Aaron Embry waited thirty-six years to make his debut album, Tiny Prayers. It’s the type of record you only get a chance to make once -- an album he began writing while on the road with his friend, Alexander Ebert. Before that, Embry was a hired gun for some other folks you may have heard of (Willie Nelson, Elliot Smith). Mostly a piano player, this particular set of songs came to Embry via an old tenor guitar, in an octave mandolin tuning, and a harmonica.
“Moon of the Daylit Sky,” the album’s opening track and first single, is a rarified thing. Opening with just acoustic guitar and harmonica, like half the other folk songs before it, something immediately sets Embry’s apart. The arrangement is perfectly sparse, but there’s a bit of old-fashioned magic as some brushed drums, mandolin, and Embry’s tinkling of the ivory fill out the song’s skeletal frame.
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