Song Premiere: Slaid Cleaves, “Through the Dark”
Texas singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves is readying a new release, Together Through the Dark, for early next year. We here at Folk Alley are thrilled to premiere its first single and title track today.
Cleaves co-wrote the song (“Through the Dark”) with his long-time friend and collaborator, Rod Picott. Both grew up in a small town in Maine and have gone on to become some of the finer “songwriters’ songwriters” on the scene these days.
Indeed, considering these friends’ near-lifelong collaboration adds a special tenderness to its lyrics about making it through darkness together.
Cleaves has said the song is, simply, “about offering comfort in hard times.”
His friendship with Picott aside, the song carries with it the weight of the past couple of years, as so many people were isolated alongside one another throughout the hardest days of the pandemic.
Songs about surmounting dark days together are always imbued with emotion but there is new light cast here when an artist such as Cleaves drops the emotionally raw line, “Can’t fight the storm outside / but we can wait it out.”
Cleaves’s first album in five years, Together Through the Dark is due March 3, 2023.
Socials:
Facebook: @slaidcleaves
Instagram: @slaidc
Twitter: @slaidc
