JAMES FILKINS’ 'DOG EARED DAYS': Where Memory, Nature and the Acoustic Guitar Become One
- Jonathan Widran
- 5 hours ago
- 7 min read
A dog on a paddleboard, a rainbow glimpsed during a walk, the quiet of a Michigan winter, birds announcing the arrival of spring—James Filkins finds music in the seemingly everyday things that become extraordinary simply because he was there to experience them. On Dog Eared Days, the evocative, multi-dimensional fifth release from the Michigan fingerstyle guitarist, composer and sonic meanderer, he creates not only an album that intricately documents a life, but one with the uncanny ability to preserve its memories for us.
The collection’s 13 acoustic instrumental compositions feel less like conventional songs than carefully captured fragments of a life, each revealing a different facet of Filkins’ world. His guitar does not merely describe the places and feelings that have shaped him; it seems to inhabit them, tracing their contours through alternate tunings, resonant low tones, bright treble figures and the tactile sound of fingers moving across strings. The result is music that feels at once intimate and cinematic, rooted in specific memories yet open enough for listeners to find pieces of their own lives within it.
The album’s title acquires an especially poignant resonance through the story of Mojo, the family dog Filkins and his wife lost in June 2025 after more than 16 years together. A rescue who became “Ms. Enthusiasm,” Mojo was woven into virtually every aspect of their lives—stand-up paddleboarding, cross-country skiing, hiking, running, Christmas mornings and ordinary evenings on the couch. The cover photograph captures her sitting on the paddleboard, while another image shows her pausing during a walk to contemplate a rainbow. Filkins describes the emptiness following her death with striking candor, but the title Dog Eared Days ultimately turns toward remembrance rather than sorrow. A friend, seeing photographs of Mojo, observed that she appeared to have had “a darn good life and a heck of a lot of fun.” That thought helped Filkins begin to reconcile the loss. The resulting title composition is an ode to those well-loved, well-worn pages of memory.
It is fitting that Michael Manring’s fretless bass became the voice alongside Filkins on “Dog Eared Days.” The guitarist recorded his part first, sensing that the composition needed the darker, more fluid dimension of fretless bass. Manring’s contribution proves revelatory, winding beneath the acoustic guitar with a vocal-like, almost cello-like fluidity. Filkins’ warm midrange melody remains the emotional center, while Manring’s bass establishes a shadowed countercurrent—at once grounding and mysterious. The result captures two feelings simultaneously: grief for what is gone and profound appreciation for what was.
That coexistence of contrasting forces is one of the album’s defining musical characteristics. Filkins says he is naturally drawn to earthier tones and sometimes consciously balances them with higher registers, but he also hears musical “conversations” while composing. A piece may begin as a fragment and remain unfinished for days, weeks, months or even years before another idea suddenly reveals itself as part of the same musical thought. His process is remarkably organic, even by his own description. “I am largely self-taught,” he says, explaining that his unconventional approach sometimes allows him to break rules simply because he does not know them—or chooses what he calls “musical ignorance.” There is something liberating about that philosophy. Filkins isn’t trying to make the guitar conform to a predetermined system; he is listening for what it wants to say.
That instinct was strengthened by his discovery of fingerstyle guitar and alternative tunings, influenced by artists ranging from Michael Hedges, Martin Simpson and Brooks Williams to Pierre Bensusan, Robin Bullock and Al Petteway. The music of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell had already planted the seeds. Discovering the CGDGAD tuning through El McMeen, along with commissioning handmade guitars from Irish luthier Dermot McIlroy and American luthier Simon Fay, opened another door. For Filkins, the instrument became more than a collection of strings and frets. Its construction, tuning and vibration combine to produce what he calls a form of “sonic communication.”
You can hear that philosophy immediately in “A Place in the Sun.” A steady lower-register figure provides the earth beneath an elevated higher, more adventurous melodic voice, giving the sensation of two guitarists weaving around one another. Stephen Wake’s lead guitar adds another dimension to the interplay, his Celtic sensibilities particularly well suited to Filkins’ melodic architecture. The piece has a sunlit, almost windswept character, its high and low voices moving across the stereo field like currents of air. There is a sense of searching here, but also arrival—a musical invitation toward that elusive place where lightness and serenity meet.
“Gratitude” begins more tentatively, with isolated notes seeming in search of their destination before the melody gradually reveals itself. Filkins deliberately tried to slow his hands down on the piece, countering his tendency toward frenetic fretboard activity. The result is one of the album’s most convincing examples of restraint becoming expressive power. You can hear the physicality of the instrument—the finger scrapes, the changing pressure, the resonance after a note has been struck. The melody eventually settles into an infectious, gently swaying current, its shimmering tones floating above the grounded acoustic foundation.
