Exploring the highway as a means of outrunning and temporarily escaping profound loss is probably the most accessible medicine for those wanting to escape their immediate surroundings and sticky situations. This theme has been visited and sung about in too many ways to count. However, each tale is brought to new colors courtesy of its respective songsmith.
Wilmington, North Carolina-based singer-songwriter Brad Heller keeps it simple and flavorful with digestible lyrics that make his narrative lyrics enticing. On his new track ” Incinerating Miles, ” that Glide is premiering below, Heller wraps the inducing vulnerability of Vic Chesnutt and the grandiose Americana landscapes of Nashville’s most underrated troubadours. His tales of hitting the road acts as a candid lens to view the pavement as a self-medicating tool.
“I wrote ‘Incinerating Miles’ back during the pandemic,” says Heller. “Like so many people during that time, I experienced loss, and I just found myself driving around for days on end, clearing my head. The song is about self-alienation, uncertainty in a time of complete chaos, and basically just dealing with loss and using continual movement to try to avoid and defy that loss.”
“Incinerating Miles” is the first track to emerge from Heller’s forthcoming album, From What You’ve Built, due out this fall, recorded with Heller’s longtime collaborator, co-producer and engineer Patrick Ogelvie at Wilmington’s Flux Audio & Video. Having worked together on five of Heller’s six albums, over the years the pair has developed a close friendship, as well as a deep synergy in the studio.
“I started writing ‘Incinerating Miles’ at the height of the pandemic. Jobless, I drove aimlessly around the coast of North Carolina with my dog in search of clarity and purpose in a time of uncertainty. Sometimes with a coffee in hand, sometimes with a beer. It started to become evident that the open space of the song was mimicking the open highways and endless skies in front of me. The lyrics reflect the alienation of a character thrust into unemployment as global chaos ensues and an unpredictable future lies ahead,” says Heller.
“After laying down the drums and bass, we slowly layered the track with auxiliary instruments in the hope of capturing a Van Morrison-meets-Stones groove that felt drifting and intoxicating at the same time. I wanted the song to breathe, to let space be its own instrument. I’m also a huge Brian Wilson fan, so we tracked layers of harmonies to make the chorus explode with color and depth. I was trying to find a balance between dynamics and space with this song.”
From What You’ve Built was made at a relaxed pace over several years, constructed track by track, with Heller laying down a core foundation of acoustic guitar, harmonica, percussion and, of course, lead vocals. Aiding in the album’s journey were drummer Ronn Pifer and keyboardist Phil Bevilacqua, as well as Paul Edelman (guitars, backing vocals), and another longtime Heller collaborator, Ted Crenshaw (guitars, bass, lap steel guitar, backing vocals).
While influenced by his decades living on the Carolina coastal plain, with its lush greenery, rivers, and oceans, the record still has an undeniable space—a wide-open, big-sky vastness that can only be attributed to Heller’s Southwestern roots.
“Arizona, as a place, has tremendously influenced my music. I think all that open space out West contributes to this cinematic openness in my songs. I was really going for a cinematic feel with this record—these big crescendos, and then you break everything down. And then you bring it up to a crescendo again. This is the first time I’ve ever used so many fadeouts on a record. Taking a page from Springsteen, we’ve got all these grandiose outros that just keep going and going. They grab you to listen longer once the lyrics are done. Eventually things fade out, but when they do it’s still very much the apex of the song. Subliminally, you feel it, even if you don’t have it cranked up.”
