Mike Munson decided on a fresh approach for his sixth full-length album, Let Some Light In. "All my other recordings are all live recordings," he explains. "What someone sees me doing onstage, it's going to sound exactly like the record. But I wanted this to be different."

Based in Winona, Minn., Munson has built a solid career as a blues-steeped guitar player and songwriter. He's honed his craft playing live in venues across the upper Midwest, and by deepening his study through a longtime connection with Bentonia, Miss., blues stalwart Jimmy "Duck" Holmes. For Let Some Light In, Munson continued to evolve his career through new collaborations. 

Notably, Let Some Light In did not begin with a guiding vision for a full album. On a return trip from playing a show in Duluth, Minn., Munson stopped at Carpet Booth studio just south of Rochester, Minn., to record three songs for the Treedome Live series. It was at Carpet Booth that Munson first met and worked with producer Zach Zurn. Motivated by that session, Munson reached out to Zurn to help him work out a new single, "Wheels," at which point Zurn connected with session players JT Bates on drums and Charlie Burkett on bass to round out the track.

Appropriately enough, it was "Wheels" that got Munson’s album rolling. "That was a great one-off experience," Munson recalls. "And then I had other songs kind of coming together, so it was like, 'Well, that was such a good time, and we all seem to enjoy working together in person and remotely. So let's just keep that going.' And then so Let Some Light In kind of came together piece by piece."

Because much of the work on the album was taking place during the thick of the pandemic, Munson didn't have tour dates competing for his time. Rather, he was able to immerse himself in the album and to take his time on it. In contrast to his previous approach to choosing final tracks from one or two live takes, Munson leaned into the deep well of production options available at Carpet Booth, and he relished the opportunity to collaborate with Zurn and Bates. "I wanted this to sound like a studio project with other people's input and ideas and contributions," he says.

Another person who provided vital input on the album is Siri Undlin, better known by the artistic name Humbird. Munson has known Undlin for quite some time, having performed at the same venues and festivals down the years. The idea to collaborate with Undlin came when Munson was working on an unnamed track. "I had the guitar parts and I was working on my own vocals and melody for it, and it was just was kind of striking out," Munson recalls. "And Siri's record was on at my house at the time … so I sent her the tune with zero direction. I said, 'This is what I've got. I would like you to run with it, if that's something you want to do.' She said, 'Absolutely. Give me a couple weeks,' and then came back with brilliant contribution."

In addition to providing lyrics and vocals to the song, Undlin's vision helped crystallize the final presentation of the album, giving it a title track. "Siri hadn't heard any of the other songs from the record," Munson says, "but lyrically, she was hitting at the heart and the soul that I was feeling with it — and then some — just in making some specific references that I felt like just hit home with the rest of the record. … It was like, 'Well, let's just call this song and album Let Some Light In. It symbolizes the whole effort of working together and how seamless that went."

Let Some Light In released on November 3, 2021, and even the artwork reflects the album's collaborative spirit. The cover features stained glass work by Jack Honeywell of Cedar Tree Studio, an atelier set in the Driftless region of Minnesota south of Winona. The inside of the physical CD sleeve, meanwhile, includes photos by Adam Kennedy, a photographer from Newcastle, England, who conducted the photo shoot remotely through an app that Munson installed on his own smartphone, allowing Kennedy to take photos from 4,000 miles away through the proxy of Munson's iPhone camera. "[Kennedy] spent a lot of his time in the pandemic doing photoshoots of American musicians," Munson explains. "To have a European lens on American music is sometimes really helpful to kind of recenter what it is we're doing or working on here; you know, just to have someone super excited about American music."

Now that the album is out in the world and Munson has been touring the Midwest in support of it, he acknowledges that the music continues to evolve. "When I play it out live, it's a very different set of songs, obviously, without all of Zach's production and without JT's exploration in the middle there, which I really enjoyed," he says. "But they're completely different songs live, which is exciting to me.”

Mike Munson performs Thursday, March 10, at Sociable Cider Werks in Minneapolis. He'll perform at the High Court Pub in Lanesboro, Minn., on Saturday, March 12, and at 10k Brewing in Anoka, Minn., on Sunday, March 13.

External Link

Mike Munson - official site