Brother Bird - The Lodge in Miller County (2026) [Hi-Res]

The Lodge in Miller County is a concept album inspired by the poem, Guest House, by Rumi.

Each track is a different character staying at a fictitious lodge in central Missouri (Miller County).

Most of these songs were written the summer of 2023.
I had just turned 29. I was spending a large portion of my days on the phone with divorce lawyers from the comfort of my parent’s basement.
A full select-all-delete software reset. A humbling one.

It was a year filled to the brim with loss and discovery ... and more love than I’d ever experienced in my life. I’m changed forever by it.

I spent so much time on friend’s couches and guest rooms, inhaling every therapy book I could find.

In one of them was Rumi’s poem.

I had become an expert at hiding the “bad” feelings away under lock and key… The idea of welcoming them all in & giving them a voice was a completely foreign concept. It has since acted as an anchor to my literal existence, and the sole catalyst to making this album.

I started making up little characters (guests) each day and writing songs from their point of view. It always ended up being a good mix of fact and fiction, allowing me to say the ugly thing without fully claiming it as my own.

My sophomore record, Another Year, came out March 2024, and I started recording this album immediately with the same collaborator / co-producer, Owen Lewis.

We tracked most of the bones that summer, but these songs required a pretty extensive amount of time.

We were so tunnel-visioned on finishing, and it became clear that - annoyingly - I had to step away, regain perspective.

I spent the following year driving back and forth to ATL and meticulously reworking each track with Jamie Martens & Andy Hull. Re-recording…re-writing…it was messy, frustrating, and tedious, almost surgical. But totally necessary.

A true testament to how much care was poured into these songs. It absolutely took a village.