To date Atlanta, Georgia based songwriter Christopher Paul Stelling has released 7 albums and played thousands of concerts across the US and EU. Over the last decade Stelling has toured as both headliner and as support for Son Little, Mavis Staples, and The Devil Makes Three, Ben Harper (who produced his 2020 album Best of Luck) and many others. Stelling released a trio of albums for indie favorite Anti- records (Tom Waits, Merle Haggard, Niko Case) and has performed multiple times at Newport Folk Festival and on CBS Saturday Morning. Stelling is known for his intricate finger-style guitar and road tested vocal delivery.

Forgotten But Not Gone & Few and Far Between is the new double LP by songwriter Christopher Paul Stelling.  Written and self-produced at home in the wake of a painful divorce from his partner of 13 years, Stelling describes the album as more of a life-raft.

 

« I’ve been hesitant to speak about it much, but the more I slowly do – the more I find how much the subject matter – and just the general situation itself – is so accessible and so familiar to so many.  Up until this point I’d been lucky in love. Recently I played a set of these songs live for the first time, and within the first minute of the first song, 4 people were audibly crying, It was revelatory for me as a writer and performer to meet my audience at this new place, at rock bottom, and then build our spirits back over the course of the show.  I’ve never written about love or loss or grief like this, mostly because I just hadn’t experienced it before.  This is the album I never wanted to make, but here we are, here I am. I don’t know where I’d be without my craft right now, I might not be here at all, and I’m grateful and humbled by it. »

This new album is in fact more 2 LPs, than a typically « long » album the way Stelling conceived it.  « I just had that much in me, and time was of the essence, I couldn’t let too much water pass under the proverbial bridge before I released these songs. »  These 20 new songs represent a turning point for Stelling, an artist who has been appreciated for his vulnerability in the past, but now probing the intricacies of marriage, separation, longing, grief, and most importantly rebuilding.

 

The record was written and recorded by Stelling at home, where he found himself living completely alone for the first time in his life.  « Being alone, keeps you honest – either that or it drives you insane. »  Stelling had delved into self recording and producing on his previous effort « Forgiving It All », but unlike that record which was recorded live with just himself and his guitar, Forgotten But Not Gone(…) finds Stelling arranging and playing all the instruments, sometimes as a full rock band, sometimes a quiet folk rock ballad, sometimes a raging chorus of feedback and drone.  « I can’t say I intended for the range to be there, but I think in it’s way the record represents all the stages of grief and longing, despair and hope that would naturally accompany such a life event.  I’m proud of what I’ve made here, and all I can hope for is that somehow it will find the right folks who are looking for something to help them get through something like what I went through, something that helps mend a broken heart, something that gets them back on their feet. »