How Johnny Irion and an All-Star Crew Put Together His Best Album Yet

Not long ago, Johnny Irion was putting the finishing touches on his new album when he realized that he could use some harmony vocals. So he called Mike Mills, who met him at a mutual friend’s studio in Georgia, and they spent an afternoon singing together.

“I just love Johnny’s worldview,” says Mills, who ended up on two tracks from Sleeping Soldiers of Love, out Aug. 9. “There is a kindness and a positivity to it that I really enjoy, especially in these potentially dark times in which we live. When I listen to this, it makes me feel good about things, and what more could you ask of a record than that?”

The fact that Irion can get a founding member of R.E.M. to contribute to his album — not to mention hop onto Zoom from his home in Athens, Georgia, to talk about it with Rolling Stone — speaks to the respect he’s accrued over many years of thoughtful folk songs, hard-charging roots-rock, and more. His wide circle of talented friends also includes people like Dawes’ Griffin Goldsmith, who plays drums on the album; actor and musician Jeff Bridges, who introduced Irion to co-writer John Goodwin and sings on an alternate version of one of its tracks; and Wilco’s Pat Sansone, who arranged several songs during the Sleeping Soldiers sessions and mixed the finished LP.

“I love the soulfulness of it,” says Sansone, joining the Zoom call from Nashville a few weeks after Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival. “Something that I really wanted to lean into was that sense of being connected to the natural world. Hopefully the arrangements would encourage a romantic feeling about being in nature. That panoramic, open eyes and open hearts feeling.”

The album they made together unfolds like a long drive through lush green mountains. Each track is full of warm acoustic melodies draped in orchestral accents, from the inspirational opening number “I Will, I Do, I Can” (“If there’s a darkness I can light, I’m ready to lend a hand”) to the slow-rolling alt-country ballad “Mustangs” (“Mustangs are hard to saddle/And you’ve gotta choose your battles”) and onward.

Sleeping Soldiers of Love began several years ago, when Irion read author and activist Jay Leutze’s 2013 bestseller Stand Up That Mountain: The Battle to Save One Small Community in the Wilderness Along the Appalachian Trail.

“He’s a dear friend of mine, and he saved a portion of the Appalachian Trail just outside of Asheville, North Carolina,” says Irion, who’s logging onto Zoom from his own home base in western Massachusetts. He began sharing copies of Leutze’s book with everyone he knew. One thing led to another, and Irion and Goodwin ended up co-writing a song cycle about nature and standing up for what you believe in.

Something about the songs called out for more than a one-man, one-mic recording approach. Irion started thinking of the project as the soundtrack to an imaginary movie, inspired in part by 1972’s Jeremiah Johnson, which starred Robert Redford as a mountain man. He found himself dreaming of melodic motifs that recurred and overlapped, like they would in a film score.

“I love that idea you have, Johnny, the repeating figures in different keys,” Mills adds. “That’s one of the reasons there’s a lot of nice depth to this record. It reveals itself more with repeated listening, which is what you usually want in a record.”

When he needed help putting it all together, Irion asked Sansone if he’d consider writing some orchestral arrangements for his acoustic songs.

“There’s such an amazing tradition of that, especially in English folk music from the Sixties and Seventies,” says Sansone, who used a digital Mellotron to create his arrangements for the album. “Nick Drake, Bill Fay, Roy Harper, Scott Walker, even — these are some of my favorite records that inspire me, period… I embraced the challenge of incorporating some of these themes into this folky foundation.”

Irion, Mills, and Sansone have an easygoing dynamic in conversation that shows their years of friendship. At one point, discussing a minor hassle he recently encountered, Mills remarks, “It’s as good as a bad thing can be, so I’ll take it.”

Irion: I’m writing that down. That’s good. “It’s as good as a bad thing can be.”

Mills: Hey, wait, that’s mine!

Sansone: Hold on, wait a minute. I started the conversation…

Mills: We can write three songs.

Another key assist on Sleeping Soldiers of Love came from Arlo Guthrie, who is listed as a co-writer on the gently anthemic title track and lives just down the road from Irion in the Berkshires. Irion was married to and collaborated with Arlo’s daughter Sarah Lee Guthrie for many years, and he and Arlo have remained close. 

“He’s got a big piano in the living room there,” Irion says. “I played him a handful of tunes, and then I was getting ready to leave. He’s like, ‘I got an idea. What’s that sleeping soldiers song? Can you play it one more time?’ Went back to the piano. He was like, ‘Something needs to happen in the chorus,’ and he threw in the B minor and the E minor. And it stuck.” (He adds that Guthrie, who announced his retirement from touring in 2020, is doing well. “Every time I see him, I’m like ‘One more [show]?’ But he’s done.”)

Lately, Irion has been listening to the album as he rides through his pastoral New England surroundings. “If you start the album in Stockbridge, by the time you get to my house, it’s done,” he says. “You’re coming up the mountains here and coming through the hills.”

“I can see that listening to it on that drive would be kind of perfect for it,” Mills says. “It’s something you could ride through the countryside and really have it sync up with what you’re looking at.”

Later this month, Mills and Sansone will hit the road for a tour honoring the 50th anniversary of Big Star’s classic album Radio City, where they’ll be joined by musicians including Jon Auer from the Posies, Chris Stamey from the dB’s, and drummer Jody Stephens, the sole surviving original member of Big Star. 

“I am digging in on Andy Hummel’s bass lines, and they are phenomenal,” Mills says. “I never got to know Andy, but now I kind of feel like I do a little bit. It’s really fun inside his head.”

“I feel the same way about learning Alex [Chilton]’s guitar parts,” Sansone says. “I mean, you think you know those songs and then you start digging in and there’s so much. That music just continues to give.”

Irion agrees: “It just never gets old.”