“I think it was just part of reclaiming myself over the past year. I think I got in a rut and was kind of repeating myself, and not wanting to do what I wanted to musically and personally,” says Strand of Oaks frontman Timothy Showalter. “I figured if I was going to take that path, I should start at the beginning.

Growing Up In Goshen

The beginning, for Showalter, is set in northern Indiana. He grew up in Goshen. His father and grandfather founded Showalter Buick GMC (now Goshen Motors) in 1980, and he spent much of his adolescent summers in Kosciusko County.

“I spent a lot of time in Syracuse, that’s where my grandparents lived,” Showalter says. “It’s a pretty ideal place to grow up. I had a good time. I think any kid – no matter if they live in L.A. or Warsaw – when you hit 13, life gets a little weird. I became a strange kid, and I just wanted to be in my basement and listen to music.”

“There was such a joy to it. There was not judgment,” continues Showalter. “I knew I loved music, and I knew I wanted to make it. I had to figure out how that works.”

Not Always Sunny In Philadelphia

In 2001, Showalter moved to the Philadelphia area. “I think it was a girl,” he recounts. “Women are the compass point for my geographic locations, it seems.”

Over the next 13 years, he would experience his fair share of adversity. He briefly moved back to Indiana with hopes of marrying his high school sweetheart. That didn’t pan out. So he moved back to Pennsylvania and got a house in Wilkes-Barre. Shortly thereafter the house burnt down.

He kept at the music though. Back in those days, Strand of Oaks was more of a folk outfit with often abstract, imaginative lyrics (hear “Daniel’s Blues”). He gained some notoriety in the 2000s opening for acts like The Tallest Man On Earth and Phosphorescent. Early records Leave Ruin (2009) and Pope Killdragon (2010) earned him some critical acclaim and a cult following.

Sometime after releasing Killdragon, Showalter married his wife, Sue. His albums were getting him some attention from record labels and he was touring a lot. Things were looking up for Showalter.

But, Showalter and his wife hit a rough patch. As a result, he approached the followup to Pope Killdragon with some ambivalence. In an article in Spin from June 2014, he admitted to Joel Oliphint that he dropped the ball making 2012’s Dark Shores.

“That was the lowest point of my life. That’s when my marriage was falling apart. I wasn’t living at home,” he told Oliphint. “It’s weird that during the most tumultuous time of my life I made this sterile-sounding record.”

Dark Shores could’ve been the demise of Strand of Oaks. Record label attention dwindled, and Showalter, trying not to let it get to him, headed back out on tour. But he could only run for so long. The weight of the situation finally settled in during a tour stop in Sweden.

“It was a culmination of pressure,” Showalter recalls. “My marriage was suffering, I’d released a record I was disappointed in, I didn’t like how I looked or acted. So I’d gone on tour, I was gone about two years! I didn’t take time to think about failure, but I knew I was going deeper and deeper. I was thinking, I have this life, but it’s not my life, I haven’t done it right.”

You Got To HEAL

Showalter came off the road with an abundance of thoughts swirling around his head. Songs started pouring out of him. He cut 30 songs in three weeks.

And these weren’t the kind of tracks that were featured on his previous works. These were highly-personal, autobiographical songs with stream-of-consciousness, venting, confessional lyrics and music featuring electric guitars and synthesizers at the forefront.

Northern Indiana played a pivotal role in the production of that record. As he said, Showalter felt he needed to go back to the beginning. Songs like “Goshen ’97” put listeners square in the middle of Showalter’s Michiana adolescence – awkward, confused, but finding direction in music.

“My first guitar ever was a knock-off Ovation with a plastic back. I plugged it into my dad’s tape machine. That’s where it all started,” Showalter recalls. “I pressed record, and boosted all the knobs. Pure analog distortion. I look at it like all the wood paneling that was in every Indiana basement. I thought [HEAL] was an American record, like a small town Americana record.”

Showalter played all the instruments except the drums on the songs which would become HEAL. Most of the tracks for the album were in the can by late 2013, and he and Sue traveled to Elkhart County to visit family for the holidays.

“I went to Goshen for Christmas. We were around Ligonier and had just the worst wreck ever. We were lucky not to die. But I was like ‘I got to get back to Philly to mix this record.’ I was still trying to cope with it. I kept thinking ‘I should’ve died in that.’”

Prior to the accident, the plan for HEAL was an 80s New Wave thing with slick, polished production. Showalter was scheduled to mix with John Congleton, a Grammy-winning producer/mixer who had engineered hits for Modest Mouse, St. Vincent, Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s, Murder By Death and many others, but with a swollen brain and under the influence of pain killers, Showalter took the mixdown in a much different direction.

“We kind of purposefully made the record just so we could turn it up loud. I just kind of wanted to worship the guitar again,” he says. “The push and pull of it all, that’s probably from listening to Nirvana. That was the kind of music I grew up with.”

Heal is ragged, dynamic, introspective and honest. At times it’s soft (“Plymouth”), with Showalter whispering intimately into the microphone, elsewhere it rocks upbeat and straightforward (“Goshen ’97) and occasionally it is a wash of ear-splitting, fully-enveloping electronic noise (“JM,” “Mirage Year”).

“At the end, I told John: ‘I’m glad we made those decision. Let’s push it even further. Let’s fulfill this whole goal,'” says Showalter. “I think it was the courage, I felt a little invincible. And I didn’t care. The last solo on ‘Mirage Year’ is what my head sounded like.”

HEAL Strikes A Chord

“We had that lucky break where people didn’t hate the record. It felt like the right time for that kind of music,” Showalter remarks. “Maybe people needed to release some tension. I was just personally ready to make something a little more dangerous. I wanted to make this something that’s visceral. I could tell a lot of critics felt the same way.”

To say “people didn’t hate the record” is an understatement. Paste, Consequence of Sound, and many other reputable music publications ranked Heal – which was released by the Bloomington-based record label Dead Oceans last June – among the best records of 2014. He played before a national TV audience on Late Night, and he’s performed the songs from HEAL on a plethora of radio shows.

Last month, Strand of Oaks played a homecoming show in the Hoosier state. Before a packed house at the Hi-Fi in Indianapolis, Showalter – clad in his typical all black, a cut-off t-shirt exposing the “survivor” tattoo on his right forearm – rocked the home town crowd. Half hidden beneath a bushy beard and long hair, Showalter’s eyes shown fierce as he and his band tore through the songs on HEAL.

With the last song fading out, the amplifiers still humming, Showalter hopped off the stage and started shaking hands and taking pictures with the showgoers. And he was all smiles.

“That was a wild show. We’d never played Indy before as a headline band,” Showalter says. “Strand of Oaks has been a band for a long time. All the weird times and disappointing moments have built to this.”

“What we’re doing is just growing. And I want to grow right,” says Showalter. “What’s really cool for me is [HEAL] is connecting everywhere. I go everywhere now, and every kid in every country, every place that I go probably had that feeling.”

“I hope that other people don’t have to live through my experience because it’s pretty severe, but I want people to live that way in their lives,” he continues. “Life is short. What’s the worst that could happen? My dad and my grandpa opened car dealership with no money, right in the middle of the gas crisis, but, you know, the place was open for 30 years.”