DEMO: “Castaways in the Night”

“Castaways in the Night" is one of those rare songs that appears, fully formed, out of a lightning strike of inspiration. Nothing about it existed: no chords, no scrap of melody, no title scribbled in a notebook. Then—90 minutes after a strum of a random chord—a whole new song existed.

This was back in June. I was waiting for the water to boil while making coffee, and I picked up my guitar, began absent-mindedly fingerpicking, hummed a melody, sang the first line, thought, “oh, that’s nice”, and almost reached for my phone to record the idea with the intention of stopping and coming back to it.

Like most songwriters, I have hundreds of recordings like that on my phone. Some of those ideas—after hours, months, years—end up turning into finished songs. But most end up in a long scroll of Voice Memos. This time, I decided to get out of my own way, shove my inner critic down a flight of stairs, and let the song reveal itself on its terms.

Most songs take a long time to “get right”. The music we’re releasing this fall took years to “get right”. But before we share those songs, I decided to release a new song, while still fully in love with it.

Download a free, exclusive recording of “Castaways in the Night” from Bandcamp, here.

Follow the steps below, and this song yours. I wont be putting this song on Apple Music or Spotify anytime soon. This one is just a little secret between us.

Photos from our debut show at The Hideout in Chicago

Thank you to everyone who came out for our debut show at The Hideout! I’m still riding the high from the show, as well as from the support and love everyone brought to the venue (despite it being so late on a school night). It’s the first time we’ve performed these songs live with the full band, and it felt amazing to share them—especially in a venue as special as The Hideout.

Missed the show? No worries: It won’t before we’re back on stage. We’re working on rescheduling the original show with Great Waters for their record release party. So, if you missed the debut—or if you enjoyed the set—good news: We’ll announce a makeup date soon.

Extra special thanks to the team at Hideout (especially sound engineer, Kwame, for dialing in such tasty live tones), the folks at Odd Commodity for capturing video (more to come there), and Jennifer of Milk Punch Photo for all the beautiful photographs.

It’s extremely busy for us over at Okay Lakes HQ. We’ve got lots of big news to share coming real, reaaaal soon. Till then, give us a follow on the socials below if you want sneak peeks at what’s going on behind the scenes.

That’s all for now, friends. Talk to you soon.

JK