The last few weeks have been rough on my car CD player. The girl-child was home from college and when she borrowed my car, the CD wars commenced. The girl has excellent taste in music and has introduced me to some really great stuff…but….I have my staples, three CDs that never ever ever EVER leave my player. Well, until the girl-child plants her tush behind the wheel and removes my beloved CDs, only to be replaced by her cool, hip, underground indie stuff…harumph.

What’s that? The CDs? Oldies but goodies, my friends — The Lonelies – The Lonelies EP, Macon Greyson – Miles from Here, Collin Herring – Avoiding the Circus. They are all over 2-7 years old, but I never ever tire of them. EVER!

So I sent out a plea for any information regarding Collin Herring nearly a year ago. Patrick and I were both a’wonderin’ what that boy has been up to…until I went to visit Patrick over at This is Texas Music last week…

At long last, today comes news of a release date for Collin Herring’s Past Life Crashing….Read it all and watch the video interview.

Then I was like all, “duh Cindy. Go see what Jed has to say about Collin’s whereabouts…”

Since the 2002 release of his live debut album, Avoiding the Circus , Fort Worth, Texas, singer-guitarist Collin Herring has been heralded as “the torchbearer for alt-country,” while one overwhelmed writer reported that Herring’s style was, in a word, “unclassifiable.” As critics and music fans responded with increasing enthusiasm to Avoiding the Circus and Herring’s 2005 release, The Other Side of Kindness, the musician went from being a local Forth Worth favorite to a nationally known and widely respected artist who garnered award after award, headlined gala benefit concerts, and was a featured guest on numerous television and radio specials. “All this notoriety wasn’t expected,” says Herring. “I was just doing what I love to do, having no other choice than to get what is inside of me out.”

What’s been building up inside of Collin Herring for the past three years will become evident to his loyal fanbase in March 2008, when his third and most anxiously awaited album, Past Life Crashing, becomes available.

The album is a triumph for Herring as it chronicles the intense struggles he’s faced over the past few years, struggles that lead to stints in rehab and a divorce. In the two grueling years he spent writing and recording the record, Herring continually rerecorded and rewrote songs in an effort to make them representative of his changing mindset, eventually trimming them back to the point that their sparseness became their appeal. The softer sound of Past Life Crashing “just happened,” he says, as it was the next logical step for his music, a natural evolution in his emotional maturity exhibited through every lyric and note on the album. Herring describes the album as “songs for the common man,” songs that come from an internal dialogue that expresses the distractions and reflections of a time filled with profound change, whirlwind emotional turbulence, and deep introspection. “I kept rerecording the songs because I’d heard them and I just didn’t believe it,” says Herring. “I wanted them to sound frayed enough that people heard them and felt the way I did when I wrote them.”

Past Life Crashing is an album that fully displays Herring’s ability to intricately capture the essence of emotion—displaying it through creative metaphor with spot-on accuracy. The desperation of love and the unavoidable loneliness that comes when your inner self knows the truth is recounted in the song “Beside.” He sings, “I listen to you/But you don’t listen to me/ Now I’m beside myself/But that’s all there is/The way I’ve been traveling/It’s just me sitting beside myself.” On the soft, languid acoustic track “Sidekick,” Herring conjures up the vision of a tortuous love affair—one intensely passionate and perceptibly perfect, but romantically unsustainable. Herring writes, “If you were a Queen and you had a stable/Would you lend me a steed/Could I fill my canteen,” signifying the sustenance that the relationship brought followed by the impending discontent later on, actualized through the refrain, “I got a letter, but don’t want to read it/It’s better to stay half finished forever/I got a problem I don’t want to leave it/Just stay in the storm where the light won’t grow/Cause these are the hardest days.” Past Life Crashing is a universal testament to anyone who has been through the wringer of recovery or relationship—and the maturity of the music and lyrics is bound to secure Collin Herring a position as one of the preeminent songwriters of our time.

The album was recorded across a multitude of recording sessions with a mix of supporting players, including former Wilco drummer Ken Coomer, Kathleen Edwards, Audley Freed (Black Crowes, Cry of Love), Andrew Duplantis (Meat Puppets, Bob Mould, Alejandro Escovedo, Son Volt), and Collin’s own father, Ben Roi Herring, who contributes vocals, pedal steel and keyboards on the record.

Past Life Crashing doesn’t veer far from the sentiments and sounds of The Other Side of Kindness, as it contains the same rootsy alt.rock distortion and touches on some of the same dark “country” themes like booze, regret, unresolved emotion, etc.—but Past Life Crashing seems to “scratch a little deeper,” emerging as more mature and sentimental and evoking a universal requiem for the heartache and wisdom that comes with disappointment. The record speaks to that point in all of our lives where you realize that the cruise control has given out or maybe never existed at all, and now you have to steer this thing even when you can’t always read your own mind to know where you want to go. Sobriety and wildness, stability and passion all collide in the twenty-to-thirty-something mindset of trying to figure out the future when the future is now. Laying himself bare in the midst of this personal transformation, in and amongst a separation from his wife and with his own father looking on from the sound booth, Herring’s odyssey through these songs is nothing short of courageous.

Collin Herring’s work has always been evocative and insightful, but Past Life Crashing stands as heroic even in a stable of winners. It’s touching but challenging, lively but thoughtful, and it climbs inside you not just as an agent of catharsis, but also with the anodyne velvet touch of knowing universal empathy. Herring reaches out to you and with an invitation like this one you involuntarily reach back from within. It’s a record that can’t help but connect and in that it stands in simple triumph.

There you have it. I’m not sure if I can wait until March for this new album to find its home in my CD player, but I’ll do my best to remain (sort of) patient. I love you Collin….

Listen to some forthcoming tuneage here.

Me thinks a Cowtown adventure is in order this weekend…

Friday, January 11th
The Moon Bar – Fort Worth
Collin Herring / Kevin Aldridge / Hosty Duo

Also…

Saturday, January 12th
Bill’s Records
Buddy Huffman (Macon Greyson) performs solo w/ Tommy Irvin / Christen Cross / Karen Naomi
2:30 PM – Free

Saturday, January 19th
AllGood Cafe
Doug Burr w/Sarah Jaffe
8 PM