Grover Anderson made his bones penning story songs about love and disappointment and death, like a modern-day Sherwood Anderson (no relation). But after years of telling strangers’ stories, on 2024’s Hold Tight Together he decided to look inward. “This album doesn't have anyone who dies in it, which is rare for me,” he says with a laugh. “Every song is about my life and my family.”

Anderson’s life begins and continues in the small town of Murphys, California, where he grew up on 90s country while teaching himself guitar via spotty dial-up Internet. After a stint studying theater at UCSB, Anderson found his voice on a European adventure, writing a song in every city he visited and marveling at the laughably simple notion that all these people and places he encountered would go on existing with no memory or care for his time spent with them.

He wouldn’t fully pin down his sound until 2014’s The Optimist, and formed The Lampoliers with drummer Josh Certo, guitar player Marshall Henry, and bassist Dave Duggan. Inspiration for that album, in some respects, came from Anderson’s obsession with the legend surrounding Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. Goethe was depressed, and as his character plumbed the depths of despair Goethe found the clarity to put things in perspective and turn his life around. Anderson, who’d been working through personal struggles of much lower stakes, completed the album and went on to tour extensively and to meet his now-wife.

Married and working as an English teacher, Anderson entered a new phase of his maturation with The Frontman, his first country effort. His ode to small towns, All the Lies That I Have Told, followed in 2021 as Anderson continued to grind, achieving small victories through sheer grit. “If you work hard and make good stuff, people may notice,” he says. “But if you aren’t afraid of being told ‘no,’ you never know what will come of asking.” That mindset led to Ty Bentli premiering the band’s single “Willie Nelson” on his Apple Radio show in 2021, a slot at 2022’s Salmonfest in Alaska, and even a cameo in Matt Battaglia’s 2023 graphic novel House on Fire. And he’s far from done. His next album, Hold Tight Together, is yet another evolution.

Anderson sought outside production for the first time on this effort — collaborator Kiel Williams — and decided to look inward instead of at strangers on the train. His daughter inspired the gorgeously sentimental song “Sticker,” about a heart-shaped sticker that was torn in two, and his daughter’s sweet request for him to fix it. And then there's the rich, resonant album opener, “Dreams,” which deals with having bad dreams about someone you love — and realizing that those phantasmagorias are merely reflections of your own insecurities.

“Well” is Anderson’s favorite track on the EP, a bittersweet song about “having faith that things will work out in spite of ample evidence that it might not,” he says. “Part of it is in appreciation to my wife and family that there’s always support. Yeah, this is hard, and I don’t have any answers, but we’ve got each other and thank God you believe in this silly dream I have.” That theme continues with “Gleam,” which is about getting older. “I'm almost 40 and I'm in a small town,” Anderson says. “I love my life, but some of the dreams are starting to drift away — and that’s okay.” Love is the central theme of the album, though — love for family, for music, for life. That’s encapsulated in “Blanket,” a “silly love song” about Anderson’s wife that he wrote while he and the dog tried to figure out how to pass the time while she and the kids were out of state for a couple of weeks.

Anderson kicks off 2024 with the nostalgic single “The Guy Who Brings The Yo-Yos To Your Elementary School,” which harks back to the story songs that established Anderson’s identity as a musician. In it, he recalls the professional yo-yoers who visited school assemblies, selling toys under the guise of teaching kids about perseverance. “It started off being about how much I hated this guy, but ended up being a thinly veiled metaphor about me,” Anderson says, then adds, “I should clarify that, despite what a commenter on YouTube believed, I am not actually the yo-yo guy.” The gig might not always be glamorous, and, yes, being an entertainer has its ups and downs — but, in the end, once you find something you love that keeps you dreaming, you don’t let it go.