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For nearly four decades, The Grahams, Alyssa and Doug Graham, have been writing their lives into song. From teenage years spent following the Grateful Dead on tour to building a creative home at Nashville’s 3Sirens studio, their partnership has always been as much about shared experience as shared sound. Across a trilogy of albums shaped by rivers, railways, and highways, their songwriting acted as a kind of American cartography, mapping people and places encountered along the way.
With their latest album, The Bridge, that outward gaze turns inward. The record marks the most personal chapter of their career so far, confronting memory, illness, identity, and time itself — particularly the fragile, aching awareness of what it means to become parents later in life. Its emotional centrepiece, Georgette, is written for their young daughter: a song filled with pride, fear, tenderness, and a quiet reckoning with the unknowable future.
Speaking with an honesty that mirrors the record’s unguarded tone, Alyssa and Doug reflect on vulnerability, collaboration, and what happens when artists with nothing left to hide finally tell the truth. As they prepare to bring The Bridge to UK audiences on a headline tour this March, The Grahams stand not on opposite sides of a dividing line, but on a crossing connecting past and future, love and uncertainty, music and life.
Alyssa, Doug, welcome. You’ve spent most of your lives making music together. When you look back at that journey, from following the Grateful Dead as teenagers to where you are now, what still surprises you about working side by side?
Hi, thanks for having us and for listening to the music. Ha — I think it still surprises me, first of all, that we still only fight when we’re writing songs, and second, that we can continue to grow as artists even this far into our career. We’ve been with each other, as you said, since we were teenagers, and still we’re both so passionate about each other and our music that it’s always tumultuous writing together. However, it’s equally surprising that together is always better. Our songs are always better when we work as a team and fight it out.
Your new single Georgette feels incredibly intimate. Was there a moment when you realised this song had to be shared, even though it’s so personal?
Funny enough, I don’t think it’s the most personal song on the record, but it is the one that often pains me the most. The song was written as a question. Doug and I have been together for decades, but our daughter, Georgette, didn’t come along until seven years ago. As artists and parents, we are constantly questioning what we will leave behind for her and what lessons she will take away from our music. We are also sadly realising that because we had her so late in life, we will not be around to see much of her journey. There is a line in the song that crushes me every time I hear it or sing it: “What’s in her dreams, where will she go? Who will she be and who’s gonna know?” When we wrote that, it was the moment we really realised that we won’t know. That’s a hard pill to swallow.
Alyssa, you’ve spoken about the song being rooted in both pride and fear, the joy of parenthood alongside the uncertainty of the future. How did you balance those emotions musically and lyrically?
Art is funny that way. It’s a vehicle to do exactly that. It allows you to explore emotions that you may otherwise keep bottled up. As a songwriter, you don’t want to be too sappy or too vague. As a listener, you want the truth, but you also want the inspiration. It’s a difficult balance, but one that, if you’re able to accomplish it, can set you and the listener free. That’s the beauty of music and art.
Doug, you’ve said this record goes to places lyrically that you’d never normally go yourselves. Did writing Georgette change the way you think about vulnerability in songwriting?
I think being a parent and before that, a husband and partner for over three decades — has afforded me the opportunity to work on being vulnerable. Lol, otherwise we wouldn’t be so successful as a family. That being said, working on The Bridge as a whole, with some co-writers (besides Alyssa, Bryan, and myself) for the first time, definitely allowed me to go deep and talk about things I never thought were shareable in our music. Georgette is obviously a special one because there is nothing more unknowable than who your child will become and what world she will live in — especially right now. Songs like Maybe This Song and The One Who Remembers also really pushed me to get it all out and let the listeners in. At this point in our careers, we have no place to hide and no need to. We’re just getting our truths out now.
There’s a warmth to Georgette that feels timeless. Critics have mentioned echoes of classic songwriting and 1960s pop. Were those references conscious, or did they emerge naturally?
