“I’m sitting in a hotel room in Grand Rapids, MI, staring out over the city cloaked in a swirling snowstorm. It’s beautiful and haunting all at once, a lot like Rayland’s music. This entrancing quality, like staring at a fire, is something so rare to find in a musician. Rayland Baxter has that special thing. That thing that keeps you coming back to the music over and over, finding new artifacts and gemstones hidden deep within the sounds and mystical poetry.”

“I pictured Wilco, the band, as hunter gatherers against a canvas of midwestern time-space, discovering one day a burning branch and carrying it with them.  But to carry that fire you needed a container, and the albums, like Ode to Joy, are the only vessels strong enough to carry the sweet and acidic mixture of pity and laughter, loneliness and trepidation, heartbreak and cautious optimism that is Wilco’s music.”