Nashville-based, platinum recording artist Ron Pope has released “You’re OK,” the latest single and video from his forthcoming LP, Inside Voices, due June 2nd via Brooklyn Basement Records. The video was created by Nashville-based animator and illustrator Stephanie O’Byrne. “When my daughter stumbles and falls, I’ll often pick her up, dust her off, look at her, and say ‘You’re OK!’ Then she’ll take off running again,” Pope explains. “The fear that I won’t always be around to pick her up when she’s in trouble is one of the central forces guiding me as I teach her; I want to help her become strong and confident so that she can always dust herself off and keep going.”

With the release of “You’re OK,” Pope has partnered with MusiCares® to raise funds for their efforts towards assisting with the mental health needs of the music community.  Listeners can donate to support MusiCares using this special link: https://www.musicares.org/about?form=FUNYCEBKVPH

MusiCares helps the humans behind music because music gives so much to the world. Offering preventive, emergency, and recovery programs, MusiCares is a safety net supporting the health and welfare of the music community. Founded by the Recording Academy in 1989 as a U.S. based, independent 501(c)(3) charity, MusiCares safeguards the well-being of all music people through direct financial grant programs, networks of support resources, and tailored crisis relief efforts. For more information please visit: www.musicares.org

Inside Voices has a strong mental health component – created in the wake of back-to-back tragedies in Pope’s family, the album is the most vulnerable, stripped-back set he’s ever recorded. After being pummeled with one tragedy after another, the Pope family was in a very dark place of unbearable heaviness and overwhelming pain. For a year, he found himself unable to create, spending all of his energy trying to keep his family afloat. To gain some sense of normalcy, he packed up his wife and young daughter and headed to the beach. The Popes found peace and rest by the ocean; the simplicity of life by the water began to resurrect the spark of creativity, and he was able to write again.

When it was time to make the record, the “normal” grind of 18-hour days in the studio, locked away from his family, was out of the question, his family was still too fragile. He decided to record the album at the shore, finding a small, secluded cottage on the Peconic Bay, a rural area of Long Island. Enlisting the help of longtime friend and collaborator, Paul Hammer, the pair set about the painstaking work of recording – playing all of the instruments, carefully building each track layer by layer, as well as mixing and mastering it – by themselves. It was the happiest Pope had ever been while making a record. Here, there is no artifice; this is the sound of a man stripped bare, broken down, and then rebuilt. Inside Voices finds Ron at the height of his prowess, a writer speaking with honesty, vulnerability, and ultimately, gratitude. 

Inside Voices is available for pre-order HERE; the album will be available digitally and on vinyl, along with a limited edition, cream-colored pressing.

Photo Courtesy: Stephanie O’Byrne