A couple weeks ago I waxed ecstatic about Steve Hindalong and his new solo album The Warbler. This week I’m going to do the same for his longtime partner in crime, Derri Daugherty. Not to be outdone, Daugherty has three new albums out this week, and they’re all wonderful.

I’ve been in love with Daugherty’s voice since I first heard it at age 16. I’ve mentioned the Choir’s phenomenal Circle Slide so many times in this space, but it all comes back to that album for me. I bought it on a whim, and my life has never been the same. The first thing you hear when you cue up Circle Slide is a quick Hindalong drum roll, and then Daugherty’s guitar just fills up whatever room you’re in. It’s thick and dripping with reverb and impossibly huge. And then his voice comes in, clear and high and dreamy. “Imagine one perfect circle above the stratosphere…” That’s literally all it took.

And over the next 26 years, Daugherty has remained one of my favorite singers and guitar players. The Choir has made 14 albums, and there isn’t a catalog in modern music I like more than I like this one. Daugherty has given us two solo projects, joined fellow spiritual pop luminaries in the Lost Dogs for ten records, and recently started a side project called Kerosene Halo with guitar god Mike Roe of the 77s. There’s a lot of Derri Daugherty material out there, is what I’m saying, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend virtually all of it.

And that absolutely holds true for his three new releases, all of which are out on Lo-Fidelity Records, run by my friend Jeffrey Kotthoff. The first two resurrect Kerosene Halo, Daugherty’s traditional country-pop duo with Mike Roe. The new full-length Kerosene Halo album is called House on Fire, and was funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign. The first Kerosene Halo record was a quiet acoustic affair, full of beautiful covers. (Hearing Daugherty and Roe sing Tom Waits’ “The Bottom of the World” and Richard Thompson’s “The Dawning of the Day,” though? Amazing.) This one is almost entirely original tunes, and it features a full band, including the great Phil Madeira on guitar.

The difference is immediately striking. House on Fire is rich and full, like a great Buddy Miller album. It’s soaked in traditional country, with glorious harmonies and fiddles and mandolins, but it also sounds right now, vital and lively. Before the Lost Dogs, I never thought Daugherty’s voice would fit this kind of material, but it does brilliantly – his high tenor complements Roe’s darker, lower tones, and when they sing together it warms my little heart. Old-school songs like “Hear That Whistle Cry” sit next to pop wonderamas like Hindalong’s “Sweet Girl” and louder, swampy numbers like “Bring It On.” (I’m a huge fan of the moments when Roe and Daugherty sing sweetly over abrasive, charged music. There’s something about the contrast that kills me.)

There are two songs here that might be familiar. First is “Beautiful Girl,” which the Choir recorded as a bonus track on their last album Shadow Weaver. This version suits the song a lot more, giving it an acoustic lilt and some swell pedal steel accents. It works as a heartland love song. The other is a gorgeous cover of Steve Earle’s “Every Part of Me” – Roe sings it from the heart. “I can’t promise anything except that my last breath will bear your name…” The other cover is more obscure: Chris Taylor’s “Goodnight Goodnight,” from his 2014 album Daylight. (Taylor’s another of those undeservedly obscure songwriters, and I’ll talk more about him in a week or two.)

It’s the originals here that really make it, though, particularly those co-written by Madeira. I’m especially fond of “Come On Out,” a classic tale of old west spirituality that sounds like the Firefly score, and is perfect for Mike Roe. My favorite may well be “The Ghost of Johnny Cash,” which was previously recorded by Shawn Mullins. It’s similar – lots of fiddles, sung by Roe – but it’s deeper somehow, more meaningful. Roe sings of a trip through hell, and the guide bringing him through: “Sitting in the stern singing hymns and talking trash is my broken guardian angel, the ghost of Johnny Cash…” It’s dark and hopeful and mesmerizing. “He’s still flipping off the Pharisees and laughing at Ol’ Scratch, and he haunts the halls of Heaven, the ghost of Johnny Cash…”

I’m beyond happy with House on Fire – it was worth the wait and then some. But the band didn’t stop there. One of their Kickstarter reward levels allowed funders to choose songs for them to cover, and they’ve compiled those covers on an entirely separate album called Live Simple. Roe and the 77s did the same thing a couple years ago on an album called Gimme a Kickstart and a Phrase or Two, and that was terrific. Live Simple isn’t as vast, but it’s easily as lovely. It’s mostly Roe and Daugherty and a couple acoustic guitars, going full Everly Brothers.

As usual in these situations, there are some fascinating choices and some perplexing ones. Among my favorites are a moody version of Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Bring On the Dancing Horses” and a strange yet winning take on “Bendy Line,” a song on the Prayer Chain’s unjustly obscure album Mercury. I couldn’t imagine the Kerosene Halo versions of these songs before I heard them, but now they make perfect sense. I also love what they did with Future of Forestry’s “If You Find Her” and Ryan Adams’ “La Cienega Just Smiled.”

