SHAKE THE DUST | INTERVIEW + TRACK REVIEW

Some records feel less like albums and more like the quiet conversations people have with themselves while driving home alone at night. Everything Will Be Okay lives in that space. Built from slow-burning Americana, reflective songwriting and deeply human imperfections, Shake the Dust create music that doesn’t try to escape hardship so much as sit honestly beside it. Across the album, moments of loneliness, resilience, ageing, uncertainty and hope drift in and out like passing headlights on an empty highway, never overstated, never forced. There’s a warmth to the record too, the feeling of real people in a room capturing something fragile before it disappears. In a world increasingly obsessed with speed, polish and artificial perfection, Shake the Dust lean fully into humanity instead. In this conversation with Lucid News, the band opens up about vulnerability, emotional survival, poetic songwriting, imperfection, and why sometimes the most powerful reassurance isn’t certainty — it’s simply hearing someone else say: everything will be okay. This is a paid collab with Shake The Dust.

TRACK REVIEW - SUNNY'S SONG

I found myself flicking through Everything Will Be Okay before landing on “Sunny’s Song” — and honestly, this was the one that stayed with me. There’s something incredibly somber and human about the track that immediately cuts through. I’m always a sucker for songs sung with genuine feeling rather than perfection, and “Sunny’s Song” leans fully into that emotional honesty. Nothing feels forced or overperformed. It simply exists exactly as it needs to.

The chorus in particular really lands emotionally, especially when the doubled vocals begin to swell underneath everything. For such a restrained and downbeat track, there’s still this quiet power sitting inside it that slowly builds without ever losing its intimacy. The keys throughout the song tie everything together beautifully too, almost catching the song every time it begins to emotionally unravel and gently carrying it forward again. It’s reflective, fragile and deeply heartfelt.

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The title Everything Will Be Okay feels reassuring, but also slightly uncertain, almost like something you tell yourself while still trying to believe it. Was that tension intentional?

The title came from a card someone gave me during a difficult time I was going through.  It simply said “Everything Will Be Okay” - in the context of the card it is being made as a definitive statement or declaration.  In the context of what is going on in the world I can see how it might create tension or a convey a subtle uncertainty - but there is no question mark so I have to hope and believe everything will work out and be okay in the end.

Your music sits between stripped-back folk intimacy and these slow emotional swells. Do you think vulnerability becomes more powerful when it gradually builds rather than arriving all at once?

I think most humans, including myself, struggle with vulnerability but we are not forthcoming when it comes to talking about it or exposing it in ourselves.  So in the natural sense we reveal vulnerability gradually almost in a way to test out how we will be perceived when we expose those parts of ourselves.  In the music this isn’t an intentional approach just the way we write and record the songs as we write them.

A lot of Americana music romanticises struggle, but your songwriting feels more grounded in actually living through it. How do you stop hardship from becoming just another aesthetic?

I think as a songwriter it is just about staying true to yourself.  When you write about something that you or someone close to you has experienced it will be authentic. Writing about ideas that I haven’t lived through always makes for a bad song in my experience and I generally stay away from that approach.  I realize it can be done and there are folks in places like Nashville who can churn out songs purely based on a concept whether they have any experience with it or not.  I should note too though people often conclude that every song I write is somehow autobiographical which isn’t always exactly the case.  In my songwriting process I am simply trying to organize a group of fragmented experiences or emotions from across a lifetime into something semi-cohesive that works well with the music or melody.  Songs about hardship or struggle tend to come easier - maybe that is because we all can relate to having the blues and music is the best medicine to cure it.  Happy songs are actually really hard to write - at least a good one.

There’s a loneliness woven throughout the album, but also this quiet persistence underneath it. Do you think hope is something people naturally hold onto, or something they have to actively fight for?

It is going to be different for every person.  Some people are more resilient than others, some more hopeful, some more skeptical.  Personally, I find I have to often fight to stay hopeful and to push through difficult times.  Just taking it one day at a time I find is a good approach.  Dwelling on too much or worrying about things too far ahead is overwhelming and accomplishes nothing for the moment you are currently living in.

Bands like Wilco and Jason Isbell are masters at making small human moments feel enormous emotionally. When you’re writing, are you chasing emotional detail more than dramatic storytelling?

I come from a background of poetry - it is what I studied in university.  Although my songwriting style tends to be different than when I write a poem, I do carry over some of the principles in terms of rhythm, metaphor, allegory, alliteration and so on.  In the end I try to mix in common principles with saying things in a way they haven’t been said before.  I don’t always accomplish it but that is usually my approach.  But yes I would agree that I tend to focus on emotional detail and maybe more abstract concepts than telling a dramatic story with a beginning, arc and and a clean ending.

The name Shake the Dust feels symbolic, like movement after stagnation. What does that phrase represent emotionally for the band now?

We haven’t put much thought into that.  Shake the Dust was one of our songs before we had a name for the band.  We just grabbed the name from the song because we needed something to put on the flyer for our first show.  The original song was about welcoming an old friend back into your life after loosing touch with them.

Your live shows move between full-band energy and stripped acoustic performances. Do songs reveal different truths depending on how exposed they are instrumentally?

I am sure that is possible - I don’t necessarily pick up on it when we play live but I am sure the audience does.  I definitely think the song can land different emotionally with the listener depending on how it is delivered. In an acoustic approach there is less competing with the original essence of the song.

There’s a rawness in your description of the album that suggests imperfections were allowed to stay. Was preserving humanity in the recordings more important than achieving technical perfection?

In a time where AI is starting to become an actual competitor to traditional bands this ia great question. There wasn’t a conscious approach to preserve the humanity in the recordings - its just how we have always done it.  Real humans playing real instruments in the studio and recording those sounds as we make them.  Do we do a fair amount of editing in the studio - sure but again we are just editing organic sounds played through instruments so the human quality is always preserved.

A lot of modern music feels designed for short attention spans, but your work seems to reward patience and emotional investment. Do you think there’s still space for slow-burning records in today’s music world?

I have to hope so.  There is still something special to going to the record store , buying the new album by your favorite artist, and then listening to it start to finish in one sitting.  I just did that a few weeks ago with my buddy for the new Mutiny after Midnight album by Sturgill Simpson. It was such a great time!

If someone listens to Everything Will Be Okay during a genuinely difficult period in their life, what do you hope they walk away carrying with them after the final song fades?

I’ll answer this by first quoting the author Ocean Vuong who wrote “"The hardest thing in the world is to live only once. But it's beautiful here — even the ghosts agree."   

Life is hard but not impossible and it always remains beautiful. Find your place and purpose, focus on the positives and the wins, surround yourself with the right people and everything will turn out ok.