source: Tired Pony's Facebook page

Hope you're all having a lovely Labor Day ... it's hard to believe that summer is nearly over. But this means that I won't feel out of place listening to all the folk and acoustic music I've been wanting to listen to anymore. Yes, in addition to eating and living seasonally, I listen to music somewhat seasonally as well. I have really strong associations with pretty much any music I listen to, and now that I'm older, the more I listen, the more it seems something sounds like something else I've heard before and, inevitably, have associated with something or someone from my past.

That's all a very long-winded way to introduce this week's Music Monday artist, Tired Pony. Tired Pony, the brainchild of Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody, has a sound that is so surprisingly American to me ... and I know that's a really odd thing to say, but at times, it sounds like pure Americana. It's incredibly folk, a little country. And knowing now that Gary Lightbody's long had the ambition to create a country album, it all makes sense.

Tired Pony is a "supergroup" consisting of a bunch of artists who were already quite well-known: Gary Lightbody, Belle & Sebastian's Richard Colburn, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, Iain Archer, Jacknife Lee, Scott McCaughey and Troy Stewart. The group recorded their debut album ("The Place We Ran From") in Portland, Oregon, and their second album ("The Ghost of The Mountain") in Topanga Canyon in California.

Something about Tired Pony's music is very transitional -- the perfect kind of music to mourn the end of summer and ease into acceptance of autumn days ahead.