I’m not sure I needed another version of Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly” or the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and closer “That’s Where Jesus Is” seems particularly strange considering it’s a Lost Dogs tune, so we’ve heard Roe and Daugherty sing it before. But I’ll definitely praise their take on T-Bone Burnett’s “River of Love,” and when Roe cranks up the electric guitars on a stonking version of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” it’s a nice surprise. Live Simple is more like the first Kerosene Halo album, all covers and all performed by Roe and Daugherty, and it’s a delightful little bonus to the main record.

Speaking of bonuses, we have my hands-down favorite of the three. While finishing up House on Fire, Daugherty recorded a whole new solo album called Hush Sorrow. He kept it under wraps, as did everyone he worked with – my good friend Jeff Elbel, who produced parts of it and played on other parts, didn’t breathe a word of it to me. It was a complete surprise, and a wonderfully welcome one. Hush Sorrow combines three ambient instrumentals with seven glorious covers, all soaked in reverb and led by Daugherty’s heart-melting voice.

More covers, I hear you cry? But these work to a theme, and together they are remarkably moving. Hush Sorrow is about dealing with loss and finding solace in spirituality. It opens (after the first instrumental) with one of the most stunning things I’ve heard this year: Daugherty’s cover of “All the Right Reasons,” by the Jayhawks. It’s nothing like the country-folk of Kerosene Halo – this (and all of Hush Sorrow) incorporates Daugherty’s trademark ambient, floaty guitar, and it sounds like it’s levitating six inches off the ground, weightless. And yet, it packs an emotional wallop.

Throughout this album, Daugherty chooses songs about rising up through pain, dealing with misery, leaving burdens in the hands of God. The title track is a Buddy and Julie Miller song, from the album Written in Chalk, and it’s about silencing dark feelings. Daugherty sings it with grace, and he brings that same grace to “I Still Believe,” an anthem originally by the Call. That may be my favorite thing here, but then it might be the version of Richard Thompson’s “Withered and Died,” or the plaintive plea that is Mary Gauthier’s “Mercy Now.”

Hush Sorrow gets a lot of mileage on its cumulative effect, and on the fact that it’s Derri Daugherty playing and singing these wonderful songs. I’m not sure what inspired this, or how it came to be, but I’m incredibly grateful that it exists. Daugherty is working on another full solo album now for release next year, and given that he made Hush Sorrow quickly and it’s this good, I can’t wait for the real deal. Derri Daugherty remains one of my very favorite singers and players. I like a lot of music, but for more than two decades, Daugherty has made the music I most want to hear, the music that speaks to me most, and I feel very lucky to have found him.

You can buy all of these records from Lo-Fidelity here. As a small note here at the end, you’ll also find a brand new live album from Mike Roe called Gothic at that link, and it’s also fantastic. It documents a night with a crack band in Denver in 2001, which was preceded by exactly no rehearsal. It’s loose and fun and shows what a great guitar player Roe is. There are three new studio tracks (two covers, one original) at the end, too. I’d recommend it, along with all the Mike Roe and 77s material you find on sale from Lo-Fidelity.

And I should probably mention that the Choir, Derri Daugherty’s main band, has just released their definitive live album and DVD, called Live and On the Wing in Music City. I’ve seen a lot of Choir shows, and this is a very good one. If you want a quick way to find out what I’ve been talking about all these years, you could do worse. Buy it from the Choir site here.

Next week, the legendary Peter Garrett returns from exile. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s genuinely difficult to pick a favorite member of Nickel Creek.

Chris Thile is a once-in-a-generation musician, of course, able to do things on a mandolin that even the creators of the instrument couldn’t have foreseen. His band Punch Brothers is one of the most impressive collectives of progressive-minded bluegrass players ever assembled. You’d think he would be the easy favorite, but no. The Watkins siblings, Sean and Sara, may not be as supernaturally talented, but they are superb songwriters, players and singers, and their individual takes on the style of bluegrass-folk-pop that Nickel Creek traffics in are refreshing, shorn of some of the off-putting complexities of Thile’s work.

Both Sean and Sara Watkins have released solo albums this year, and both of those albums are splendid, while being markedly different from one another. Sean Watkins’ dark and brooding What to Fear is his best, a moody affair about liars and philanderers and the state of the country. Now here is Sara Watkins with her third solo effort, Young in All the Wrong Ways, and it’s bold and ambitious and hopeful, even when it’s angry. It’s an album that effortlessly straddles all the different types of music Watkins has made in her career, melding them into a vision of pop music that is thoroughly organic.

