There are some artists who just keep getting better, the more they seem to let go of expectations or boundaries set by other people. Andrew Combs is one of them. His latest two records, Sundays and Dream Pictures feel free and assured. More and more, Combs is creating his own canvas. Last week, we set up in a friend’s garden in Deventer, The Netherlands and filmed a live version of Heavy The Heart.

Dream Pictures, the sixth album from Andrew Combs, is a dreamy, dusky record for the quiet hours that bring each day to a close. It was during those nightly stretches of solitude, after his children had gone to bed, that Combs penned the record’s 12 songs. “That’s the best time for me to do anything creative,” says the Nashville resident, who’s become a fixture of modern-day American roots music over the past decade. “Six nights a week, I’ll come out to the garage to write or paint, and it’s a time for me to escape into my little world for awhile. A chance to take a big breath, in and out.”

Andrew Combs is creating his own world.

Combs co-produced Dream Pictures with drummer Dom Billett. “Dom bought a tape machine and wanted to learn how to use it, so he asked if I had any new songs,” Combs remembers. “That’s how everything began. I’d go over to Dom’s house, where he has a room filled with vintage keyboards and guitar pedals and drums, and we’d add cool weirdness to these songs. I didn’t have a grand thesis behind the album I was writing; I was just happy to be making something I was proud of, with one of my best friends.”

With the exception of instrumentalist Spencer Cullum, who contributed pedal steel to 10 songs, Dream Pictures was entirely recorded and performed by Combs and Billett. The two embraced all the imperfections that came with the homemade tracking process, finding the beauty in the blemishes, balancing the rawness of reel-to-reel recording with the smart finesse of Combs’ songwriting. They even captured Combs’ vocals with a series of live-in-the-studio performances, resisting the temptation to edit different takes together for a more polished — but admittedly less believable — product. “I love art that has just enough naivety to it, because it feels real,” says Combs. “We were figuring things out as we went along. We were creating our own world.”

“This record is about contentment: being at ease with who I am and where I am at in my life and career,” Combs explains. “It’s me sitting back at the end of each day and finding something that is inspiring, and embellishing on it. I don’t think many of these songs could’ve come if I was in turmoil. I think that dovetails with the album title, because being at ease with who I am lets my imagination run wild and gives me the ability to dream.”

Too Stoned To Cry

In between filming this live video and posting it a week later, there was more Andrew Combs news; Margo Price released a cover of his song Too Stoned To Cry, with Billy Strings. On her Substack, Price writes: “This past April, I went in the studio here in Nashville and recorded a single called “Too Stoned To Cry” featuring the multi talented and inimitable, Billy Strings. I’m so happy to say, this song is finally going to be released September 12th. The song was written by of one of favorite Nashville based artists, Andrew Combs. It was produced by my buddy Beau Bedford who also played the keys and recorded it in historic RCA Studio A with engineer Phillip Smith.” Watch the video below.

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Thank you for watching and enjoying this session. You’ll probably like some other sessions from The Influences’ archive too, like these earlier ones I filmed with Andrew Combs.