Kevin Morby settles into the friendly confines of the National’s Aaron Dessner’s upstate New York studio Long Pond on Little Wide Open, his eighth studio album. The LP is led by the single “Javelin” and will be released May 15 through Dead Oceans. An extensive 2026 tour is also on the books.
“Little Wide Open is set to a backdrop of tangled highways, towns with populations less than 100,000, roadside crosses, a rock and roll romance, coupling butterflies, being an American entertainer, Econoline vans and more,” Morby says. “This is, without a doubt, the most personal and vulnerable album I’ve ever made. Aaron did a heroic job of holding me back from throwing too many tricks at the songs, and letting my stories stand a bit naked. Despite its title, this album is, in fact, very wide open.”
“Javelin” references Morby’s relationship with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and is described as “a song I wrote about being in love with someone you keep circling around the globe, relentlessly traveling through the air and down highways and then returning home alone to middle America.” The track features Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath, of whom Morby enthuses, “I had invited her into the studio and asked that she create a backing choir out of just her voice, but her presence is so special that her ‘backing vocals’ can’t help but take the lead.”
Elsewhere on Little Wide Open, Morby gets a lift from Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, MUNA’s Katie Gavin, Lucinda Williams, Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy, Mat Davidson, Oliver Hill, Rachel Baiman, Stuart Bogie, Tim Carr, Andrew Barr, Benjamin Lanz, Colin Croom and Tom Moth. Novelist Rachel Kushner also contributes an essay about the album, in which Morby traces many album themes back to the book Field Guide to the North American Butterfly.
“It’s all in there,” he says. “I was on this drive through Arkansas by myself. I noticed that butterflies kept hitting my truck, as they were trying to cross the highway. I went to Dickson Street Books in Fayetteville, and looked at this book. It was this moment where I was like, what does it mean that there are butterflies crossing the highway? What do they mean as a symbol? The people who died going to my show [in a 2021 Denver car accident], it means that. It means me and Katie meeting on the road and touring together and falling in love. It’s like, we’re floating around. Flying over the highway like we are not butterflies. Like we are not fragile.”
Morby will be on the road internationally from May 8 at Levon Helm’s barn studio in Woodstock, N.Y., through July 18 in Munich. Many dates will feature support from Liam Kazar.
