Partners Megan Lightell and Derek Greene collaborate as Minor Powers for their album Stones We Keep, a darkly beautiful debut recorded and produced by Dave Coleman. Hailing from the foothills of the Appalachians and raised on old-time mountain and folk music, Lightell infuses the spare melodies and vocals with the same sensibility as the paintings for which she is best known: the stillness of mountain music with a rock edge underneath, like a line of dark rain clouds approaching from a distance. Building on his years of experience playing drums for various bands in his native Nashville, Greene covers new ground as a lyricist in this project, revisiting themes of fragile relationships and a sense of loss.
This bittersweet fragility is at the core of the record, surfacing following a major hit-and-run car accident in 2017 that left them both with scars and an urgency to bring forth the music that had been in the background of their lives as they raised their daughter and grew even deeper roots in the Nashville community. Haunted by the past while grasping at the ephemeral nature of the present, these songs search for the meaning of memories and second chances.