Within the first three songs, in fact, Watkins jumps from the loud electric explosion of the title track to the slow and peaceful “The Love That Got Away” to the more bluegrass-inflected “One Last Time,” and remarkable as it may seem, all three share space on this record with ease. “Move Me,” the soaring first single, is a gloriously loud pop tune, and Watkins’ voice is passionate and strong. “I want you to move me, but you just keep the peace…” It’s an awesome song, a true standout here, and yet it fits nicely between “One Last Time” and the quiet, simple “Like New Year’s Day.”

Watkins sounds comfortable, even energized, by the different types of music she tackles here. Perhaps her finest moment is “Say So,” a song co-written by the great Dan Wilson. It’s one of the poppier songs, led by a strumming acoustic and a shimmying beat, and her vocals here are delightful. It’s also one of the most hard-won: “Hope is where you say it is, deep as you can dig for it, when you’re ready to begin, say so, just say so…” That hope suffuses the record. Yes, there are lost-love stories like the traditional country number “The Truth Won’t Set Us Free,” but they’re matched and outshone by lovely pieces like the closer, “Tenderhearted,” a paean to those who let love in: “They’ve had loss and been broken, more than we will ever know, but it’s the tenderhearted who let life overflow…”

Part of the reason Young in All the Wrong Ways impresses is the team Watkins has assembled to help her realize it. She’s been in the game a long time and developed relationships with some of the best players around: Jay Bellerose, Jon Brion, Aoife O’Donovan, Sarah Jarosz, Jim James, Benmont Tench and Punch Brothers Gabe Witcher, Chris Eldridge, Paul Kowert and Noam Pikelny. Witcher produced the album, and Watkins co-wrote with Wilson and Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman. But the truly impressive part is that it’s Watkins – her songs, her voice – that holds this dream team together, and molds them into a perfect portrait of her own talent and vision. I may never be able to pick a favorite member of Nickel Creek, but as long as all three keep putting out music of this caliber, I’m happy I don’t have to.

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Speaking of individual visions, there’s Natasha Khan. Her one-woman project Bat for Lashes has always been fascinating, marrying a strong Kate Bush influence with an affinity for grand concepts. This has never been more true than now, on Bat for Lashes’ fourth album, The Bride. I’m not sure I’m ready to call it her best – that honor probably still goes to the glorious Two Suns – but The Bride is a beautiful and tragic piece of work, an exploration of heartache, loss and healing.

Yes, it’s a concept album, the story of a bride whose fiancé dies in a car crash on the way to their wedding. She decides to honeymoon alone, and spends the second half of the album learning to cope with her loss and her new life. The record begins and ends at peace, but Khan puts you through an emotional wringer in between. Her voice, always haunted and forlorn, is in top form on this album, making you feel every painful and longing word.

As you might expect, none of this is subtle. The album opens with “I Do,” a brief moment of bliss on the eve of the bride’s wedding. “In God’s House” finds her waiting at the church for her fiance, and receiving the news of his death. “Honeymooning Alone” begins the emotional heart of the record: “Your empty seat by my side, if I drive far enough, will I find my love?” “Sunday Love” is the most propulsive piece here, the closest thing to a single: “Even though I’m falling apart, I want Sunday love in my heart…” The song skips forward on a trippy beat and glittering synths, yet Khan’s voice keeps it melancholy.

As much as I like the concept, and the forward momentum it provides the first half of this record, I also like that it’s basically an excuse for Khan to write six songs in a row about losing someone you love, and working through the pain. These six songs are the core of the album, and among the best that Khan has ever penned. They’re whispers, barely-there things that are bursting with feeling. “Never Forgive the Angels” is powerful, a single unmoving bass line with thick keyboards, Khan grieving in song: “Nightmares come and they don’t go, for my love is gone, and I will never forgive the angels for that…”

“Close Encounters” follows suit, but removes the bass line, leaving Khan to sing over her bed of sad strings and keys. “Widow’s Peak” is a spoken descent into the heart of darkness, the bride trying to outrun the widow that she knows she will have to be. The spare “Land’s End” and “If I Knew” feel like climbing through fog toward the light, and the light breaks through on “I Will Love Again,” a song that resonates even more fully at the end of this record. “I will turn it back around, I’ll be homeward bound,” she sings, and then with the peaceful “In Your Bed,” she proves that love is not out of her reach, that her hard battle with grief and loneliness was not in vain.

The Bride is not an easy album to listen to. It’s a difficult and painful journey, and Khan gives you no outs, no asides, no respites. It hurts. But it’s worth it. I don’t know what kind of loss Khan herself suffered that inspired this album, but she’s invited us to travel with her during her healing process, and undertook that process with searing honesty. This might very well be her best work, and I hope its quiet, understated nature doesn’t lead to it being ignored when it comes time to tally up the year’s best. It’s haunting and utterly captivating.

* * * * *

I’ve been waiting months for the Sara Watkins and Bat for Lashes albums, but my third contestant this week was a complete surprise.

