ArtsATL

Your Guide To The Arts In Atlanta

Atlanta-based visual artist and musician Lonnie Holley has announced the September 21 release of his third album, MITH, the followup to 2013’s Keeping A Record Of It. The video for the aptly titled first single I Woke Up In A Fucked-Up America, created by Atlanta videographers Matt Arnett and Ethan Payne, was released today.

The 10 tracks of MITH will include collaborations with fellow artist Laraaji, the late Richard Swift, folk duo Anna & Elizabeth, experimental musician Shahzad Ismaily, Della Mae’s Courtney Hartman, saxophonist Sam Gendel, and the Nelson Patton duo. The album is being released on the Jagjaguwar label (also home to Bon Iver, Angel Olsen and Dinosaur Jr). Holley performs at Atlanta’s Symphony Hall on July 17 with indie band Animal Collective, the first date in a 10-city summer tour.

“We all have a certain amount of care that we put into our artistic efforts, but because of the way I grew up, I see myself as being responsible for each little thing I do,” Holley told ArtsATL in a profile published in January of 2017. “I might not have understood the seriousness of it when I started out doing this. I wasn’t self-aware of me being an artist. I was aware of me needing something to take me away from the daily stress of the situations I was involved with, being a part of something I couldn’t get away from. The art allowed me to break away and train myself to focus elsewhere and meditate, concentrate a lot deeper on the situation.”