, the striking new Rock Ridge Music album by Nashville-based singer-songwriter Matt Hires, pays off the promise the musician makes to himself in “Begin Again,” one of the album’s key songs, to “shake the dust and start over.”

American Wilderness was prefaced by a period of profound personal change for Hires. The well-traveled artist had previously issued two full-length albums, Take Us to the Start (2009) and This World Won’t Last Forever, But Tonight We Can Pretend (2013), on F Stop/Atlantic.

12.0pt;font-family:”Arial”,sans-serif’>“I think that was a big part of the change in my music,” says Hires. “There’s something about moving to a new city, and experiencing new things that helped in opening up my songwriting to new levels of honesty.”

12.0pt;font-family:”Arial”,sans-serif’>He recalls, “We started doing this thing called ‘Scotch ‘n’ Songs.’ The average size of the group was five or six of us. We would get together every other week and share new stuff that we’d been working on, and share a bottle of scotch or bourbon. We’d talk about the songs. Pretty much all of this album was born out of that, partially out of necessity. A few weeks would roll by, and I’d say, ‘Oh, man, I need a song to bring to the group,’ so I would sit down and force myself to write. I’d say, ‘What do you want to write right now? If you could turn on your radio or your iPod right now, what would you want to hear?’”

12.0pt;font-family:”Arial”,sans-serif’>“When I would write songs before,” he says, “I would have these things hanging over my head – ‘What’s my A&R guy at the record label going to think? What are my parents going to think?’ I tried to shed all of that, and just write what I wanted to write. I remember talking to one of my friends in the songwriting group, and he said, ‘Write what scares you.’ I took that idea and ran with it, and it made the record what it is.”

American Wilderness drew its stylistic inspiration from old and new strains of Americana and contemporaries whose work reflects Hires’ own engaging pop sensibility.

Southeastern. During the last year, I was listening to Brandon Flowers’ solo record The Desired Effect – I’m a big fan of The Killers. What I tried to do with this record was create songs that were lyrically interesting with something to say while remaining musically accessible, without being candy-coated.”

12.0pt;font-family:”Arial”,sans-serif’>“I grew up in the church – my dad was a pastor,” he says. “It was something I was familiar with and comfortable with my whole life. Moving to Nashville, we stepped away from the church and stopped going for a little over a year. I feel that was a really good thing for me. I didn’t stop thinking about that sort of thing. I wanted to look at it from outside the lens of Christian culture, and try to delve into what I actually believe, and be able to question things and not be afraid of that.”

12.0pt;font-family:”Arial”,sans-serif’>Though 12.0pt;font-family:”Arial”,sans-serif’>“A strong theme on the album is rebirth, new beginnings, and the idea that tomorrow doesn’t have to be like today,” he says. “The last song is ‘Don’t Let Your Heart Grow Cold.’ While it can go to some fairly dark places, I wanted to make sure it ended on a hopeful note. You can make it better. Winter always turns into spring.”