It’s no secret most of us would just as soon put 2020 in our review mirror and rarely speak of it again. Yet, for Houston, Texas-based Brightwire, there’s one more occasion to mark what 2020 did to the world.

March 11, 2021 will see the release of the newest Brightwire (Samuel and Kimberly Barker and Michael Helfenstein) album Cracked, Flawed and Frayed. Marking the occasion of the Barker’s 4^th anniversary, but more solemnly the date the United States became entrenched against the viral behemoth. As Samuel put it “We used this dark period to create an album we’re proud of and feel absolutely at peace with since we could not do it with the peripheral world.”

The second track from their forthcoming release “Tears Through the Sunshine” collaborated once again with friend/fellow songwriter Ben Hall to convey a story of an individual who takes out their past on those near them, unable to let go, conveying the reality of such a person and actions through lyrics like “Everybody in this town knows/that lonely is a verb/and sorrow is a state/forgotten are the words/written too late”.

The rooted-Country/Americana style of Brightwire, paired in the video with the road trip views of New Mexico and Arizona, I-40 and Route 66, and the juxtaposition of unrelenting beauty in a time of unyielding stress, brings a sense of warmth and balance on what is an uphill climb for each of us individually.

Brightwire looks to March 11, 2021 as a celebration of the new record, an anniversary, and a reclamation. Until then, we have “Tears Through the Sunshine”.