Lauren Mann is a delightful songwriter I discovered at the Cornerstone Festival in 2010. In 2011, I bought her second album, Over Land and Sea, and loved it to pieces. Mann’s piano-led pop is unfailingly tuneful and memorable, romantic and optimistic. You can’t listen to Over Land and Sea and not come away with a song in your heart. Blessedly, the same is true of her third album, Dearestly, which she surprise-released online about a week ago. In fact, this one’s even better, even more soul-enriching.

I’m a fan of these surprise releases. In about 15 minutes I went from not even knowing that Lauren Mann had a new album in the works to enjoying it on my laptop, and that’s a completely different experience than anticipating and longing for a record you know is coming. It’s even better when the surprise album turns out to be not only excellent but so damn optimistic that you feel even more like dancing. I don’t think I’ve heard a more upbeat, pure-joy one-two-three punch this year than the one that opens Dearestly. “New Beginning,” “Brave Face” and “Beautiful Place” are all nimble, full-hearted tunes that will make you smile and sing along.

The rest of Dearestly is just as pretty, as in love with life, as its opening trilogy. I wouldn’t hesitate to use the word “dreamy” for much of this material – just listen to the long piano-and-backing-vocals coda on “Talk of Leaving,” and try not to get caught up in it. The wonderful chorus of “Hibernate,” the disco-inspired groove of “Make it Smooth,” the gorgeous piano and organ atmosphere of “Oregon,” the killer Suddenly Tammy-esque riff of “Show Me the Way,” the soaring “You Are Fire,” and on and on. There are just too many high points to mention. To my ears, the only misfire is the goofy “St. Lawrence,” and I even like that one.

I know, you’ve never heard of Lauren Mann. Well, you should fix that. You can download Dearestly for as much as you want to pay, or buy it on CD and vinyl, here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

When I was a kid, there was this bookstore called Bibles, Books and Things just two towns north on the highway. It was a Christian bookstore, but I was a Christian kid, one who hadn’t quite learned to feel out of place in environments like that. I don’t remember why or how I first was taken to this store, only that I was young enough to need to be taken. What I do very much remember is seeing the huge selection of music on cassette and CD, and knowing that this was music I couldn’t find anywhere else.

You see, for me, the bibles and the books were much less important than the things, and the things were cassette tapes. I must have bought 300 tapes from that store over the years, trying out bands and special-ordering and filling in holes in my collection. As far as I knew, Bibles, Books and Things was the only place on earth to get music by the likes of Daniel Amos or Bloodgood or Barren Cross or my once-and-forever favorite, The Choir. That this was an industry geared toward a customer base never entered into my head. For all I knew, these bands were making music just for me.

I should explain that in the ‘80s and ‘90s, so-called Christian music was much different than it is now. Sure, there have always been the saccharine purveyors of encouragement-pop, geared toward moms in their minivans (or whatever moms drove in the ‘80s and ‘90s). But there was also an extraordinary diversity outside of that mainstream, a creative and artistic freedom that some of these bands would never have been granted anywhere but this industry. That many of them also thoughtfully talked about faith and doubt and pain and redemption was a bonus for a kid just learning to do that himself. What I liked was the music.

And this was music no one else had heard. I admit to feeling some pleasure at that. I knew that when I brought Tourniquet albums to my metal-loving friends, there was no way they’d ever have heard of them otherwise. When I let my college-radio-loving friends hear the Choir and the Prayer Chain, two bands matching or outshining most of independent rock in those days, I knew I’d be the one introducing them to something amazing. It was so fulfilling. I felt like an explorer tasked with visiting uncharted lands and bringing back treasure.

I was also beginning my lifelong obsession with hearing new music, and it was at Bibles, Books and Things that I really decided to try everything I could. I listened to demos and bought cassettes in all genres, and that scattershot approach absolutely paid off. I once bought a PFR album called Goldie’s Last Day just because the title was fascinating, and they turned out to be a great pop-rock band with Beatlesque overtones. And as I’ve mentioned here before, I bought Circle Slide by the Choir just because I fell in love with the cover. (I just received the remastered Circle Slide on vinyl, and it came with a print of that cover, and I plan to frame it for my wall soon. It means a lot to me.)

That give-me-everything approach has been the defining characteristic of my musical life. It’s how I have heard every one of my very favorite bands, and how I discovered all of the spiritual pop (and rock and metal and ambient and and and) that I love. I can’t imagine my life without Adam Again or the 77s or Steve Taylor or any of the other truly wonderful artists I found in that cassette rack in Milford, Massachusetts. Those cassettes are the reason I first went to Cornerstone, and now go to AudioFeed. They’re the reason I have been in a position to find artists like Timbre and Josh Garrels and Hushpad and Von Strantz and so many others.

