Crystal Wise
Light dances on the sea-green surf. A handful of little boys — brothers — play together in the soft foam of the ocean’s edge, facing forward into the unknown. Slightly faded with the grainy haze of yesteryear, the photograph captured a moment of childhood innocence. It was anirreplaceable treasure … and Abraham Alexander lost it.
Now 32 and fresh off the release of his debut album, SEA/SONS, the Fort Worth singer and musician is a stirring storyteller with a philosopher’s soul. He was just 10 years old in the snapshot, which was taken where he grew up in Athens, Greece.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” says Alexander, who first came across the vintage photo in 2019. “It blew my mind. It brought back all these memories and was so nostalgic for me. And immediately I knew what I wanted to call my album and what I wanted the concept to be about.” The cherished picture would take pride of place as the cover art. “I knew that whichever [record] label partner I would have, this is what I wanted.”
Then the pandemic arrived and swept everyone’s plans away. Three years later, Alexander signed to Nashville’s Dualtone Records and set an album release date — but the photograph had disappeared. He remembers the tension: “I can’t find it. I’m stressed. Anxiety starts to creep in, and I’m complaining to everyone and their mama, to all my friends.” Then his best friend, Elle, spoke up. She had wanted to surprise him with a gift on the day of his record release, but it would have to come early: She had painted the photograph.
While Alexander was away on tour with Leon Bridges, Elle (who hadn’t picked up a paintbrush since high school) had been inspired to recreate the happy scene, transforming the lost snapshot into something even more meaningful and beautiful than before. Her painting is what you see now on the cover of SEA/SONS, which was released on April 14 of this year.
“This record has been a healing process for me,” says Alexander, who has overcome tragedy and trauma to emerge cleareyed and confident, with a calming presence and a quiet strength of character. “I’m excited to share something special.” Full of hope and sorrow, love and loss, the album’s intimate lyrics and stripped-down aesthetic touch a nerve, bypassing the brain to connect directly with the heart. “They say that your pain can bring answers to someone else’s, and that’s all I want to do … I’m just talking about my life, and I hope that people can understand theirs when they listen.”
Pure, powerful emotion inhabits the sound of the singer-songwriter and guitarist, whose self-taught style is all his own — a silken blend of contemporary folk, blues, and soul that feels like a deep breath of truth. Alexander’s album has been a long time coming. “Ten years ago I was just trying to figure out how to play the friggin’ instrument,” he laughs, reflecting on the musical journey that has led him here, standing on the verge of becoming a true phenomenon. But his story starts long before that.
Crystal Wise
A time to be born
Raised in Athens by Nigerian immigrant parents, young Alexander romped and played in the ancient city of philosophers. “It was such a beautiful place to grow up,” he says. “I was always a very curious kid.” Schooling often took place in the open air. “We were learning outside and in nature. I would ride my bike, and there’s the Acropolis, and here’s the Parthenon. There’s such a beauty and freedom within that.”
Growing up in Greece gave Alexander a unique view of the world, but all too often he was on the outside looking in. He and his siblings were the only Black children in their school. He was a Greek-speaking Greek citizen who was born in Greece, but some people only saw the color of his skin. “I wasn’t really accepted,” he says. But he didn’t understand why. “I just knew there was always something different about me. Kids would treat me differently, the places I would go would treat me differently … it was an interesting juxtaposition to be in.”
But Alexander didn’t have to face that juxtaposition alone. He’s the second oldest of nine children in the family, eight brothers and a sister. “It’s a blessing and a gift,” he says. “It’s magical to be honest, and we’re not all biological, but there is a bond, a different bond between all of us that’s really special.” Having so many siblings has played no small role in Alexander’s ability to connect with listeners as an artist. “It prepares me to dive into people’s epicenters and try to see things from their perspectives and see what their joys are and what their heartaches are.”
Heartaches were looming. Looking to escape Greece’s economic woes and racial tension, in 2002 the family uprooted itself across the sea to a faraway land called Texas. The three older boys traveled first with their parents, settling in Arlington.
“I cried,” admits Alexander, who was 11 years old at the time. “I knew something was different. The air felt more dense … it’s weird to explain. There was a lot of crime that we would see constantly. The food was different. I hardly spoke English, and so I found myself in a new place, new country, new language, and still isolated. I just remember feeling heavy. I didn’t feel as free.”
The brothers dealt with the upheaval in different ways. “My younger brother was kind of oblivious to it all … he was just excited by the new experience.” Alexander’s older brother struggled a bit, wearing a pink shirt and yellow pants on his first day of high school. “He got dubbed Banana Split,” says Alexander, who had an easier time fitting in. “I was able to tap into sports really quickly and find friends from that.” But all three brothers relied upon each other. “That was when our bonds really started to form because we were all experiencing the same thing at the same time, but on different levels.”
Then nine months after they arrived in Texas, a heart-shattering tragedy befell the family: Alexander’s mother was hit and killed by a drunk driver.
