Kevin Morby Previews New LP With ‘Campfire’ Video Featuring Waxahatchee

Kevin Morby has shared “Campfire,” the first offering from his new album Sundowner, out October 16th via Dead Oceans.

Directed by Johnny Eastlund and Dylan Isbell, the video features Morby at Castle Rock in Kansas — playing guitar and surrounded by limestone. He meets up with his partner, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, who drives off in an old Ford pickup, with Morby riding in the truck bed. “Now that it’s dusk, kids scatter the avenue,” he sings. “Hey, who are you? I’m a sundowner too.”

Morby wrote Sundowner after moving back home to Kansas City from Los Angeles in late 2017. “Landing back home felt jarring juxtaposed with a life full of chaos and adventure with my band on the road. But at the very least, I was happy to have — for the first time in my adulthood — a place to close the door, with no temptations other than to work on music and reflect on what I had built since I left. It was a new form of isolation, one I had never explored or expected to experience.”

“During that summer my isolation was given a subtle lift when Katie Crutchfield, who I had toured with the year previous, began visiting,” he added. “A musician like me, she would stay weeks at a time, living quietly beside me — our love taking shape in a quiet refuge from our lives on the road. We shared many things, including a mutual melancholy that seemed to appear every night around sunset. We began to refer to ourselves as ‘sundowners.’ Sundowner is my attempt to put the Middle American twilight — its beauty profound, though not always immediate — into sound. It is a depiction of the nervous feeling that comes with the sky’s proud announcement that another day will be soon coming to a close as the pink light recedes and the street lamps and house lights suddenly click on.”

Sundowner marks Morby’s sixth album, following 2019’s Oh My God. He’ll kick off on a virtual tour on September 10th, performing every album in its entirety, beginning with his 2013 debut Harlem River. Tickets are available here.

Sundowner Tracklist
1. Valley
2. Brother, Sister
3. Sundowner
4. Campfire
5. Wander
6. Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun
7. A Night at the Little Los Angeles
8. Jamie
9. Velvet Highway
10. Provisions

Virtual Tour Dates
September 10 — Harlem River
September 17 — Still Life
September 24 — Singing Saw
October 1 — City Music
October 8 — Oh My God
October 15 — Sundowner