[Cover photo credit to Misty Lynn Bergeron]
Michigan songwriter Chris Bathgate recently released his first music in five years, “Bruises”, and announced new album The Significance of Peaches for a May 13th via Quite Scientific. The next single from his sixth full-length album has also now been unveiled, “Don’t Look Back,” along with a video. The new album features the support of a parlor organ.
Regarding the new track, Bathgate notes that it relates to the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, a story of love and an underworld journey:
‘Don’t Look Back’ is an interpretation/echo of Orpheus and Eurydice, one part Greek myth, one part personal myth–it has a bit of an attitude.
The Significance of Peaches is inspired by Bathgate’s time spent living in rural areas, from the National Forests of Michigan to farms in Northern California, along with the significance of peaches in his recent life and the development of an important relationship.
Discussing this time, Bathgate explains:
Before I moved to California, I spent a summer in the Huron-Manistee National Forest. I was camping, parking my van in the woods, sometimes working as a carpenter. There are orchards on the westside of Michigan, and late that summer I ate every local Michigan peach I saw. I would give peaches to people I cared about, sometimes trying to express exactly what I meant by the gesture. Here, please have this–a focal point of this exact and singular sacred summer, a ripe local peach. It’s been nice to be alive with you here, Carpe Diem, I love you. The interest followed me into a changing life, into the wonderful Co-ops of Northern California. Then to the Embarcadero Farmers market, while living in SF with the now mother of my children.
Over the course of a last decade, and five albums prior, Bathgate has toured across the US and some of Europe, and performed a NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