It’s also the reason I know who One Bad Pig is, and that I was one of 317 people who helped them make their reunion album this year. When I say that ‘80s and ‘90s Christian music had a lot more diversity, I mean it. One Bad Pig was one of the pioneering Christian punk bands, and their snarky, funny, spunky records were released by one of the biggest labels in the scene. It was a time when this industry not only allowed but invited self-criticism, and One Bad Pig joined the likes of Steve Taylor in critiquing the public face of the church.

Their three main albums – Smash, Swine Flew and I Scream Sunday – ran the gamut from thrashy punk to mid-tempo guitar-pop, led by Carey Womack, a frontman who shouted and squealed more than sang. Perhaps the apex of their output is a frankly astonishing cover of “The Man in Black” with guest vocals from Johnny Cash himself. I play it every once in a while just to remind myself that I didn’t hallucinate it.

While I have personal and theological problems with some of One Bad Pig’s output (“You’re a Pagan” is hard to listen to, as is “Bowl of Wrath”), I still find them fun. The song of theirs that has made the most lasting impact is a 30-second bit of weirdness called “Pad Thai.” It consists of the band members yelling “Pad Thai!” over and over, and I can’t eat the titular food now without hearing that in my head.

That alone, I figured, was worth pitching in for their Kickstarter. Like a lot of bands from this corner of the music world, One Bad Pig has reunited 25 years after their last album, and they turned to crowdfunding to pay for a new one, called Love You to Death. And because they are One Bad Pig, they refused to take themselves too seriously, offering some hilarious incentives, which fans took them up on. Someone named Mitch Connell, for instance, paid to be the one who “presents” the album on the front cover, so everyone’s copy of the album reads “Mitch Connell presents One Bad Pig.”

As a fan of crowdfunding, I think that’s kind of awesome, and it already put me on the band’s side. The album itself is pretty good. Though all the band members are in their 50s now, they don’t seem to have lost much of their youthful energy. Love You to Death is a slightly more mature One Bad Pig album, with slightly more to say than their primary-colored early work. Womack still sounds like Johnny Rotten mixed with a terrified swine, and his voice is an acquired taste. (I’m glad I acquired it when I was 15.) The band gets serious on songs like “Heads Will Roll” and “Straitjacket,” both about religious persecution, a topic on which I now disagree with them. They also lose me on “What Does the Fool Say,” with its paean to intelligent design. But they make fine points about faith without works on “Get Your Hands Dirty,” a nifty tune that features Les Carlsen of Bloodgood and his ridiculous high voice.

It might be no surprise that my favorites here – the songs that make me glad I backed this – are the more fun ones. One Bad Pig was never scared to seem like a novelty act, and here they embrace that side of their image with gusto. They cover “The Lust, the Flesh, the Eyes and the Pride of Life,” an absolute classic by the 77s, and Piggy it up. (I really wonder what Mike Roe thinks of it.) “Sunday Skool Rawk” is a thrash-y medley of songs anyone who went to Vacation Bible School will recognize, played for laughs. And perhaps my favorite thing here is “Ben Moors,” a song written as a Kickstarter reward. Ben kicked in the required amount to have a song about him included on the album, and it’s a hoot. They even refer to him as “Ben Moors the Kickstarter funder” in the chorus.

There’s enough whimsical frivolity here to offset the moments that make me squirm. I get the sense, though, that like all punk bands, the members of One Bad Pig want me to squirm, want to confront, want to put their beliefs square in my face. And I’m less interested in that kind of Christian music than I used to be. I’m happy I contributed to a new One Bad Pig album, partially because it’s just fantastic and ridiculous that One Bad Pig has a new album in 2016. Love You to Death was worth hearing, and much of it is worth owning. I feel differently about them now than I did when I was 15, and it was worth the investment to find that out.

There are very few bands I feel the same devotion to in my forties as I did in my teens. But one of them – perhaps the most important of them – is the Choir. Buying Circle Slide, their extraordinary fifth album, on a whim at Bibles, Books and Things is one of the best musical decisions I have ever made. For 26 years the Choir has soundtracked my life, draping it in gorgeous sounds and thoughtful spiritual insights. The voice of Derri Daugherty singing the words of drummer Steve Hindalong has pulled me through many a dark time.

In many ways, the Choir is the antithesis of One Bad Pig, and of most heavy-handed Christian music. Hindalong writes about his life, seen through the prism of his faith. He never preaches, and when he hits you with a message song (like “It Should Have Been Obvious” or “The Word Inside the Word”), the message is one of love, acceptance and grace. If more Christian music were like the Choir, I would like more Christian music.

It’s a great time to be a Choir fan. Since 2010, the band has been on a roll, giving us four swell albums (including Shadow Weaver, one of their very best) and a just-released definitive live album. Daugherty released an instrumental ambient album, and has a new solo album coming soon. (He’s also about to release two records with side project Kerosene Halo, and I’ll get to those in a couple weeks.) And now, for the first time in nearly 20 years, Hindalong has made a solo album. It’s called The Warbler, and it’s a thing of beauty.

