Two Weeks in the Woods

A letter to everyone who pressed play.

Two weeks ago I did the most hardest thing I’ve ever done as a creative person. I took music I’d made quietly, mostly alone, and put it somewhere anyone could hear it.

A friend put it perfectly the morning of the release: “So brave of you to put it out into the world.”

Honestly, it felt like standing in a doorway with the lights up, knocking, waiting to see if anyone would open up.

Many of you did. You opened the door — and then you wrote back. This letter is my attempt to tell you what that has felt like.

The album went places I never could

What I didn’t expect was where the music would end up. Over these two weeks, you’ve sent me notes from all over, and reading them back feels like watching the album take a trip without me.

Someone listened in a park in Philadelphia, in the shade on a perfect sunny day, and called it “perfection.” Another friend put it on while driving the Golden Circle in Iceland, past waterfalls and rock formations. One person had it on repeat all morning in Spain. A few of you played it on long drives — one through Moab, another for a full eighteen hours on the road. It scored lunchtime hikes, early-evening coding sessions, flights home, and more than one quiet walk.

But the ones that touched me mostwere the homes. “Listening to it with the family. My girls play piano and can appreciate your music on a different level.” “Our family is in the car listening right now. I love it.” One person wrote that their kids now request it by name — “Can you play that high school friend’s album?” — and that Teddy’s Ride is the runaway favorite of the ten-year-old demographic in their house.

I wrote a lot of this music to slow time down. Knowing it’s now part of yours is the whole thing. That’s it. That’s the prize.

What you heard in it

A handful of you, without comparing notes, reached for the same names: Keith Jarrett. George Winston. Debussy. Radiohead. Bon Iver. One friend said it best — “Hints of Keith Jarrett, but this is definitely your own.” Another described it as “peaceful, meditative, atmospheric — a hint of Radiohead on a couple tracks.”

I’ll be honest: hearing those names next to mine is dizzying. But the phrase I keep coming back to is “definitely your own.” That’s the only review I was ever really hoping for.

And then there were the responses that had nothing to do with influences at all — the ones that went straight to the body. “Goosebumps.” “Made me cry.” “Absolutely lush and gorgeous.” One person listened with their eyes closed, picturing the stream and the leaves of Big Cottonwood Canyon. Someone on a lunchtime hike said the music “made it bliss.” A fellow musician told me a single track was “a stirring song” they couldn’t shake.

You felt things. That means the music did its job.

The tracks you loved

I wasn’t going to count, but you made it impossible not to.

Cottonwood is, by a wide margin, the one you’ve claimed as your favorite — over and over. One friend said it “should be turned into a symphony performance because it’s that powerful.” It’s tied for me to a real place, and it means everything that so many of you found your own places inside it.

Teddy’s Ride is the joy-bringer (and, apparently, the ten-year-olds’ anthem). Shadow found its devoted fans — a few of you would happily listen to “a whole album of that soulful organ.” Bleed is the one that sits heaviest; people keep telling me it’s their favorite and that it makes them ache, which is exactly the contradiction I was chasing. And the title track, Waltz in the Woods, kept showing up on people’s shortlists alongside Thaw, Blue Water, Beginning, and Hope.

There’s no wrong favorite. But I love that you have one.

The breath at the end

A few of you caught something I wasn’t sure anyone would notice: the exhale at the very end of the record. “Seems intentional,” one of you wrote. “I’m not sure what to make of it.”

It was intentional. After the last note, there’s a breath — relief, release, the sound of finally letting go of something I’d held for a long time. One listener called it “a nice sigh of relief at the end of the final piece.” That’s precisely what it is. I’m glad it’s in there. I’m glad you heard it.

What this has meant to me

I’ll let you in on something. Finally having the courage to publish this music has reoriented my life more than I expected.

Over these past weeks I’ve been thinking seriously about what it would look like to give this work a much longer runway. I’ve worked incredibly hard on other projects over the years, and I’m proud of many of them — but this feels like the most honest expression of who I am, and the best thing I’ve made so far.

The quiet truth is that I’d keep doing this even if no one were listening. Crafting sound is how I slow the world down. But you are listening — in parks and on flights and on the family piano and on eighteen-hour drives — and that has turned a private practice into something I get to share. I don’t take a single message of yours for granted.

So: thank you. For pressing play. For writing back. For telling me where you were when you heard it, and what it stirred up, and which track you’ve put on repeat. You’ve been waiting to hear from me, and I’ve been a little quiet — partly because I’ve been busy in the woods, building what comes next.

There’s more coming. The poems, the stories behind each track, and a few things I’m not quite ready to name yet. Stay close.

With more gratitude than I know how to put into a paragraph,

Reese

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A Waltz in the Woods is out now everywhere you stream. If a particular track found you somewhere — a drive, a hike, a hard day — I’d still love to hear about it.