I normally write up a handful of releases for Bandcamp Friday, and I’ve listed a bunch of stuff I’m excited about below, but this time around, I want to shine an especially bright light on a single song: “Ellington Bridge,” the first single from the upcoming eponymous album by Richmond-based rock group Timothy Bailey & The Humans.

On Tuesday, a Style Weekly article went live that I’d been working on for more than five months — a deep-dive into the journey that led to the creation of Timothy Bailey & The Humans, and into the creative community that has rallied around Bailey. (The album was recorded at Spacebomb Studios with his band, a killer lineup of session players performing Bailey’s own arrangements, and production help from Creative Capital grantee Bob Massey and Chad Clark of Beauty Pill.) I feel fortunate to have had a window into such a remarkable creative achievement — music that’s as bold and beautiful as any I’ve heard, and that communicates a type of hope that will both break your heart and mend it back together stronger than it was before.

Bob Massey may have said it best:

“The culture values prodigies but discounts late-bloomers,” he says. “But I think the late-bloomer often has a lot more to offer than the prodigy. In this case, it’s an entire lifetime of experience, wisdom, skills and musicality, and it’s music for grown-ups. It’s music for people who have suffered and who have loved and who have come through the other side, or maybe are still not there yet.”

Click here to read the rest of the article, and listen to “Ellington Bridge” below. If you’re looking for a song to lift you up and fill your Bandcamp Friday with defiant joy, you’ve found it.

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More fun stuff I have my eye on:

The Modern Folk — Modern Folk One
Leon III — This Whisper Is Ours b​/​w Paper Eye (DUB REMIXES)
NO BS! Brass Band — “Undying”
ragenap — “shenandoah”
Sharon Van Etten — We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong
Sam Gendel — SUPERSTORE
dhemo — Spinning in Place
Stray Fossa — Closer Than We’ll Ever Know
Kikagaku Moyo — Kumoyo Island
Deau Eyes — Legacies