An evening with
John Doe &
Kathleen Edwards
Four Year Bender Duo (Ryan Smith and Sean Leahy)

John Doe
Kathleen Edwards

“Like Clint Eastwood, John Doe is an unusually handsome American pop-culture figure with an unusually hardy career...the songs play Doe's steely frontiersman reserve against his
big tenor...”— The New Yorker

On June 12 Yep Roc Records released John Doe 's much anticipated A Year in the Wilderness , the follow-up to 2005's acclaimed Forever Hasn't Happened Yet, of which Rolling Stone said, “John Doe proves again that this punk legend/journeyman actor can still make great music.”

Produced by long time collaborator Dave Way and John Doe in Los Angeles at The Way Station, the album opens with the haunting sound of a church organ in the 20 second piano vignette “The Wilderness,” then launches into the gritty “Hotel Ghost,” setting a darker tone than his previous solo efforts. Doe laments, “Recording in winter always hits you right in the guts, `cause it usually rains and makes you want to close down and pull inside.” Yet like all of Doe's work, Wilderness continues to explore the artistic and emotional common ground between punk rock and American roots music with its simple yet powerful—and in this case animalistic—themes of love, loss, destruction and redemption.