Abe Partridge spent years for something to believe in.  

The journey took him from the Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky, where he preached the gospel as a Baptist minister, to the Middle East, where he maintained planes for the Air Force. Somewhere along the way, he began collecting stories, writing songs, and making visual art, finding new ways to make sense of the world and his place in it. 

"My life has been a pilgrimage of sorts," he says, speaking with the accent of a South Alabama native and the perspective of a musician who's spent the past decade on the road. On Pilgrim Song, Partridge puts that perspective to work, tracing a winding path through faith, doubt, war, self-discovery, and at least one existential freakout at a Southern flea market. The destination, it turns out, was never a specific place. It was art itself.  

Produced by Steve Shelley, the longtime drummer of Sonic Youth, Pilgrim Song captures Partridge and his longtime collaborators making music the way they’ve always wanted to: together in a room, playing live, following the songs wherever they lead. "We recorded the LP with David Barbe and his dream crew in Athens, GA," says Shelley. "Patterson Hood and Jay Gonzalez of Drive-By Truckers visited and played, and even Abe's mother played piano on a tribute that Abe wrote for her." Over 15 days, the crew recorded more than 25 songs together. The songs that made the final cut — punky-tonk barn burners like "Everybody Wants To Play Country Music, But Nobody Wants To Do Country Shit"; heartfelt acoustic ballads like "Mama's Song"; spoken-word absurdism like "Talkin' Never Stare Into The Eyes Of A Chicken Blues"; waltzing eulogies like "Ghost (For Jacob)" — share the rawness and darkly imaginative spirit of Partridge’s tar-board paintings. In both mediums, he conjures up his own Southern Gothic world of black water, backroads, and highway gravel. 

Of course, he wouldn't describe it that way. For someone who's toured Europe five times, built an audience in Dutch-speaking countries, and established himself as an award-winning visual artist with exhibitions at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Partridge remains remarkably self-effacing. He calls the album "a bunch of folk musicians getting together with Sonic Youth's drummer and making some cool shit," but he's selling himself short. Pilgrim Song is more than that. It's proof that Abe Patridge, like John Prine and Todd Snider before him, is carrying a torch for fiercely independent songwriting centered around the raw, unvarnished American experience. 

When you've lived a life as unpredictable as his, there's no escaping the past. "Appalachian Farewell" was written in the midst of a collapse of faith, capturing Partridge's decision to leave the ministry altogether. He calls the song "half prayer and half apostasy," and its arc — an introduction that makes room for fiddle and pedal steel, then a fiery finish fueled by an unruly rock & roll guitar solo — mirrors his own passage from devotion to messy, hard-won liberation. "Western Stars," a stark portrayal of the loss of innocence that occurs when young men are baptized in battle, was inspired by his tours of duty as a military man. "Jesus on their Fists" tackles hypocrisy in the church, while "Ghost (for Jacob)" pays tribute to the late Jacob Hall, a fellow Mobile-based musician whose death rocked an entire community. The songs form a map of Partridge's life, each one marking a different turn in the road — and because that life has never followed a conventional blueprint, neither does Pilgrim Song.  

Partridge's visual art is equally singular. "Songwriting and painting were born in my heart simultaneously," he explains. "They offered me a complete escape. I could paint things I felt beyond verbalization, and I could write about things that were hard to capture with paint. I can't remember doing one without the other." Hundreds of gigs and dozens of art exhibitions later, those two mediums are still intertwined, even if they scratch different itches. "These days, all my music shows are art shows and all my art shows are music shows," he adds. "I always bring one into the other." 

Connection. That's always been a staple of Partridge's live performances, and it runs throughout Pilgrim Song, too. Years before learning that Steve Shelley was a fan of his work, a teenaged Partridge discovered Sonic Youth's Experimental Jet Set Trash and No Star at a record store near the University of Alabama. The album left a permanent mark. "It was like a transcendental experience or something," he says. Later, when an opportunity arose to work with that band's drummer, it felt like a musical homecoming. So did the chance to collaborate once again with Katrina Kolb, Adrian Carter, Austin Harper, and Shawn Byrne, musicians who've all played shows with Partridge — sometimes as a duo, sometimes a trio, sometimes a full-fledged band — but have never appeared on the same record. "This time, we got to flesh out the songs in real time, living together, eating together," Partridge says. After years of recording albums like 2018's Cotton Fields and Blood for Days and 2023's Love in the Dark on shoestring budgets, he finally had the chance to fully develop his songs in the studio, working with close friends and one legendary drummer whose records had helped shape his musical imagination. 

"In the end, it's funny," says Shelley. "This kid that I had heard about, who had a little bit of Bob/Willie/Hank/Townes/Waits/Neil + Daniel in him, and even wore a Washing Machine badge on him, turned out to be one of my favorite songwriters from any era." 

We all get by with a little help from our friends. Once Pilgrim Song was finished, a phone call from the Red Clay Strays — longtime collaborators who played some of their earliest shows with Partridge, and whose members still perform with Abe in the side-project The Psych Peas — helped give it a path forward. "Those guys come over every Christmas to pick songs and drink whiskey," Partridge explains. "This can be a hard time to make art, but when The Red Clay Strays offered to release the record on their HBYCO label, it changed my outlook." 

Pilgrim Song is the sound of an artist finding meaning in the disparate experiences that brought him to the current moment. There's honesty, humor, and heart, all swirled into the same story, brought together by a wildly prolific creator whose work includes songs, stories, paintings, and a critically-acclaimed podcast. For Partridge, the pilgrimage continues… not toward some final destination, but toward the next melody, the next canvas, the next chance to figure out who the hell he is.