New Single // Mississippi Cypress

This track began in the still waters of Horseshoe Lake, a crescent-shaped oxbow cradled beside the Mississippi River in southern Illinois—a place etched into American memory by Mark Twain and the drifting journey of Huck Finn. I was there with my family, staying in a small cabin, and one afternoon I paddled out on a board with my dog Tucker, weaving through ancient bald cypress trees that rise eerily from the flooded lakebed. These giants once stood on dry ground, but now their roots are submerged year-round as the water creeps higher—a slow drowning shaped by upstream levee construction, agricultural runoff, and a century of river engineering that altered the Mississippi’s natural floodplain.

Far from shore, I attached the PlantWave to a solitary cypress—one of a trio standing sentinel in the lake’s center. Back in my studio, I played the MIDI signals from that tree through a Moog Voyager and a Roland Juno, sculpting dark, haunting textures that echo the uneasy presence of those trees. Mississippi Cypress is their voice: proud, weathered, and justifiably a little pissed off. It’s a song for a disappearing landscape—and a reminder that even the most rooted beings can be lost to rising tides if we don’t start listening.