Mike Richmond has spent decades making music, but “Without An Audience,” exclusively premiering on American Blues Scene, may be his most direct statement yet about why artists keep creating in the first place.
As a co-founder of Athens, Georgia’s Love Tractor, Richmond emerged from the Athens college-town scene that produced bands like R.E.M., The B-52s, and Pylon. The title track from his forthcoming debut solo album, due June 12 via New West subsidiary Strolling Bones Records, turns on a simple, enduring question: what happens when the work matters more than the applause?
“Without an Audience” began unexpectedly while Richmond was learning Bob Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell.” He tells me, “One of the lyrics is, ‘And his only audience was the moon and stars.’ Then I thought of Vincent Van Gogh and Emily Dickinson and how they did what they did without any applause.”
Richmond populates the song with solitary figures singing to trees, floors, and empty rooms—people creating, praying and expressing themselves regardless of whether anyone is there to hear it. He has spoken openly about questioning the purpose of continuing to write and record after Love Tractor’s heyday. While working on the album, he found inspiration in artists whose work outlived their own recognition.
“I was asking myself, why am I writing these songs? Is anyone going to care?” Richmond explained. “I’m an old guy who played in a pretty obscure band back in the ’80s—does anyone want to hear my new stuff? But I’m fascinated by people like William Blake, Van Gogh, Nick Drake and others who did what they did and never got a lot of applause for it. So I kept writing and recording, and I started to grow more confident in my mission.”
For the album, Richmond assembled a cast that includes bassist David Barbe, drummer Joe Rowe, pedal steel player John Neff, fiddler Adam Poulin, Ben Hackett, Jason NeSmith and Neil Rosenbaum.
The track recalls a jangling immediacy that once flowed so naturally out of Athens, with an understated country sweep that stands as its strongest asset. Every section arrives exactly when it should. Richmond’s deep, expressive vocal anchors the performance, and the chorus opens wide with the sort of melodic clarity that once turned three-minute country singles into lifelong companions.
Ironically, a song about creating without recognition is likely to find plenty of listeners.