“I’m still trying to process,” Alexander says. “It was extremely hard, extremely difficult, losing the one person that is an anchor when you’re between two places and three different cultures. I just felt a gap, and there was a sadness there. Kids have an interesting way to separate what’s physically happening and what’s mentally happening, and I had, to a certain degree, a wall of innocence that was shielding me from a lot of the pain and the grief.” Alexander now views the loss through the lens of acceptance. “That was what was bestowed upon me … If that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be who I am today.” He’s sometimes asked to give advice to others who have experienced terrible loss. “There’s no advice, really,” he says. “It’s grace.”
Crystal Wise
A time to heal
Alexander sought solace through his teenage years in the place where he felt the most comfortable: on the soccer field. His mother’s death had sparked a chain reaction in the family, leading Alexander to be adopted into a foster family at age 16. With their loving support and his impressive athletic prowess, he landed a spot on the college team at Texas Wesleyan University and a new home: Fort Worth. But his dreams of a future in professional soccer went down the drain when he tore his ACL, which sidelined his career before it began. Alexander was crushed, practically immobile and slipping under the shadows of depression.
And then someone handed him a guitar.
Crystal Wise
“That’s when my love for music took off,” he says. He watched YouTube videos of musicians Gary Clark Jr. and Bill Withers and slowly taught himself how to play the instrument, crafting a distinctive sound in the process. “It was lack that fueled my creative being — a lack of mobility, a lack of my athletic identity — and now I see that it’s just a part of who I am. It’s always existed, but the way that I’ve been able to express it has been different.” As a boy he had conveyed his creativity by updating his hand-me-downs with style tweaks or wearing his soccer socks unlike anyone else. “When you don’t have a lot of resources, you have to find a way to make do … I think I was just trying to find my own way.”
Providence helped him out. A series of chanced moments — a friend running late, a street blocked by construction, two guys moving electronics — led to Alexander meeting Leon Bridges and singing backup on his album Coming Home. Bridges encouraged him to play open mics around town; the two became good friends and later toured together. Soon Alexander was asked to open a show for the R&B singer Ginuwine, and he quit both his jobs to pursue a musical career full time. He was finding his way.
The UK’s Mahogany Records thought so, too, and signed a development deal with the young artist in 2017. Alexander began recording an EP, splitting his time between Abbey Road Studios in London and Modern Electric in Dallas. “It was such an incredible opportunity and one that changed my life for sure.” He discovered much musical inspiration in London’s collaborative milieu but missed the Texas highways — a longing that’s woven into his No. 1 song to date, “Stay.” The homesick ode appeared on his eponymous debut EP, which was released in September 2019.
January 2020, Alexander stood on stage at the Kessler Theater in Dallas and told fans to expect a full-length album later that year. Man plans, God laughs, and COVID-19 battered the music industry. Like many artists, Alexander spent the forced downtime to create, writing several new songs that now appear on the newly released SEA/SONS.
Crystal Wise
A time to speak
With an enduring cross-genre appeal, SEA/SONS stretches out from its base of soulful blues and acoustic folk to embrace elements of rock, pop, hip-hop, and R&B. Some tracks dip their toes into electronica, and others are lifted with gospel with Alexander’s soothing voice glowing through them all. He co-produced the record with a little help from his friends, including Grammy-nominated songwriter Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee) and Matt Pence (The Breeders, Yuck). Alexander’s longtime inspiration Gary Clark Jr. plays an evocative electric guitar solo on a new version of “Stay” while octogenarian Mavis Staples lends her burly vocals to “Déjà Vu.”
Sparse, uncluttered arrangements leave ample space for feelings to flow, as they do in the first song “Xavier.” The gentle breath of an organ leads us into the hymn-like requiem, which Alexander wrote after his brother Xavier was robbed and murdered in 2017. Yet this is no mournful dirge; it is a hopeful prayer rising up to the heavens.
Hope and pain stream through the album together, cresting in “Heart of Gold,” the first song Alexander ever wrote. In its pathos lies its potency. Tender and raw, it’s a message to his younger self to stay strong and survive the moment as he’s blacking out from a beating by his birth father. Alexander has called their relationship “the epitome of abuse.” Peeled back to reveal the musician’s vulnerable, wounded core, the song connects with the vulnerable, wounded core within us all — and in that connection, we can find new strength.
Alexander has found something else: forgiveness for his father. “Our relationship has been rekindled, in a way. It’s good now,” he reflects. “The child in me might not be able to forgive or figure out how to, but the man that I am now can, because I understand. I understand what it’s like to be in pain, what it’s like to try to figure out the world and not being able to. Forgiveness has so many different shades and colors, but what has to be at the center of it is perspective.”
