#faithlessact

Official BIO:

For decades, Michael Landgarten has been writing songs that explore the space where everyday experience meets deeper questions of identity, love, loss, and meaning. After releasing his acclaimed solo album Back To You in September 2025, Landgarten returns with The Long Highway, the debut full-length release from Michael Landgarten and The Converts, arriving June 26. Though the band is new in name, its roots stretch back more than thirty years through a network of longtime friendships and musical collaborations. Featuring Jay Fortin (Scissorfight) on guitar, Marc McElroy (Elroy, Tiger Saw) on bass and vocals, and Robbie Kneeland (High Range) on drums and vocals, The Converts bring together musicians from across New England's rock, indie, bluegrass, and Americana communities to create a sound that feels both timeless and entirely their own.

Recorded primarily live in Kneeland's rustic barn studio in York, Maine, The Long Highway captures the chemistry of a band that thrives on instinct and interaction. With engineer Rick Watson documenting performances as they unfold, the recordings favor feel over perfection, often requiring only a handful of takes before the magic reveals itself. The result is an album steeped in American roots traditions while remaining difficult to categorize—equal parts heartland rock, country soul, folk philosophy, and ragged electric grit. Some have jokingly called it "grunge-ry"—country and grunge meeting somewhere in the middle—but the band's sound ultimately belongs to no single genre.

The album's focus tracks, "The Long Highway" and "The Flow," showcase the depth and range of Landgarten's songwriting. "The Long Highway" follows a man confronting both mortality and fate with startling clarity, using a looming encounter with ICE as the backdrop for a meditation on acceptance, transcendence, and what lies beyond the surface of things. Influenced as much by Leonard Cohen's spiritual inquiry as by the earthy musicality of Los Lobos, the song finds peace amid uncertainty. Meanwhile, "The Flow" emerged from a transformative trip to Spain, where Landgarten experienced a rare sense of ease and freedom before recognizing how longing, memory, and attachment can pull us away from the present moment. What begins as a reflection on lost love evolves into a meditation on surrender, awareness, and the mysterious connection between being fully alive and facing death itself.

Together, these songs reveal an artist unafraid to wrestle with life's biggest questions while remaining grounded in melody, story, and song.

Upcoming show: