There is a kind of songwriter who finds the deepest questions hidden within ordinary experience, who looks at the everyday moments of love and loss and travel and sees in them the great themes of mortality and meaning and transcendence. The long highway of life carries us through countless ordinary moments, yet within these moments lie the profound questions of identity and acceptance and what lies beyond the surface of things. Michael Landgarten has spent decades exploring exactly this space, and The Long Highway, the twelve-track album released June 26, 2026, is the debut full-length from Michael Landgarten and The Converts. An album steeped in American roots traditions yet difficult to categorize, it finds an artist unafraid to wrestle with life’s biggest questions while remaining grounded in melody and story and song.
The band behind The Long Highway brings deep roots despite their new name. Though Michael Landgarten and The Converts are new in name, their roots stretch back more than thirty years through a network of longtime friendships and musical collaborations. Featuring Jay Fortin on guitar, Marc McElroy on bass and vocals, and Robbie Kneeland on drums and vocals, The Converts bring together musicians from across New England’s rock and indie and bluegrass and Americana communities. This deep foundation of friendship and collaboration gives the band its genuine chemistry, the decades of shared musical history informing their interplay, the band thriving on instinct and interaction. This rich background gives The Long Highway its authentic, lived-in quality, the music emerging from genuine musical relationships developed over many years.
The live recording approach gives The Long Highway its organic authenticity. Recorded primarily live in Kneeland’s rustic barn studio in York, Maine, the album captures the chemistry of a band that thrives on instinct and interaction. With engineer Rick Watson documenting performances as they unfold, the recordings favor feel over perfection, often requiring only a handful of takes before the magic reveals itself. This live approach is central to the album’s character, the music having the spontaneity and energy of genuine performance, the favoring of feel over perfection giving the recordings their organic, authentic quality. The rustic barn studio setting reflects the album’s roots aesthetic, the music being created in a genuine, unpretentious space that suits its earthy, authentic sound. This commitment to capturing live performance gives The Long Highway its genuine warmth and immediacy.
The album’s genre-defying sound reflects its rich influences. The Long Highway is steeped in American roots traditions while remaining difficult to categorize, equal parts heartland rock and country soul and folk philosophy and ragged electric grit. Some have jokingly called it grunge-ry, country and grunge meeting somewhere in the middle, but the band’s sound ultimately belongs to no single genre. This genre-defying quality gives the album its distinctive character, the blend of roots traditions and rock grit creating something original, the music drawing on multiple American traditions while transcending them. This refusal to fit a single category reflects the band’s artistic identity, the sound being genuinely their own, the combination of heartland rock and country soul and folk philosophy giving the album its rich, varied texture.
The album opens with Falling In and Out, exploring the cyclical nature of relationships and emotions, the falling in and out of love or of various states of being. This opening establishes the album’s engagement with the rhythms of human experience, the falling in and out capturing the ebb and flow that characterizes our emotional lives. The title track The Long Highway follows, one of the album’s focus tracks and a showcase of Landgarten’s songwriting depth. The song follows a man confronting both mortality and fate with startling clarity, using a looming encounter with ICE as the backdrop for a meditation on acceptance and transcendence and what lies beyond the surface of things. Influenced as much by Leonard Cohen’s spiritual inquiry as by the earthy musicality of Los Lobos, the song finds peace amid uncertainty. This profound title track sets the album’s contemplative tone, the meditation on mortality and acceptance reflecting Landgarten’s gift for finding the deepest questions within difficult experience.
The Flow, the other focus track, emerged from a transformative trip to Spain where Landgarten experienced a rare sense of ease and freedom before recognizing how longing and memory and attachment can pull us away from the present moment. What begins as a reflection on lost love evolves into a meditation on surrender and awareness and the mysterious connection between being fully alive and facing death itself. This song reflects the album’s philosophical depth, the journey from ease through the recognition of attachment to a meditation on surrender and awareness demonstrating Landgarten’s ability to find profound meaning in personal experience. Flying Ship follows, bringing an evocative, perhaps surreal image to the album, the flying ship suggesting transcendence and imagination, a vessel that defies the ordinary boundaries of earth and sea.
