Daily Dose: Eliot Bronson, “From Rabun Gap”

Baltimore native Eliot Bronson has been part of the thriving Atlanta folk scene for more than a decade now, first as part of the duo The Brilliant Inventions and later as a solo singer/songwriter with six albums under his belt, often leaving our city to tour both sides of the Atlantic but always coming back to Georgia for more inspiration, as on his latest song “From Rabun Gap.”

“I was offered a residency at The Hambidge Center in North Georgia last summer,” Bronson tells Paste. “It’s a beautiful secluded campus in a place called Rabun Gap. They set me up in a fairly remote cabin. My only companion was a large turtle taking daily sunbaths in the pond outside. I don’t think I could have written this song without all that solitude and silence. The song is essentially a letter to an ex. One last bit of unfinished business perhaps. It’s a situation we’ve probably all experienced, but one that’s difficult to define—thinking about someone you used to love without wanting them back. Maybe the last step in truly letting go. The song says it all better than I can.”

The song is the second single from his upcoming 2024 album Talking to Myself, co-produced by Bronson and Damon Moon of Standard Electric. “Damon usually makes records with louder bands,” Bronson says, “and that was interesting to me. I wanted to work with someone who had a different sensibility than I did. He brought a new atmosphere to the album. Instead of playing bass on a song, we’d use a Moog. Instead of playing a shaker, we’d use a brush on the side of a tambourine. We wanted to get outside the box of what an Americana folk singer is supposed to sound like.”

Listen to the exclusive premiere of “From Rabun Gap” below.