Recorded in two sessions at Echo Mountain Recording in Asheville, I Stood Among Trees was named after a poem Tirey wrote about six years ago. Mixed, mastered, and engineered by Drew Thilmany and produced by Tirey, it maintains a certain organic character that allows each song to speak honestly to its own artistic quality and his expert craftsmanship. Tirey dovetails exquisitely fingerpicked acoustic guitar with the deft pen of an author in “The Evening Tide” and “The Time Leaves So Soon” bringing the listener into the songs’ plotlines making them one of the characters. Using imagery reminiscent to that found in the Bible, Tirey vividly brings the apocalyptic setting in “Final Resting Place” to life with an immense feeling of foreboding that washes over his audience. Written the day the stock market crashed in 2008, Tirey drove into a windstorm while driving back to Dayton from a show in Cincinnati inspiring the hellish imagery for the song. The violent imagery in “Wild Beasts” was influenced by Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and most of the instrumental “When Your Eyes See the Valley” was written after Tirey’s first trip to Asheville and influenced by the American Primitive style of guitar playing similar to that of John Fahey and Jack Rose. Written with the hand of a true author and imagined through the eyes of a young artist, I Stood Among Trees, is the musical equivalent to a literary masterpiece. With vivid imagery, simple plots, and a cast of characters, Tirey eloque