Doug Levitt Shares New Single '40 West'

Singer-songwriter Doug Levitt has shared his new single "40 West," which is slated to appear on his forthcoming debut album Edge of Everywhere, out May 12.

Over a sweeping roots soundscape and a wistful melody, Levitt tells the tale of a mother who gave up her dreams of being in the Air Force to raise her son and tenderly touches on the sacrifices that parents make out of love. Edge of Everywhere is available for pre-order.

Levitt will be joining Laura Cantrell on a U.K. tour this summer - a full list of dates can be found below and tickets are available here.

"'40 West' is a song about a woman who I met because she was picking up a rig to drive it back to the Gulf Coast," shares Levitt. "Now in her early 60s, Susie told me how she initially had joined the Air Force because it was the only one of the armed forces that would allow a woman to be an MP, military police. 'I joined the Air Force to see the world,' it turns out she said, 'I got about an hour away.' But she then had a son and she'd said, 'He needed me more than the Air Force needed me.'"

Edge of Everywhere has already been praised as "one of the most important albums of the 21st century" by Americana UK and has earned support from No Depression. "40 West" follows the "poignant" (Glide Magazine) "Cold Comfort" and the emblematic "Highway Signs," which serves as the emotional centerpiece of Edge of Everywhere and earned support from The Alternate Root.

Produced by multiple GRAMMY Award-winner Trina Shoemaker (Brandi Carlile, Josh Ritter, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris), this album powerfully chronicles his ongoing Greyhound bus journey over the last decade, traveling over 120,000 miles to date and sharing the inspiring stories of folks he's met through song. At its core, Edge of Everywhere is about empathy and connection, colored by touching vignettes of the human condition. These stirring narratives range from a father who faced the law after running from it to another father who blames himself for his son being shot in a drive-by.

In March, Levitt brought the impactful stories from Edge of Everywhere to life at New York City's Lincoln Center, where he launched his new partnership with Guitars for Vets. Proceeds from the show along with future tour dates and sales from the album will benefit the organization, which provides guitars for veterans and teaches them how to play. Levitt also recently performed at the men's and women's prisons in Attica, NY, which was filmed for an upcoming BBC TV and radio documentary (the second in a series).

With a bourbon-rich baritone and a range that reaches the heights of a falsetto at times recalling Cat Stevens, Levitt brings listeners along on a transcendental trip in which we are all travelers on a bus writ large. Following the success of a BBC radio documentary two more are planned to broadcast later this year for TV and radio, featuring songs from Edge of Everywhere.

Perhaps it was suffering tragedy as a young person which made Levitt so receptive to other people's stories. When he was 16, he tragically found his father dead by suicide. For years, he says, he couldn't cry and turned to music as an outlet. But before using that music to reflect the journeys of others, he set out on his own, first at Cornell, where he studied Critical Thinking with Carl Sagan, and then as a London-based foreign correspondent for CNN and ABC filing dispatches from such places as Iran, Rwanda, Bosnia and Gaza.

He followed those instincts to Music City, USA. Not long after moving to Nashville, Levitt set out on his first Greyhound tour, with nothing but an initial six-week bus pass, a Gibson J-100, a copy of Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory, a country to cross and an American story to tell, one about life from the margins in.

More than 120,000 Greyhound miles on from that first tour - with stops along the way playing in everything from prisons, VAs, and shelters to the Kennedy Center, Woody Guthrie Center, and Martin Luther King's church - have all culminated in the moving opus that is Edge of Everywhere, a testament-in-song to belonging and connection in the face of uncertainty.

U.K. Tour Dates Supporting Laura Cantrell

June 23 - Leeds, England - Brudenell Social Club
June 26 - Wavendon, England - The Stables
June 27 - Sunderland, England - The Fire Station
June 28 - Glasgow, Scotland - Saint Luke's
June 29 - Hebden Bridge, England - Trades Club
June 30 - London, England - Union Chapel
July 3 - Birmingham, England - Kitchen Garden Cafe
July 4 - Nottingham, England - The Old Cold Store
July 5 - Manchester, England - Night & Day Cafe
July 6 - Hassocks, England - Mid Sussex Music Hall
July 7 - Twyford, England - St Mary's Church
July 9 - Bristol, England - Hen and Chicken Southville
July 10 - Oxford, England - Wesley Memorial Methodist Church

Photo Credit: Patrick Fraser

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