ALEX AMEN, SUN OF AMEN

Just a short ferry ride from Seattle, Alex Amen spent three and a half years living on Vashon Island. He arrived during the early days of the pandemic and immersed himself in music, sometimes practicing guitar for as much as twelve hours a day, studying rural American folk music, and taking the ferry to bluegrass jams.

Amen also got into mountaineering, mycology, poetry, wooden boat building, and restored a sailboat that he sailed from Washington to Canada. He has talked about the darkness and rain of the Pacific Northwest, but also the intense periods of sunshine and beauty that come with the changing seasons. Music and place became increasingly connected for him during those years. 

Amen left Houston, Texas at eighteen for California, originally intending to study filmmaking and make rock climbing documentaries. He dropped out after a semester, lived on a commune, formed the psychedelic folk rock band American Slang, and eventually made his way north to Vashon. After leaving the island, he returned to California to concentrate on his own music. Now, at 26, he has released his debut album, Sun of Amen.

And what an album it is. Sun of Amen is sun drenched in the warmth of late '60s and early '70s country folk. There is John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot, Gram Parsons, Laurel Canyon, California country, folk, soul, and that wonderfully laid back West Coast sound. Amen has talked about the California sound found in records by the Flying Burrito Brothers, The Mamas & the Papas, and Merle Haggard, something difficult to define but easy to recognize. Sun of Amen lives in that world.

Amen produced the album himself with Jonny Bell engineering, recording at Jazzcats in Long Beach and Valentine Recording Studios in Los Angeles. They worked live to tape using old microphones, reverb chambers, and vintage equipment. But Amen says equipment alone doesn't create the sound. Much of it comes from the musicians, people who share his love and understanding of the older music that inspired him.

Listening to Sun of Amen, there's nothing here that sounds remotely modern, and I mean that as a compliment. Amen isn't trying to reinvent country folk or disguise where his influences come from. What does feel fresh is hearing someone make this kind of music in 2026 and do it this well. The playing is terrific, the arrangements are gentle and understated, the harmonies are beautiful, and everything has the warmth of the records Amen clearly loves.

Amen once said that a good record “has different things to say for the different seasons of your life.” Asked what life was trying to tell him through Sun of Amen, he simply answered, “It's a beautiful, tragic, wild ride.”