The songs on The Bridge, collectively, are absolutely a nod to the great ’60s and ’70s songwriters who influenced us as kids, like Carole King, Carly Simon, and Burt Bacharach, particularly songs like The Best I Ever Had, The Worst Parts of Me, and Maybe This Song. Georgette, though, actually takes that classic songwriting from the era we were exploring and puts a cool, jazzy, modern — almost Portishead — vibe to it. That’s what’s so great about playing with amazing musicians and being in the studio: anything can happen. A song you write as a classic-sounding piece can take on a new life in the studio and fulfil an identity you didn’t even know it needed. Georgette is one of those songs. It needed that slinky, mischievous sound.
You collaborated with a remarkable group of writers and musicians on this record. What did bringing other voices into such a personal project add to the process?
I would actually say that these writers — Kate York, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Dex Green, Jarrad Kritzstein, and Pat McLaughlin — are the reason this project is so personal. Doug and I have been writing songs with our childhood best friend for decades, and we love working together; the songs we’ve written over the years are some of our favourites. This was a different experience. It was like mining. Every day, Doug and I would go on a long hike and hash out our deepest emotions, then come in with an idea for a song about something specific — our fear of our daughter growing up in a world without us there, my mother’s horrible progressive illness, our lifelong connection to New York City and the power it still has over us. We explored these deep concepts with our co-writers and fleshed out the darkest parts — all the things I think we’ve been too nervous to explore in our songwriting in the past. We are eternally grateful to these collaborators, as we are now forever changed as writers and artists.
Recording at your own 3Sirens studio in Nashville must have offered a certain freedom. How did that environment shape the sound and emotional tone of the album?
We built 3Sirens for artists to come and collaborate, explore, and feel freedom — freedom from competition, from big labels, ambition, and judgment. We built it to create an environment where art can just be art. That’s definitely what we felt when writing these songs. There were no attitudes or egos allowed. Everyone was there to help tell our story, to push us in a supportive and safe community. It was an incredibly satisfying experience, and one we’re so grateful for. The space, as much as the collaborators, was a piece of the puzzle. You can hear the rooms of the old Nashville house-studio on the record. Those walls can talk.
The album also touches on heavier themes of memory, illness, identity, and home. Did writing about these experiences bring any sense of resolution, or did it open up more questions?
The One Who Remembers is the best example of what you’re asking. It was the hardest song to write, the hardest to hear, and the hardest to sing — but it’s real. I’ve lived an incredibly fortunate life, surrounded by a loving family, husband, and friends. However, there are, of course, demons. Many people will listen to The One Who Remembers and think it’s only about addiction and illness, but it’s so much more. Yes, my mother — who has been my best friend my entire life — suffers from Alzheimer’s, and we’ve been struggling with it as a family for over a decade. But in many ways, the “lifelong bad habit” is less about the important people in my life and more about my own personal struggles and the habits I fight daily to stay sane. Sometimes it’s less about the afflicted and more about those who are there to witness.
For listeners discovering The Bridge through Georgette, what do you hope they take away from the song on first listen?
I think Georgette stands on its own, actually. It’s a sound I’ve never really heard before — a little jazz, a little experimental pop, a little classic, and very mysterious. I hope it draws people into a world that’s both magical and honest. I believe that throughout the track, you can hear little pieces and nods to all the other songs on the album.
You’re returning to the UK for a headline tour this March. How does performing these deeply personal songs live compare to playing material drawn from observation and storytelling?
I guess we’ll see! I hope I don’t stop and cry on stage — just kidding, that’s not my style. These songs are cathartic, though, and they will definitely create a bond between us and the audience. People will inevitably get to know us better, and I’m sure everyone has demons, so everyone will be able to relate. That’s something we really look forward to: a shared experience where there’s no division. We all struggle, and we all experience joy. Let’s have a night of that together through music.
Finally, if The Bridge represents a crossing point in your lives and careers, what feels different about the way you’re standing on the other side of it now?
I think it’s less of a division “other side” and more of a connector. We’re more connected to our past and moving optimistically towards the future. It really is a bridge.
