Waxing Gibbous + Studio Week Next Week
3 days and <$200 from The Night album merch pre-sale/crowdfunding goal, plus a songwriter's round this Sunday and a new (sad) song
I’m not entirely sure where June went between an extremely busy work month, Pride events, and the relentlessness of the (bad) news cycle…I’m hoping for a calm rest of the summer work-wise, though hopefully that’ll just mean time for recording and other work on my album, plus putting a priority on getting some shows booked.
Anyway, the moon is in waxing gibbous, approaching Thursday’s full moon, which is relevant to my music—here’s what’s ahead in this month’s Substack:
an update on recording plans for The Night album, and a boost for the final days of the merch pre-sale/crowdfunding campaign (which is SO close to meeting its goal before the next full moon!);
an invitation to a songwriter’s circle in in Greensboro this coming Sunday afternoon;
a rough recording of a new song I wrote after saying goodbye to my soul dog Crash;
and my monthly segment, Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently.
The Latest on The Night Album
Turns out I’m pretty terrible at running a crowdfunding campaign—please enjoy this self-deprecating video I made after the stumbling start to The Night album merch pre-sale!—but I’ve had a good response to early offerings of album art prints, stickers, downloads, moon portraits (see above for one example, shot by Sam of Steel String Photography!), and especially The Night mini-deck, which I’m particularly excited about/is probably the most unique item I’m offering. The pre-sale/crowdfunding campaign runs through this Thursday, July 10, and I’m SO close to my goal of $2,500—if you haven’t already donated or gotten something fun, click here (I promise this link works!) to do so.
After Thursday, I’ll assess which items will be back at a permanent spot on my Emorie Hush online store and which might be exclusive to the pre-sale. I’ll warn any vinyl lovers that I’m nowhere near a critical mass of orders to make those worth pressing, so if you for some reason just NEED The Night on vinyl, uh, go order a couple hundred or something. :)
I’m very excited to have studio days on the calendar NEXT WEEK, which means I’m working on arrangement ideas and trying to prep as much as I can.
Show This Sunday, July 13!
This coming Sunday, July 13 @ 4:00 p.m. I’ll be at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, joining Kristy Jackson and Vicki Genfan for the 37th edition of Songwriters @ Scup. I’m told we each get in about 6 rounds, so I’m taking requests as I make my setlist, and I’d love to see you there.
A Song for Crash, or Any Grief
Last month, I shared that I had just said goodbye to my best dog of ten years, Crash, and that I was trying to write a song for him. Well, I somehow succeeded, and in a way that tickled my songwriter brain (which perhaps made it feel a little less raw)—I intentionally crafted a song that both speaks to specifics of adjusting to life without a dog, and which I think could apply to many other experiences of loss or grief. Here’s a rough recording of “Lost at Sea.”
Some Things I’ve Enjoyed Recently
TV: I hadn’t watched a medical drama in a while, but several people recommended The Pitt and I finally got into it. It’s 15 episodes set over the course of one 15-hour shift in an underfunded emergency department, and I’ve been enjoying it (and also crying some). One thing that struck me is that the mass casualty event—because is it a medical drama if there isn’t one of those?—is something that feels entirely too realistic as something that could happen anywhere.
MOVIE: Not long after my girlfriend learned I’d never seen the 1996 movie The Birdcage, she sat me down to fix that. I found the comedy, about a cabaret owner (Robin Williams) and his drag queen partner (Nathan Lane, who, importantly to my millennial brain, is the voice of Timon in The Lion King) pretending to be straight to impress their son’s fiancee’s uptight, conservative parents, very funny and charming, even if the premise is a bit sad when you think about it and there were definitely a few 90s phrases that startled me to hear in 2025.
MUSIC: My church did Christmas in July this past Sunday, which meant I got to do some unseasonal decorating last week. To get in the mood, I put on Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas, which I adore and commend to anybody.