Irion Takes on Mountains, Sleeping Soldiers, and Love

Former Montecito resident Johnny Irion’s new album, Sleeping Soldiers of Love, has roots deep in the world of nature, but also sounds like a cinematic score. For good reason. 

The songs on Soldiers were inspired by Jay Leutze’s 2013 bestseller Stand Up That Mountain: The Battle to Save One Small Community in the Wilderness Along the Appalachian Trail, about the activist’s successful campaign to protect the portion of the trail from a mining company that wanted to level the forest. 

“I grew up near there, and I wanted to shine a light on the whole thing,” said Irion, a North Carolina native who now lives on a 100-acre farm in the Berkshire mountains in western Massachusetts, not far from folk legend Arlo Guthrie, the father of his former wife and longtime musical partner Sara Lee Guthrie. Irion shared the book with a lot of his friends, including Santa Barbara actor-musician Jeff Bridges, who introduced him to John Goodwin, a Nashville singer-songwriter that ended up co-writing what is essentially a song cycle about both the importance of nature and taking a stand for what you believe in. 

“The book is about pretty much what’s going on in our society, about what’s the moral and just thing to do,” Irion said. “I have strong ties to Asheville, and I was inspired to tell these stories about the environment and about humans.”

Originally, there were plans to turn Stand Up That Mountain into a movie, with the album potentially serving as the soundtrack, with the Robert Redford mountain movie Jeremiah Johnson as the musical inspiration. But after Covid hit followed by his divorce from Guthrie, Irion couldn’t wait for the wheels of Hollywood to turn. 

“It got to a point where I knew this record needed to get done,” he said. “Otherwise, I didn’t know how I’d move forward as an artist.” 

But those influences remain. 

“I wanted to make an album with recurring motifs, like how if you’re driving through the Berkshires, or from Santa Barbara to Hollister Ranch, you can feel these beautiful landscapes, with the music pulling it together,” Irion explained. “Tanglewood is right at the bottom of the hill and I love when the Boston Pops takes over in the summer. So this is also my first attempt at a symphonic folk album, with true stories.” 

Irion enlisted lots of support from friends including R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, who shares lead vocals on a couple of tracks; Bridges, who added vocals; Wilco’s Pat Sansone, who arranged several songs and mixed the album; Dawes’ drummer Griffin Goldsmith; and even Arlo, who made a key suggestion for the chorus of the title track. 

“This is probably the most Guthrie-esque record I’ve ever made,” Irion said. “It’s a shame that Sara Lee didn’t hang around for this one. But I’ve got Sarah McCombie of Chatham Rabbits on some songs.” 

The heartfelt words on Sleeping Soldier’s lyrical, mostly gentle songs are immersed in nature, with lines about mountains, flowers, fields and nuts, as well as themes of unity, oneness, and home.

“They’re all metaphors of love,” Irion said. “Things have just come to that point where whether or not we know it, we’re all kind of married. Tom Steinbeck (the late Montecito writer was John’s son and Irion’s uncle by marriage) used to tell me a good song starts a conversation. You stop and you boil it down to those small little things, and then you start adding them all up and hopefully you have something.”

Irion previewed a few of the songs at SOhO last spring, and he’ll play a few at the second annual Local Vibes concert at Elings Park, where he’ll play a solo acoustic set and sit in with headliner Doublewide Kings on September 27. The official CD release show takes place at SOhO on October 5, with Chris Stills opening and joining Irion and his west coast collective U.S. Elevator for a full reading of the album as well as tracks from earlier Irion records. 

“I’ve had to really dig in the last couple of years, and I feel like I’ve found my singular voice with this album, new terrain,” he said. “I can’t wait for everybody in Santa Barbara to hear these songs.”