ABOUT US

The Grahams / 2023
Let’s get one thing straight: this is not a “greatest hits” record.

Alyssa and Doug Graham have been together for more than three decades, and they’ve been making music together—as kids growing up in Jersey, across the New York City jazz scene, and officially as The Grahams—for nearly as long. But with their latest release, a self-titled album featuring ten tracks from across their career, they’re not just looking back. They’re defining who they are.

A decade ago, the duo made a plan and a promise: three concept albums in ten years, exploring America and its music. They spent a year on a Mississippi riverboat, absorbing the “swampy” sensibility for their 2013 debut, Riverman’s Daughter. For 2015’s Glory Bound, they crisscrossed the country by train, playing roots music inspired by life on the railroad. For the trilogy’s final installment, they blazed down Route 66 on motorcycle, writing the roaring, genre-defying Kids Like Us.

Ten years and a pandemic EP later (2021’s Sha La La), the all-consuming project has come to a close, but The Grahams aren’t the same as when they started. Now parents to a young daughter, founders of a burgeoning label (Nashville’s 3Sirens), and musicians with a growing bent toward indie pop, the band is seeing things differently. But for a new chapter to begin, the last one needed a proper bookend.

So, how to honor a decade of musicianship through a lens that feels current and true? The answer was simple: After years trying on the sounds of the country, The Grahams are sounding like themselves.

With The Grahams, the band pays homage to the project that consumed their last decade, but this is no retrospective. Instead, the album takes ten songs from their catalog and pours them through a new filter: what they’ve learned, how they’ve changed, and perhaps most centrally, how they sound. “When I listen to these new imaginings, I hear a sense of resolve,” Alyssa says. “Not that they’re better or worse, but perhaps our approach is more resolute. It’s been 10 years—one would hope we’ve learned a thing or two.”

The tracks were selected by polling friends and peers—and a bit of soul searching. And while they bear some resemblance to their Americana roots, they lean harder in a new direction, weaving threads of The Grahams’ other influences: the bands they grew up with, the input of their collaborators, and the ever-evolving love affair that now includes their child. In the studio, this attitude left more room for play. “We kept asking, ‘What would we normally do?’ And then, ‘How can we definitely not do that?’” Doug says.

Track by track, the changes are transformative, stripping the songs down in some cases, dressing them up in others. On “Glory Bound,” what was once a bold, from-the-chest manifesto becomes a shimmering reflection on hope and regret, building around a subtle, hypnotizing riff. “Listening back to my approach, originally and now, I'm a different person,” Alyssa says. “You can hear it in my voice.”

“The Wild One” gets equally stripped of its bravado. “Originally, we felt like that song was perfect,” Doug says. “It was over-dramatic in all the right places. This new version is so much simpler, just telling a story.” Today, the song’s nostalgia gives way to grit, and a meaning that’s sharpened over time. “We took out a portion and focused on the most meaningful line to us, which is, “Don't believe the lies they tell you; Don't you know they'll buy and sell you,” Alyssa says. “Which sort of sums it all up.”

From Kids Like Us, “Painted Desert” graduates to focus track status. The new recording feels “more rock and roll” and less produced, channeling the “lush, psychedelic backdrop” of its Route 66 muse. “This song has its own magic built in,” Alyssa says. And while some may be deeper cuts, certain inclusions on The Grahams were no-brainers. “‘A Good Man’ was never a question for this project,” Alyssa says. “I think people love it because it’s so honest.” The reimagining plays up that naked honesty with a fresh layer of tenderness—and less of its old twang.

For the band, there’s a lot less ego in music these days. “We’ve had a long journey together, both musically and personally,” Alyssa says. “We’re in a more weightless place now. We’re not so precious about it all.” With time, they’ve found there’s less to prove, and the result feels lived-in and unconstrained.

The band credits much of that ease to the record’s team—seasoned all-stars in their own right. The Grahams was engineered by Dex Green, the band’s longtime producer and trusted friend, and produced by Dan Molad (Lucius, Coco), who they first worked with alongside the late Richard Swift on Kids Like Us. “He’s been a true creative force for us,” Alyssa says. “And he's great at bringing people together.” For The Grahams, that group included Ray Jacildo (The Black Keys) on keys, Jack Lawrence (Jack White) on bass, and Lucius, who lend mesmerizing backing vocals to several tracks and feature on “Lay Me Down.”

The album was recorded over ten days at 3Sirens, The Grahams’ East Nashville studio and label. Opened in September 2021, the space was envisioned not only as a platform for acts they admired, but a place where artists could just play. “We wanted to create an environment where people could leave it all at the door,” Alyssa says. “Where they felt safe to create something they loved, not what their label wanted from them.”

Overseen by Green, the sessions are arranged by invitation, with recording, mixing, and mastering in-house. “We see this as a community,” Doug says. “We want to be a label for artists having a tougher time getting their music heard, or don't have all this fanfare behind them.”

While 3Sirens has welcomed a slew of budding acts, it’s released projects by several major names, too. John Doe, Margo Price, JD McPherson, and David Garza have all made use of the studio, while heavy hitters like Lilly Hiatt, Andrew Combs, Dylan LeBlanc, and Elizabeth Cook have appeared on the label’s compilation albums, With Love Parts 1 & 2. Already, the rebel operation is turning heads. Conceived as a no-rules creative salon, 3Sirens is increasingly regarded as putting out some of the industry’s most notable work.

“We want to empower artists,” Alyssa says of the project’s bottom line. “And these walls want to hear some stories.” In the end, it’s a pure distillation of what the band is about these days: art for art’s sake, created among friends.