Even when you know where you’re going, you don’t know what you’ll find there. Jeremy Nail went looking for Georgia O’Keeffe’s old stomping grounds in Abiquiu, N.M., but ended up confronting majesty and ruin in the Land of Enchantment.
“When I was driving through Abiquiu, I was struck by the desolation. Abandoned buildings and houses where it felt like ghosts haunted the streets. A past in disrepair. Parts of town surely are preserved, but not everything can be. Similar to areas of most cities today,” wrote the Austin singer-songwriter of the road trip that inspired his most recent single, “Abiquiu.”
“Once I got a little ways out of town, the landscape opened up and lifted me to another place entirely. The vastness and awe-inspired beauty of the red cliffs and lakes took on an otherworldly feel. ‘Abiquiu’ came from the idea that great beauty rests on the other side of suffering. In this dimension, beauty and suffering are so closely intertwined, it’s almost like one cannot exist without the other. It’s part of our journey.”
Following the emotional summit of 2016 sophomore LP My Mountain, which came out in the aftermath of a bout with sarcoma that stole his left leg, Nail now returns with Live Oak. Pastoral and poetic, the new album – arriving August 17 – finds the native Texan from Albany ever reflective and resilient, breathing in life’s landscapes, literal and figurative, and exhaling a peaceful sense of place.
Watch “Abiquiu” here:
This article appears in June 22 • 2018.