Bozeman Magazine

'My Best Friend' is one of the first songs I wrote for this new record. When it came time to record it, we went back to the stripped down country sounds of fiddle and steel guitar, and kept the production simple to give the lyrics plenty of space," said Eady about the song. To the Passage of Time first took shape in a frenetic burst of creativity back in the doldrums of quarantine. Over the course of a three-day period last August, the Fort Worth-based musician wrote more than half of the album, locking himself in his bedroom and emerging only when he felt completely burnt out. "I went in thinking I was going to write just one song—but then the songs kept coming, and I didn’t want to break the spell," Eady recalls. "I’d go to sleep with the guitar by the bed, pick it back up when I woke up the next morning, and do it all again. I’d never really experienced anything like that before." With its nuanced exploration of aging and loss and the fragility of life, To the Passage of Time arrives as the Mississippi-bred artist’s most lyrically complex and compelling work to date. As Eady reveals, the album’s understated power stems in part from the intentionality of the recording process, which involved enlisting Band of Heathens’ Gordy Quist as producer and gathering many of Eady’s favorite musicians he’s played with over the years (including Noah Jeffries on mandolin and fiddle, Mark Williams on upright bass and cello, and Geoff Queen on Dobro, pedal steel, and lap steel). To the Passage of Time will be Eady’s eighth studio album and follows his critically acclaimed I Travel On, which saw a deluxe release in 2019. NPR Music said, "I Travel On is the sound of a deep, restorative breath being taken, of wooden instruments pushing air around a room together in real time, of middle age as a source of strength instead of crisis." The album was also embraced by The Austin Chronicle, Rolling Stone, Noisey, Wide Open Country and many more.