Art by Zack Ogulnick. Layout & design by Matt Goff.
“Sang Through the Summer” is now available on all streaming platforms!
It’s the second of three singles off our upcoming album, Plant It or Build It. You can listen to both (and follow us on Spotify) here.
Recorded in a converted home in Big Sur by Ky Takikawa (Moon Dog and the Astral Cats) and mastered by Adrian Dolan (The Wailin’ Jennys), “Sang Through the Summer” is an ode to the journey. It was written about our band’s first tour, “Autumn’s Crossing,” a two-leg run to the Southwest and the Northwest in the Fall of 2017.
Whether on the road or on the trail, we’ve found travel to be good for our souls. This song is our attempt to put that feeling into words.
We hope you enjoy it!
All our love,
Late for the Train
A bit more about the song:
When we wrote “Sang Through the Summer” in the fall of 2017, we were a freshly formed duo on our first tour - booked largely on enthusiasm - through the Pacific Northwest and Southwest. We had been wanting to do a run from the Bay Area up to Portland, and around the same time we had the incredible opportunity to be invited to open for our friends Oddjob Ensemble for the Southwest leg of a 3-month national tour they were wrapping up. Figuring that we might as well go for broke, we decided to do both regions and dubbed the entire thing our “Autumn’s Crossing Tour,” spending nearly three weeks on the road together in a little Toyota Yaris. We went north first, stopping at home after the first leg only briefly for a quick family Thanksgiving with family before heading south and east to Santa Fe.
Being on the road together awoke a deep feeling of adventure in both of us. Everywhere we went, we were greeted with open arms and home-cooked meals, whether it was staying with friends or being welcomed into small town pubs that took care of us with motherly warmth and hospitality. We played bars, clubs, patios, houses, breweries… even a listening-room show at an overwhelmingly vibrant art space in Joshua Tree called Furstworld run by mad scientist & artist Bobby Furst.
Everywhere along the way, old friends and new poured it on and made us feel like our own tiny version of rock stars. When we played in Claremont, CA, during finals week at the student coffee shop of Scripps College (Laura’s alma mater), we had two friends drive an hour and a half to find seats at crowded tables - mostly filled with textbooks, calculators, and studious scholars - to watch the show (thanks Jeff and Juan). In Portland, we performed to a packed room full of excited faces in the basement art studio of Travis Abels, an incredible artist and fimmaker. Moments like these lifted us up and filled our tank, both literally and figuratively.
It’s a wistful time to be releasing a single that, at its heart, is a love song to life on the road. “Sang Through the Summer” is a reminder to ourselves to stay in the moment and appreciate what we have. It’s also a fun excuse to look back - albeit not too far - down memory lane. We’re proud to have more than a few tours under our belt as a band now, and we’re also incredibly grateful for that. Being able to travel and perform is a gift that our community gives us, so thank you.
Though it may be a while until we can hit the road again, we’ll be thinking of it fondly until that time comes.