Symbolize the Devil confronts darker themes, the title suggesting an engagement with evil or temptation or the shadow side of human experience. This track reflects the album’s willingness to wrestle with difficult subjects, the symbolizing of the devil engaging with the darker dimensions of life and meaning. Wear Out My Name brings a theme of being worn down or used, perhaps the exhaustion of being called upon repeatedly or the wearing away of one’s identity through overuse. Your Car brings a more grounded, everyday image, the car being a concrete object that perhaps carries memories or associations, the everyday detail grounding the album’s philosophical explorations in concrete experience.
Faithless Act confronts betrayal or the breaking of faith, the faithless act being a violation of trust or commitment, the song engaging with the failures and betrayals that are part of human relationships. You Weren’t Having It brings a note of resistance or refusal, someone not accepting a situation or a behavior, the title capturing a moment of standing firm. All Day Long suggests persistence and continuity, something that goes on throughout the day, perhaps a feeling or a longing or a labor that fills the hours. Aurora brings a beautiful, evocative image, the aurora being the natural light display that fills the sky, the dawn or the northern lights suggesting beauty and wonder and the sublime. This track presumably brings a moment of beauty and transcendence to the album, the aurora embodying the wonder that exists within the world.
The album closes with If I Went to See Her Now, a reflective, conditional meditation on a possible reunion or return. This closing track brings the album to a contemplative conclusion, the conditional if suggesting reflection on a road not taken or a possibility considered, the going to see her now being a hypothetical that carries longing and memory. Ending the album on this reflective, conditional note gives The Long Highway a sense of openness and contemplation, the journey concluding with a meditation on possibility and longing.
The depth of Landgarten’s songwriting is the album’s defining strength. For decades, Landgarten has been writing songs that explore the space where everyday experience meets deeper questions of identity and love and loss and meaning. This gift for finding the profound within the ordinary distinguishes his work, the focus tracks in particular demonstrating his ability to wrestle with life’s biggest questions while remaining grounded in melody and story. The influence of Leonard Cohen’s spiritual inquiry reflects Landgarten’s philosophical depth, the willingness to engage with questions of mortality and transcendence and meaning, while the earthy musicality of Los Lobos grounds these explorations in genuine roots music. This combination of philosophical depth and musical groundedness is what makes Landgarten’s songwriting so compelling, the biggest questions explored through accessible, melodic songs.
The album’s grounding in melody and story keeps its philosophical explorations accessible. Despite wrestling with life’s biggest questions, The Long Highway remains grounded in melody and story and song, the philosophical depth never overwhelming the music’s accessibility. This balance is crucial, the album engaging with profound themes while remaining genuinely enjoyable as music, the melodies and stories providing the vehicle for the deeper explorations. This grounding in song reflects Landgarten’s understanding that the deepest questions are best explored through accessible, melodic music, the philosophical inquiry enriched rather than burdened by the song forms that carry it.
The Long Highway is the sound of an artist finding life’s biggest questions within everyday experience, a genre-defying album that explores mortality and acceptance and transcendence while remaining grounded in roots music. Michael Landgarten and The Converts have created a debut steeped in American traditions yet entirely their own, the live recording and the deep musical chemistry combining into an album of genuine depth and authenticity.
From the meditation on mortality in the title track to the contemplation of surrender in The Flow, Michael Landgarten travels the long highway where everyday experience meets life’s deepest questions. The Long Highway is the work of an artist unafraid to wrestle with the biggest questions while keeping his feet planted in melody and story, and its journey through love and loss and meaning lingers like the open road stretching toward the horizon.
This album touches on themes of mortality and life’s deeper struggles, and for anyone wrestling with difficult questions or circumstances, please know that support is available, and reaching out to those around you can provide genuine comfort along the way.
