Kevin Morby announces Little Wide Open, out May 15th via Dead Oceans, alongside lead single Javelin and a sprawling 2026 world tour. Produced by Aaron Dessner, the album marks Morby’s eighth studio release and completes an unintentional trilogy that began with 2020’s Sundowner and continued with 2022’s This Is a Photograph.
Little Wide Open finds Morby at his most vulnerable. “This is, without a doubt, the most personal and vulnerable album I’ve ever made,” he explains. “Aaron did a heroic job of holding me back from throwing too many tricks at the songs, and letting my stories stand a bit naked.” Set against a backdrop of tangled highways and small-town America, the album explores themes of romantic longing, restless movement, and the particular loneliness of life on the road.
Javelin, the album’s opening statement, crystallises these preoccupations. “This is a song I wrote about being in love with someone you keep circling around the globe, relentlessly traveling through the air and down highways, and then returning home alone to middle America,” Morby says. Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso provides what Morby describes as an irresistible vocal presence—her backing choir work becomes a lead performance in its own right.
The accompanying video captures the album’s spirit of joyful movement and middle American landscapes. Morby and comedian Caleb Hearon drive an ATV through Missouri fields and backroads, with appearances from Katie Crutchfield and Tara Raghuveer. “I think it captures all the fun we had making it,” Morby notes, and that sense of play sits comfortably alongside the album’s more vulnerable moments.
Critically acclaimed novelist Rachel Kushner, also a friend of Morby, has written an essay about Little Wide Open, entitled “Field Guide to the North American Troubadour,” in which she captures a fundamental shift in Morby’s work. He’s moved beyond nostalgia—the “losing game, losing but beautiful, of holding onto the past”—toward a new relationship with time. “He has accepted that time is ceaselessly flowing, and you can’t stop it,” she writes. “Instead, he feels like he’s riding it.” The butterfly becomes the album’s governing metaphor, drawn from a drive through Arkansas where Morby watched butterflies repeatedly hit his truck crossing the highway. The image encompasses both tragedy and romance—a couple who died on their way to his show, the way he and Crutchfield [Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee] fell in love while touring. “We’re floating around. Flying over the highway like we are not butterflies. Like we are not fragile.” But they are. We are.
The collaboration with Dessner elevates Morby’s songwriting without obscuring it. Recording began at Long Pond Studio in upstate New York in early 2025 and finished that September. The resulting album features contributions from Justin Vernon, Katie Gavin, Lucinda Williams, Meg Duffy, Mat Davidson, and others, yet Dessner’s production maintains focus on the songs themselves. There’s a newfound confidence and clarity that recalls Tom Petty’s Wildflowers.
Now primarily based in LA after his Kansas City sojourn, Morby’s sound reflects a shift in atmosphere—the feeling of hurtling toward something unknown but inevitable. Little Wide Open captures that motion without losing sight of where he’s been.
Little Wide Open Tracklist
1. Badlands
2. Die Young
3. Javelin
4. All Sinners
5. Natural Disaster
6. 100,000
7. Little Wide Open
8. Cowtown
9. Bible Belt
10. I Ride Passenger
11. Junebug
12. Dandelion
13. Field Guide for the Butterflies
Kevin Morby Tour Dates
Sat. March 14 – Austin, TX @ The Long Time
Fri. May 8 – Woodstock, NY @ Levon Helm Studios *
Wed. May 13 – Aspen, CO @ Belly Up Aspen *
Thu. May 14 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre *
Fri. May 15 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Block Party
Sun. May 17 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom *
Mon. May 18 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre *
Tue. May 19 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall *
Thu. May 21 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore *
Fri. May 22 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern *
Sat. May 23 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriet’s *
Sun. May 24 – San Diego, CA @ Music Box *
Tue. May 26 – Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom *
Wed. May 27 – Santa Fe, NM @ The Bridge at Santa Fe Brewing *
Fri. May 29 – Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater *
Sat. May 30 – St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall *
Tue. June 2 – Chicago, IL @ Metro *
Thu. June 4 – Detroit, MI @ Saint Andrew’s Hall *
Fri. June 5 – Toronto, ON @ HISTORY *
Sat. June 6 – Montréal, QC @ Théâtre Beanfield *
Sun. June 7 – Boston, MA @ Royale *
Tue. June 9 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer *
Wed. June 10 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel *
Fri. June 12 – Washington, DC @ Lincoln Theatre *
Sat. June 13 – Charlotte, NC @ The Underground *
Sun. June 14 – Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse *
Tue. June 16 – New Orleans, LA @ Tipitina’s
Thu. June 18 – Houston, TX @ The Heights Theater
Fri. June 19 – Fort Worth, TX @ Tannahill’s Tavern and Music Hall
Sat. June 20 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater
Thu. July 2 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso *
Fri. July 3 – Beuningen, NL @ Down the Rabbit Hole
Sat. July 4 – Lille, FR @ L’Aéronef *
Sun. July 5 – Hérouville-Saint-Clair, FR @ Festival Beauregard
Mon. July 6 – Paris, FR @ Salle Pleyel *
Wed. July 8 – London, UK @ Troxy *
Thu. July 9 – Manchester, UK @ The Ritz *
Fri. July 10 – Brighton, UK @ CHALK *
Sat. July 11 – Brugge, BE @ Cactusfestival
Sun. July 12 – Köln, DE @ Even Flow Festival
Tue. July 14 – Zurich, CH @ Rote Fabrik *
Wed. July 15 – Galzignano Terme, IT @ Anfiteatro del Venda *
Thu. July 16 – Feldkirch, AU @ Poolbar Festival *
Fri. July 17 – Vienna, AU @ Simm City *
Sat. July 18 – Munich, DE @ Technikum *
* = support from Liam Kazar