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a constant attitude.” Like King, Alexander’s attitude of forgiveness is greatly informed by his deep Christian belief. “My faith is extremely important. It’s very much a part of who I am and a part of how I view the world and make sense of it,” he says. “It’s the only comfort I have, to be honest. It tells me that I am just a piece of the puzzle, and I’m just here to be a conduit. It helps me not try to control what I can’t.”
Crystal Wise
A time to mend
Alexander’s journey of renewal has coincided with the creation of SEA/SONS. “Over the last few years, a lot of my relationships have been mended and made whole, which is so healing to have in conjunction with releasing this record.”
Drenched in emotion and awash with heart, SEA/SONS speaks to the essential role that each season plays in our lives: summer as well as winter, dark as well as light. “Every single season is so important to the next,” he explains. “There isn’t essentially a good or a bad — everything is essential. And everything is an ingredient to us as a whole and to the mission and the calling that we have. When I look back on each season that I’ve had, in that specific moment I thought, it’s the worst or it’s the highest of the highs … but I think it’s that balance we need to find.”
Alexander’s music is imbued with love in the widest sense of the word. He sings of romantic love, yes, but also love for home, love for family, love for listeners he will never meet. Like forgiveness, love has many shades for the artist and is better expressed in his native Greek language with words like “philia” (brotherly love) and “agape” (unconditional love for humankind). “Love could mean just being vulnerable. Love could mean being selfless and carrying something that no one else wants to, or going the extra mile. Or saying something that might not be acceptable but yet needs to be said — that’s love because you care,” he explains. “From that standpoint … my album is about love. Love that I’ve experienced, love that I’ve lost.”
In SEA/SONS, Alexander has transformed his loss and pain into something beautiful: a healing salve for listeners. “I hope they feel everything. I hope they feel joy, sadness, question, understand, love, love the person sitting next to them better, sing loudly, sing quietly, don’t sing at all, just listen,” he says. “I want them to be childlike again … I want them to feel nostalgic and to long for the days when phones were connected to the walls instead of us being connected to the phones. I want them to long to spend time with their family and travel and create memories.”
Crystal Wise
A time to dance
Alexander has been busy creating memories of his own on a month-long tour that caps off in early May. He’ll come full circle at his two-night album release party on June 2 and 3 at the Kessler, where he stood on stage four years ago and promised the crowd a new record. “Now I want to go back and say it again … and just kind of close that chapter in a way.” Sweet redemption. He’s also playing the mega-festival Bonnaroo this summer, which attracted 80,000 music fans last year. “It’s crazy. I’ve never even been — I’ve wanted to, but just couldn’t afford to go. And now I get to play there,” he says. “There’s always that dream and that hope, that aspiration that you’ll get to be on stage in front of thousands of people … it’s going to happen this summer.”
Crystal Wise
Touring and playing festivals tap into Alexander’s affinity for traveling, which he calls “one of the best educations you can get.” But his adventures all come back to the same place. “I love Fort Worth. I love the city, I love the people in it, and I feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself,” says Alexander, who lives downtown. “The more I travel, the more I enjoy being home. I say going and coming back is not the same as never leaving, because I get to go and appreciate what home is for me. It’s wild, I love this place so much … There is an energy that cannot be replicated anywhere else.”
Hometown support has been “huge” in shaping Alexander as a musician. “It allowed me to develop that artistry. And not just that, but if people weren’t receptive, then it would have been shut down. I’m a firm believer that the second person who believes in the dream is more important than the dreamer. Fort Worth was that for me.” Now he’s an unofficial ambassador for the city wherever he goes. “It’s awesome to represent Fort Worth … it’s an alma mater, and I wear that diploma with pride and honor.”
All of Alexander’s siblings eventually found their way to Texas, including all the little brothers in the photograph. “Thanksgivings are great,” he says, although they don’t wait for a holiday to hang out together at the family ranch. “Being at my family’s place every Sunday that I’m here is extremely important to me.” They play cards and Nintendo Wii. “It puts things into perspective and gives me a sense of peace. It doesn’t matter what happens — I have this community, and I have people that love and cherish me no matter what … I’m super fortunate to be here.”
Philosophers have long spoken of suffering as a source of wisdom and enlightenment, perhaps the source. In the streets of ancient Athens, Socrates taught that a life without suffering was no life at all; Aristotle wrote that we cannot learn without pain. Our modern minds eschew this idea — we want to eliminate suffering, not accept it. But by accepting life’s inevitable pain and grief, we learn compassion, empathy, and understanding. Perhaps the Sufi poet Rumi said it best: “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
Abraham Alexander has suffered the depths of darkness and come away filled with light — a light that he now shines upon others, lifting them up with a healing beacon of song and a philosophy of hope. With a new album to share with the world, he has entered a new season in his life. “I’m in spring. I am in a season of seeing what was planted, a season of seeing the hard work being manifested, and it’s such a blessing,” he says. “I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
SEA/SONS by Abraham Alexander is available on digital streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple and at local record stores.
