One could be forgiven for mistaking Hunter Paye‘s latest music video as a sort of roots-rock episode of “Rick Steves’ Europe.” The Bradford singer-songwriter took a four-month, six-country sojourn through the Mediterranean in 2021 and filmed much of the trip. He edited the footage into the video for “Alive Again,” the first single from his new LP, Blueprints for Flight.
Midway through the video, between shots of Paye grinning behind a pair of sunglasses as he traipses through Morocco, Italy, Greece, Egypt and Turkey, he sings a particularly revealing lyric, exposing the raw nerve at the heart of his new music:
“It took a while after you left to form a smile / Or transpose death into the song that I now sing.”
Paye’s global walkabout wasn’t just a sightseeing trip: He had all but fled Vermont after the May 2021 death of his mother, Tish Paye, sent him into an emotional tailspin.
“She was, and still is, my everything,” Paye told me by phone, ahead of the album release on Wednesday, October 30 — his mother’s birthday. “When she died, everything changed for me … Maybe this is cheesy, but I had to reevaluate everything. And I knew I couldn’t let my grief overwhelm me.
“But it was getting dark,” he continued. “Dark enough for me to realize it was time to do something about that.”
So Paye emptied his savings account and set out on his Mediterranean odyssey. As he confronted his profound sorrow, he also returned to the life of a professional musician, continuing a path he’d started while watching his mother die over the course of six weeks at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.
Paye was born and raised by his single mother on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River but moved to Bradford when he was 7. He launched his music career out west, however, spending two decades between Santa Barbara, Calif., and Portland, Ore. He logged 20,000 miles touring, playing with the likes of Train and Michelle Shocked. He also released five studio albums, including his 2017 West Coast swan song, Arrows in Orbit.
In 2018, a combination of his own medical issues and Tish’s declining health led him to quit touring and move back to the Green Mountains. A benign tumor on his pituitary gland, among other concerns, had made performing live difficult. So he returned to Bradford to care for his mother and himself. Music was on the back burner — until the darkness made it impossible for Paye to ignore his guitar.
“Songs just started pouring out of me,” he said. “I’d get back from Dartmouth every day and reach for the guitar. I wrote a lot of the album then, but those were the songs of grief because I was just hurting so badly.”
Those songs make up much of Blueprints for Flight. “Burning at Both Ends” and “Our Pandemic Song” are suffused with Paye’s wounded heart, decorated with apocalyptic lyrical imagery and a sense of grim fatalism. The darker tone is especially effective set against Paye’s folk-leaning roots-rock sound, adding an edge to otherwise tranquil and sunny sonic landscapes.
But those moments are set against what Paye calls his “phoenix songs,” the tunes he wrote after he returned from his four-month sabbatical abroad. His grief was tempered by recovery and a returning sense of longing for the wider world. “The Old You” and “Plant Me Anywhere” display a songwriter on the mend, smiling in the face of loss and grateful for the lessons learned, no matter how painful.
That dichotomy makes Blueprints for Flight a concept album, according to Paye.
“It’s about being part of a community of people who experience this kind of loss,” Paye said. “It’s not a small community. Those in it know that kind of emotional, raw feeling of losing someone they love, and I think it’s reflected in the songs. And there’s nothing wrong with raw songs — they’re deep wells, and we are too.”
Blueprints for Flight is also significant to Paye as his first record since returning to Vermont. He recorded it all in Bradford, after building a home studio and training himself to engineer and produce his own albums.
“Honestly, I thought I had built it to record the demos for my new album,” Paye said. “I had 100 tracks laid down before it hit me: This is the record.”
Having a home studio has been a game changer for Paye, who has already written his next album. But first he must reconcile with releasing his comeback album while not being able to tour with it or even play an album-release show.
“I’m not ready to close the book on playing live, but there’s no doubt that my health makes shows a tricky prospect,” Paye said. “It’s tough for me to say I can give a good performance next Thursday, because I don’t know how I’ll feel physically on next Thursday.”
So he’s releasing music videos for each of the album’s 11 songs, beginning with “Alive Again.” The music video for “The Piper and the Prey,” the album’s opening track, is set to drop the first week of November.
His health concerns and grief for his mother aside, Paye has a much clearer vision of his future as a musician. He hopes his first album as a returning Vermonter helps him engage with fellow Green Mountain musicians, something he hasn’t had a chance to do since moving back home.
“This is a mom album, a Vermont album, a healing album,” Paye said. “And if it helps anyone else cope with loss and come back to the light, I’d really like that.”
Blueprints for Flight is available now on all streaming services. Check out hunterpaye.com for more information.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2024.
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