. The High Road
9. Los Angeles
10. I Don’t Want To Dream Anymore
11. Hummingbird
Tour Dates:
March 5 - Houston, TX @ Red Bud Gallery
March 16 - Austin, TX @ Lucy’s Fried Chicken
April 1 - Houston, TX @ The Mucky Duck
April 2 - Austin, TX @ Stateside At The Paramount
April 8 - San Antonio, TX @ Sam’s Burger Joint
April 9 - Fort Worth, TX @ The Post
May 3 - Austin, TX @ The Saxon Pub
May 11 - Austin, TX @ Chez Zee (Texas Author Series)
May 13 - La Grange, TX @ Bugle Boy
May 14 - Austin, TX @ Wyldwood Shows
May 15 - New Braunfels, TX @ Red Bird Listening Room (Early Show)
May 27 - Galveston, TX @ The Old Quarter
May 28 - Waring, TX @ The Church at Waring
June 4 - Kerrville, TX @ The Kerrville Folk Festival
June 7 - Austin, TX @ Saxon Pub