Hindalong spoke at AudioFeed about songwriting and his life in music, and one thing he kept returning to was friendship. He’s been making beautiful sounds with his friends for more than three decades, and both of his solo albums are like a who’s-who of this corner of the music world. Choir bassist Tim Chandler, Hammock guitarist Marc Byrd, his wife Christy Byrd, guitarist and organist Phil Madeira, cellist Matt Slocum, guitarist Lynn Nichols, singer Kevin Max and Steve Taylor’s guitarist Jimmy Abegg all appear here. The sound of this record is tremendous, full and rich and beautiful.

Hindalong’s voice takes some getting used to – it has a high, pinched quality that isn’t immediate. I’ve grown to love it over years of hearing it on Choir albums, and he’s evolved as a singer tremendously since his first solo album. Here he sings with confidence, sounding better than he ever has. He rises to the challenge of the full-blooded music here, but even when he’s surrounded by very little – just acoustic guitars and a few embellishments on “Into the Drink,” for example – he delivers. I’m predisposed to be on Hindalong’s side, but I quite like his voice on this album, more than I expected to.

It’s the songs that win the day, though. Hindalong dug deep here, setting some of his most beautiful melodies to some of his most personal lyrics. There are barbed love songs (“I need more sorrow like I need more bad religion,” he sings on “Love You Bad”), odes to old friends (“O Jimmy A,” one of my favorites), prayers for healing (“Shellie’s Song”), promises of devotion (“That’s How It’s Gonna Be,” “For a Lifetime”) and moments of contentment (“Lucky and Blessed”). I would say it’s an uncommonly good set of songs, but this is Steve Hindalong, and for him, it’s not uncommon at all.

There are some exceptional moments on The Warbler, songs that rise above the already high standard. “Oblivious” is the first of those, a gorgeous drawl with lovely harmonies by Christy Byrd. “Sorry lovers caught in a rain storm, oblivious to the thunder, deaf to the cannon roar…” It’s a world-class song, one Jason Isbell would have been proud to write. It’s an abstract piece, in direct contrast to another amazing moment, “Into the Drink.” This spare song takes an unflinching look at Hindalong’s own alcoholism. He premiered this song a couple years ago at a Choir show I attended, and I’m so proud of him for including it here. “Blessed oblivion save me, morning sun be damned, the demon in my head won’t know me if I forget who I am…” It’s a brave piece of work, and a riveting song.

The Warbler ends with a pair of Choir songs, recast in new lights. The title track, originally released in 1996, is one of Hindalong’s best songs, and where it once rose and fell on Daugherty’s velvet guitar chimes, here it feels earthy, dark, down in the mud, looking skyward. Most of it is Hindalong and his electric guitar, but when the full band erupts to life a couple minutes from the end, it’s thick and unstoppable. Christy Byrd uses the backing vocals to correct a mathematical error in the original, too. “The Antithesis of Blue” first appeared on Shadow Weaver, an inversion of blues clichés celebrating true love. This version is a down-home hoedown, with Justin Cary on bass, Nichols on guitar and Abegg on banjo. It’s a fun way to end things, a total reinvention of a pretty cool tune.

Whenever I hear a new piece of music from Daugherty and Hindalong, whether together or solo, I think about how lucky I am to have even stumbled upon them at all. Twenty-six years of joy, with no end in sight, and it all grew from that one decision to try the lovely-looking record with the tire swing on the cover. Twenty-six years. Bibles, Books and Things is no longer in business, so I can’t go back and thank them for making this music available to a hungry 15-year-old. But I can thank Hindalong and Daugherty and every other brilliant musician I discovered by accident, just by being open to them. I listen to The Warbler’s rhapsody, and I can’t imagine my life without this music.

Buy One Bad Pig music here. Buy Hindalong’s album and the Choir catalog here.

Next week is ladies’ choice with Sara Watkins, Bat for Lashes and Lauren Mann. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The story of my AudioFeed 2016 is one of things going wrong.

For starters, I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I was scheduled to be in London, working a particle physics conference (and seeing as much of the country as I could). I would have been sad to miss AudioFeed for the first time, but hell, I would have been in London. I think I would have survived. But when those plans were abruptly changed, I had to scramble to secure a ticket and lodging for the festival.

Then my car broke down. If anyone reading this owns a Ford Focus manufactured earlier this decade, you know exactly the trouble I was having. The bizarre manual/automatic transmission in the Focus (and the Fiesta) just doesn’t work, and Ford knows it – they have kindly extended the warranty on them to 150,000 miles, meaning they expect the transmission to act up for the life of the car. I didn’t have to pay for repairs, which is nice, but it’s still a headache. I was without my car for 11 days, and unsure whether it would be ready in time for my annual trip to Champaign.

