Nahko And Medicine For The People

“Many have been silenced, but I have come to sing”

On seventh album, TRENCHES, Nahko Bear channels three years of soul-searching personal revolution into sound. Released on Sept. 1, the record reflects more than a thousand days of open-hearted self-excavation, avid learning/unlearning, and radical internal re-calibration.

In 2020, Nahko walked away from the corporate music industry, vanishing into rural Oregon to work intensely on himself and his relationship with the world. He returns with a record rich in the core qualities that have defined his career and delighted fans for over a decade – socially-conscious, super-positive folk and rock flecked with soulful alt-R&B, reggae, and gospel – now embroidered with a nuanced defiance of “cancel culture”, wide-eyed re-appreciation of himself, and a trademark stylistic eclecticism expanded into hip-hop, pop, trap, and more.

“All of us have been through so much in the last three years,” mulled Nahko. “The messages on this album will really resonate with people who’ve been through the trenches of this pandemic and whatever they’ve lost and whatever they’ve gained.”

Born to a Puerto Rican/Native American mother and a Filipino father, Nahko was adopted and raised in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. Beginning his musical journey at 6 years old, Nahko began traveling widely in his teens, wrestling with identity, purpose, and perception.

Busking on streets, selling CDs out of his guitar case, he earned a cult following. Backed by his band, Medicine For The People, Nahko’s 2013 commercial breakout album Dark As Night landed in the Billboard Heatseekers Chart top 10. Medicine For The People played major festivals including Outside Lands, Electric Forest, Wanderlust, and Bumbershoot, and sold-out Colorado’s 10,000-capacity Red Rocks Amphitheatre as headliners.

Fifth album Take Your Power Back was Nahko’s most profound and fully realized collection to date, described by When The Horn Blows as “powerful, emotional, and so heart-wrenchingly uplifting that it’s hard to find anything to fault.” Yet, dropping just as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, the record was overshadowed both by global events and Nahko’s public shaming over online allegations.

Retreating to the Pacific Northwest, Nahko watched his community devastated by deadly wildfires that summer while reclaiming control of his career as his own manager and agent. At the end of 2021 he self-released the beautiful trouble EP, comprising of tracks started before the pandemic. A year later, in a semi-spontaneous outpouring of emotion and inspiration, the songs that became TRENCHES burst forth in the California studio of producer Adam Korbesmeyer.

“Within seven weeks, we’d put together an album,” marveled Nahko. “The musical growth between Adam and I since we first started with Take Your Power Back has been immense.”

Without a label, a band, or public preconceptions looking over his shoulder, Nahko was able to enhance his signature world music and folk stylings with echoes of everything from Juice Wrld and Taylor Swift to Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver. TRENCHES is a frank expression of his musical journey and an eloquent response to recent personal controversy embraced by Nahko as his “liberation.”

“I get to be rebirthed into this place where I get to call the shots,” he explained. “And it’s now moving out of the mentality of I’m just surviving to where I’m actually thriving.”

Released in May, first single “ENOUGH” is an achingly poignant dawn of a new era, musically delicate yet stunningly strong in its “I am enough” refrain. “When I lost everything / I realized that nothing happens to me / It happens for me,” Nahko sings. “With every stone they cast / I’ll build something that lasts … My past does not define what’s next for me.”

“The headline of that song is knowing that however messy your life is, or your mental health is … no matter what people are saying about you, that you’re still valued,” said Nahko.

He describes second single “DICHOTOMY,” due on June 23, as a “message to former fans, to people in my life, and even probably to old versions of myself.” Sonically transporting and tastefully psychedelic, it’s a bold Trojan Horse that makes a tortuous tale of emotional and spiritual cleansing astonishingly easy to hear.

“A lot of people are going to resonate with the experience of wanting someone to get the fuck away,” Nahko expanded. “I can’t heal with you close to me; I can’t move on or transform with you in my presence.”

Follow-up “OK” marries Sublime-y guitar to trap-inspired drums, its sing-along chorus a timely reminder about “taking your mental health seriously and being okay with not being okay.” TRENCHES’ contemplative title track and fourth single encapsulates some of the album’s central themes: shame as a weapon; approaches to accountability; and supporting ourselves and others through epiphanies and resulting transformations.

“There’s a bit off dusting off the shoulders and a bit of ‘fuck you’ to anyone who may be in opposition to the journey of an artist and of someone in the public eye,” Nahko explained. “Coming out of the ashes, a phoenix rising, and how many times I’ve done that in my life.”

Each TRENCHES single will be accompanied by an acoustic visualizer video. The day after the album’s release, Nahko will build upon his successful 2022 headlining tour of Europe with another solo Euro trek, followed by a tour of non-traditional U.S. venues and festival sets in Australia.

“TRENCHES has something for everybody,” he concluded. “A range of emotions from anger to accountability and redemption; sorrow and mourning to soaring joy; forgiveness to rejoicing.”

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