Mark Erelli and Lay Your Darkness Down

During a performance in summer 2020, Mark Erelli looked down at his guitar neck and couldn’t believe what he saw. Or rather, what he couldn’t see: his fingers on the frets. Soon after, a diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative eye disease, would bring some answers, but it also yielded new questions. Does diminished eyesight correlate with lesser insight? Does your songwriting change when your perception of the world around you changes? These questions, and Erelli’s hunt for creative agency, are at the heart of his new album Lay Your Darkness Down (due Feb 3 on Soundly Music).

Initially, Erelli’s new physical limitations created a feeling of immense isolation. In need of connection and catharsis, he turned as he often did to songwriting. “The only way I could console myself was to know that I was still going to be able to have some creative agency,” Erelli notes. “I could then bring whatever I was feeling or wanting to express into reality.” He began to craft songs with an intricate, labored approach like never before. “It's much more like an oil painting, where you're layering different tones and colors one at a time.” His initial painstaking approach was inspired by ‘70s musician Jeff Lynne, former ELO member and famed producer for George Harrison and Tom Petty. “I've never gotten this finely attuned to the level of musical and technical detail that I did this time around. That was probably a way of compensating for the lack of control that I had in other parts of my life,” he reflects on a time in the immediate wake of the diagn… Read More