And then, on the first day of AudioFeed, I had to work, I dealt with a broken garage door opener, and I got stuck in a terrible traffic jam on the way to the fest, the result of a truck taking an exit ramp too quickly and flipping over. I missed most of the first day, including three sets featuring my friend and constant AudioFeed buddy, Jeff Elbel. By the time I’d checked into our hotel and made my way to the festival grounds, it was close to 7 p.m.

It would have been very easy for me to be frustrated and sad about all that. But then, I walked onto the grounds and I was at AudioFeed, and it’s impossible for me to feel anything but elated while I’m there. The first band I saw, quite by accident, was called Comrades. They’re a female-fronted metal trio sporting some beautiful textures and vocals, and they were incredibly loud, and I loved every minute of their set. And as I looked around, I realized I was the oldest person in the Black Sheep tent (the designated space for metal bands) by about 20 years, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

And then I saw Brian Smith and Kevin Shafer and the aforementioned Jeff Elbel and Matthew Welchel (and his sons Jack and Nick) and Jim and Jennifer Eisenmenger and John Thompson, and I met Nancy and Richard Lindsey and Matthew Hunt and several other people from a discussion group I frequent. It didn’t take long to feel like I was home, and that feeling remained for the entire weekend.

I’ve spent a lot of words in this space trying to explain AudioFeed to people who haven’t experienced it. I’m not sure it’s possible. Some may remember Cornerstone, the legendary Jesus-centric hippie music festival that ran in Bushnell, Illinois for 29 years, and may expect a similar atmosphere at AudioFeed, its natural successor. But to me, it’s very different. Perhaps it’s that I came in on the ground floor – I’ve been to all four AudioFeeds so far. As someone who doubts as often as he believes anything, I felt like an impostor at Cornerstone, but I feel welcomed and loved at AudioFeed. I’ve never once felt out of place.

For three days (four if you arrive early for camping), the Champaign County Fairgrounds is basically turned into a commune where everyone is just incredibly nice to one another. And there is music! I contend that, pound for pound, there are more phenomenal bands at AudioFeed every year than any other fest I could name. These bands, even the ones that have been around for 30 years, are usually unjustifiably obscure. Many are just starting out, trying to make a name, but many have been toiling in anonymity for most of my life, and AudioFeed is one of the only places each year to hear them play.

At first glance, the lineup this year didn’t give me many reasons to expect greatness. But I found it anyway, at least partially by being willing to try new things. Rapper Jackie Hill-Perry, for example, is terrific, spitting spiritually minded rhymes with speed and skill. Singer Chris Dupont reminded me of James Taylor, but then he threw in a healthy dose of ambient music and guitar wizardry. I bought his album Anxious Animal, and I would have bought his new one, Outlier, had it been available on CD. But Anxious Animal is excellent, full of deceptively well-written songs with delicate arrangements, driven by his even, clear voice.

The Mailboxes are one of my favorite new discoveries. Essentially the project of songwriter Jillian Spears, the Mailboxes are whimsical and piano-driven, like a less angsty Fiona Apple at times. Their album Red Flags is delightful. I love all of it, but I’m particularly taken with “The Way It Is,” an honest song about messed-up love and how that can be just right. It’s beautiful. I was similarly happy to discover Tow’rs, an Arizona five-piece anchored by a husband and wife who harmonize together beautifully. They play expansive yet catchy indie-rock with horns and strings, and their new album The Great Minimum (named after a G.K. Chesterton book) is wonderful.

On the louder end of things, I was pleased to see Analecta again. They’re a duo made up of a drummer and a multi-instrumentalist who swaps out instruments, playing them through a looping pedal to create massive post-rock atmoscapes. Their new record is called Aes Sidhe, referencing Irish mythology, and is a mammoth wallop of a thing, dragging you along on an emotional journey. And while I didn’t hit the metal tent quite as often this year, I did discover Death Therapy, the new project by Jason Wisdom of Becoming the Archetype. My first visit to Cornerstone was in 2001, and Wisdom was there on the side of the road handing out the first Becoming the Archetype demo CDs in white sleeves. I got one, and have been following them ever since. Death Therapy is a big departure, an electronic groove-metal duo, and it’s really neat stuff.

Mike Mains and the Branches played a blistering set near the end of the final Cornerstone in 2012, and I somehow failed to buy their record or see them since. But here they were, playing the Radon Lounge (ostensibly the acoustic stage, but more often than not accommodating loud, powerful bands), and they tore it up again. Mains is a hell of a frontman, his songs are driving and explosive, and his band is on point. I rectified my previous error by buying both of Mains’ albums, Home and the awesomely titled Calm Down, Everything is Fine. While they lack the sweaty energy of the live set, they’re both swell collections of punky pop.

