About Michael Rudd: Michael Rudd is a New Mexico-based Americana and roots-rock singer-songwriter known for his introspective storytelling and prolific creative output. After a thirty-year hiatus from music, Rudd experienced a profound creative rebirth in 2023, leading to a quick-fire succession of albums recorded at Frogville Studios in Santa Fe. His music explores the "inner, secretive world" of the human experience, balancing themes of isolation and mortality—informed by a recent cancer diagnosis—with messages of redemption and joy. A former educator and school principal, Rudd’s "wizened" sound and desert-rock aesthetic have earned him critical acclaim and a dedicated following.
What non-musical thing (a book, a piece of art, a smell, a bizarre historical event) had the greatest unexpected influence on this new album/EP?
RUDD: I’m not religious in the strict sense of the term - though I did attend Hebrew school three times a week and was a Bar Mitzvah and still regard being culturally Jewish as a cornerstone of my identity. That said, the non-musical thing that had the most influence on this album, and maybe all of my albums, is the Book of Job. The idea of trying to retain your faith in something while you face one challenge after the next can describe many of the people that I sing about, including those in the most personal songs. This all comes together in the first track, “The Water.”
What is the one sentence “more of the story” or life lesson that you hope a listener takes away from this specific body of work?
RUDD: Whatever differences we have, we all face challenges, we all deal with heartache and despair, we’ve all known love in one form or another, and we all seek answers about how to best live our lives.
Which one track on your new release has a private, personal “liner note” or backstory that fundamentally defines the song for you?
RUDD: The day after sessions ended for my album, "Going to the Mountain," in October 2025, I underwent a biopsy. A few days later, after learning the results, I woke up very early several hours before meeting with the doctor to discuss next steps, and I picked up my guitar and started writing "The Train is Coming." Sometimes songs come quickly as if they’ve already been written, and this was one of those. The tone surprised me, as did the feeling I had when I sang it - a kind of joy in the acceptance of mortality, which I’d never had before. To be transparent, I haven’t had a lot of moments like this over the last year, so this song remains a touchstone for me, fleeting as that moment was. In another month or so, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Metastatic Prostate Cancer and began radiation and other therapy, which will continue for at least another year. The diagnosis and treatments haven’t kept me from writing and recording. Sessions for "Ways of the World" began just a few days after five weeks of radiation; the next album, "Midnight at Dawn," has already been recorded and mastered and will be released in September 2026; and sessions for the album after that will start in early March.
In your personal or creative life, what is the one difficult truth you keep having to “be a goldfish” about - using a short memory to forgive yourself and move past a failure?
RUDD: I’ve lived awhile, and like lots of people my age, I have a long list of things to forgive myself about and plenty of failures. I’ll keep those to myself - my songs are personal enough. As for my creative life, I do wonder why it took me so many years to start writing and playing again. More than 30 years is a long time to suppress what’s inside you. On the other hand, I wasn’t devoid of creative impulses. I wrote several novels and lots of short stories and poems, all unpublished and most of which fell far short of the mark. Maybe it was those failures that led me back to a medium that feels much more natural.