Every record has two stories. The one you hear, and the one that got it made.

Hometown Immigrant almost didn’t have a second story. Four years of silence, then forty songs came out of me at once — and from those forty, the ones that survived became this record. Tracked at Sound Emporium, Studio B. Every lead vocal is in. The guitars are getting their last coats of paint.

And the first one’s finished. “Hometown Immigrant” — the title track — is mixed, mastered, and coming December 4th. My birthday. The Founders picked the day.

What’s left is the unglamorous part — mixing and mastering the rest, getting it into the world the way it deserves. And then telling people it exists at all.

The songs are done. The story’s not.

No tiers. No merch on the other end of it. This is just: you believe something’s worth finishing, so you help finish it.

But here’s what happens when you do... you become a Founder. You see it first — the artwork, the photos, the ideas before they go anywhere else. You get a vote. Founders chose the day the first single drops. Founders are picking the Nashville spots where we shoot the next round. That’s not a perk. That’s a seat at the table where this thing gets built.

If this record has meant something to you — if “The Rope” caught you somewhere you needed catching — this is where you grab hold and pull.

On the inside. Still outsiders.

Give what you can. It gets the record over the line and into as many hands as it can reach.

— JD