Of course, while I always stumble on these delightful new discoveries at AudioFeed, it’s the familiar favorites that I look forward to the most. Jeff Elbel, my roommate and the busiest musician at AudioFeed, played eight sets with various bands and lineups, and it’s always a joy to see him do what he does best. His own band, Ping, is on the verge of releasing a new album called The Threefinger Opera. It’s a conceptual piece about Jeff’s struggles with a pinched nerve that cost him the use of the last two fingers on his left hand. (Important fingers for a guitar player.) He’s had to re-learn how to play while he heals, and as therapy both physical and mental, he wrote a new set of songs about the experience. Ping played most of the songs on The Threefinger Opera> during two terrific sets, and I’m quite looking forward to hearing the real thing.

Jeff also played with Cornerstone legend Harry Gore as he ripped through a set of songs by Larry Norman, one of the pioneers of spiritual rock music, and with The Wayside, John J. Thompson’s Americana rock outfit. It was perhaps the swampiest Wayside set I’ve ever seen, crawling and laced with feedback. Late on Friday night, John and Jeff joined Brian Healy in the latest incarnation of Dead Artist Syndrome, one of the first goth bands on a Christian label. That show took place in the Asylum tent, which I had never ventured into before. To get to the stage, you had to duck into a small opening and walk through a corridor of Christmas lights and dark imagery, and it was like stepping into another world entirely. Healy is older and in poor health, but on stage he was oddly magnetic, skewering himself and his bandmates with his signature wit and pelting the audience with silly string.

Perhaps Jeff’s highest profile set came on Saturday as he backed up Steve Hindalong, drummer with the Choir. Steve has a grand new solo album called The Warbler, which I will talk about in more detail next week, and while the set was plagued with technical problems, it was still fun. Steve’s voice has improved since his first solo record in the ‘90s, and his songwriting has skyrocketed. The Warbler is full of folksy gems and earnest, honest looks at life, and I was happy with how much of it I got to hear live.

There were a few other more well-known acts on my AudioFeed lineup this year. Scream-fueled rock band Emery played all of their second album, The Question, and impressed greatly. Josh Garrels, who I discovered at Cornerstone near the end of the festival’s run, delivered his usual mix of breezy guitars and that powerful, sweeping voice. I was particularly impressed that he sung all of the high notes in “The Arrow” without faltering. Glenn Kaiser, one-time leader of the pioneering Rez Band, dropped another set of blues played on cigar box guitars, with harmonica prodigy Joe Filisko accompanying him.

And then there was One Bad Pig. As a kid growing up in church, I loved One Bad Pig, one of the first Christian punk bands. They made three studio albums of funny, sharp punk rock, lead throat Carey Womack squeal-screaming his way through most of them, and for some reason that music is imprinted on me. When I heard that the band had reunited to play AudioFeed, I confess I laughed. But damn if they weren’t fantastic. The Pig played two sets, and while I missed much of the first one (in the metal tent), I saw the entire second one (in the Asylum), and it was so much fun. I’ll talk more about them and their reunion record next week.

I was also very happy to see some of my AudioFeed discoveries once again. Listener, for example, is a band like no other – imagine Shellac fronted by a heartland poet who speak-screams insights and encouragements in a wild cadence. Harp player Timbre enthralled with a late-night set on Saturday, bringing the orchestral flourishes of her extraordinary double album Sun and Moon to life with only a couple musicians. Jason Barrows drove us through songs on his Springsteen-meets-Ryan-Adams debut album Islands of My Soul, and since he is Garrels’ guitar player, he had the strange experience of having his boss open up for him.

Barrows closed out the main stage on Sunday night, but he wasn’t the last band of the festival. That honor went to the always-wonderful Hushpad, led by my friend Matthew Welchel and his two sons. Hushpad plays an ever-unfolding brand of shoegaze pop, and their new six-piece lineup fills this sound out marvelously. I think it was my favorite experience of the festival. There were probably 20 of us, staying past midnight to hear a band we love play music we adore, and in that moment, I felt bonded to this place and this fest like never before. Hushpad’s album Helas is available now on iTunes and other digital distributors, and I think it’s superb. But it won’t capture that experience of seeing them play these gorgeous songs on a warm summer night with such great people.

I think I’ve proven that I also can’t capture the experience for you. In trying to cover all the bases here I fear I’ve written a rambling, uninteresting list. Here’s the thing: AudioFeed has truly come into its own as a festival unlike any other, and I’ll never be able to tell you what it’s like to be there. In that moment, watching Hushpad bring another terrific weekend to a close, I knew that nothing had gone wrong, that everything had worked out and I was where I was supposed to be. And I’ll be back next year, too.

Next week, a deeper look at some new AudioFeed albums from One Bad Pig and Steve Hindalong. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.