https://www.thesecretbeach.ca

Everyone loves a secret:
a shortcut through the woods, a fishing hole, a beach.

I’m at the Secret Beach now, and I’m reminded that it’s been years since Micah Erenberg merged into the rocks and trees and sand that line this endless spine of a beach – a beach that arches out of an inland ocean like a giant waking from a marshy sleep. How he did this, I can’t tell you. But it came to him as if by revelation: if place is being, then you must become that place: become the Secret Beach: become a firmament for sunny summer days: become a place where you feel like you belong, a place that reminds you of home, a place that is home. And so he became the beach. This is what the Songs from Secret Beach do, too – they can shatter and scatter you into the winds, they can peer into you as if you were glass, they can weather the edges of your broken bottles. And they allow for others – like me – to reflect. You can hear them easier out here. Listen. Put your ears to the ground. Do you hear it? Each grain of sand sings a secret song. Each one is no less important than another. I hear billions around me. A chorus of melodies swarm along the shoreline. This must be how Micah makes his songs – he simply nets them as if they were butterflies.

https://tacotapesmusic.bandcamp.com/

Taco Tapes is a collaboration steered by Ben Walden and Jeremy James Meyer. Both raised in the Pacific Northwest and in the folk music tradition, they cite their parents, more than anything, in initiating them down this path.