John Dennis has seen a lot in his young life. The Nashville-based singer-songwriter lost his girlfriend to a car accident during his first year of college, and turned to alcohol to deal with the devastating loss. His forthcoming sophomore album Second Wind chronicles his journey back to sobriety, with raw, frank accounts of his trials and tribulations in trying to put down the bottle.
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Despite its subject matter, it’s a hopeful album, as seen especially on new track “Til the Morning.” a plainspoken ode to the power of taking things one day at a time.
“‘Til the Morning’ began as an attempt to write a lullaby for a friend of mine who was struggling with depression and with several of life’s bad breaks all happening on top of each other—as they are so apt to do,” Dennis explains. “Musically, it draws from traditional Irish and Scottish folk music, specifically the 18th century melody ‘The Caledonian Hunts Delight,’ which was used by Robert Burns as a setting for his poem ‘Ye Banks and Braes.’
“It is a song of one person saying to another that, though it is totally human to be caught beneath the weight of it all, with the morning and with letting go comes a legitimate hope that life can get better, that any wound can heal, and that love can and will remain constant through any measure of night.”
Second Wind is out July 28. Listen to “Til the Morning” below.