If Dog Eared Days is partly a map of memory, “House Cleaning” is one of its most vivid interior landscapes. Filkins recalls leaving the home where he and his family had lived for nearly three decades. Amid the boxes and upheaval, Mojo curled into her bed, apparently unmoved by the human commotion surrounding her. That image of an animal becoming “the eye of the storm” is reflected in the music. The guitar’s delicate figures weave around longer cello and violin tones supplied by Katie Larson and Sav Madigan of The Accidentals, evoking an unsettled but strangely peaceful sonic environment. The plucked guitar seems to sparkle against a moody orchestral wash, as though fragments of memory are being lifted from an emptied room.
Filkins’ deep connection to Northern Michigan comes into particularly sharp focus on “Cat Head Bay.” Here, Zak Leger’s whistle and accordion transform the acoustic guitar into a kind of miniature travelogue. The whistle hangs high above the grounded guitar, while the accordion ebbs and flows beneath it, imbuing the piece with an almost Celtic-folk character. Yet the setting is unmistakably Filkins’ own: the northern tip of Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula, where freshwater, dunes, beaches and the history of the Great Lakes converge. The three instruments eventually occupy the same sonic space, producing a richly textured tableau that feels less like a postcard than a remembered landscape.
Then comes “Gravity and Inertia,” where Filkins lets his more restless side have its way. Deep booming guitar tones collide with percussive strums and nimble high notes, producing one of the album’s most rhythmically animated performances. His explanation of the piece is characteristically imaginative: some days feel burdened by extra gravity; others carry an inexplicable bounce. The composition attempts to inhabit both sensations. His reference to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, specifically Robert Redford’s character discovering that he is “better when he moves,” becomes an unexpectedly perfect key to understanding the track. This is Filkins in motion—physical, playful and slightly unruly.
That same affinity for motion makes “Rose & Hummingbird” one of the album’s most immediately infectious pieces. Filkins’ baritone guitar establishes a supple lower foundation while Luis Vilca’s flute darts, hovers and circles above it. The inspiration is his wife’s garden, where roses and native plants have cultivated a haven for hummingbirds and butterflies. Filkins describes watching these tiny creatures engage in aerial acrobatics before occasionally becoming completely still. Vilca’s flute captures both sides of that imagery: the darting flight and the suspended moment.
“Purpose” and “Witch Hazel” strip away the ensemble and place Filkins’ technique under the microscope. On “Purpose,” written specifically for baritone guitar, the lower range architecture provides a remarkably percussive foundation for soaring melodic explorations. “Witch Hazel” goes even deeper into the acoustic guitar’s possibilities. Its custom 12-fret instrument produces a fuller resonance, allowing bass and treble to exist in unusually sharp relief. The piece begins with an intricate, almost contemplative fingerstyle pattern before gathering intensity and eventually becoming more rhythmically animated. Filkins’ fascination with the witch hazel trees around his home adds another layer: these unpredictable trees, blooming at different times of year, appeal to a guitarist who likewise refuses to follow a predictable musical path.
One of the album’s most soul-stirring transformations occurs in “Leelanau Lullaby,” where Filkins gets an especially luminous quality from an old guitar he restrung in Nashville, or high strung, configuration, giving the instrument the high-octave character of a 12-string. The composition dates back decades; Filkins recorded an early version with a student, Christina Karakos, then essentially let the piece sleep until Katie Larson and Sav Madigan heard it many years later. Their cello, violin and Karakos’ viola turn the original melody into something much grander. What begins with tender guitar notes gradually blossoms into a chamber-like tapestry, the strings deepening the piece without overwhelming its intimate core. The music moves considerably more than the word “lullaby” might suggest, but its sense of place is unmistakable: the quiet beauty of Leelanau County translated into sound.
The album’s fascination with instrumental dialogue reaches another delightful expression in “Joie De Vivre,” where steel-string and nylon-string guitars reveal contrasting tonal colors. Filkins says the title emerged naturally from the joyful difference between those two voices. The effect is conversational without requiring literal speech: one guitar’s clarity meets the other’s warmer resonance, their phrases intertwining in an easy, playful dance.
On “Cardinal Serenade,” Alice Roberts’ harp becomes the perfect counterpart to Filkins’ guitar. The guitarist hears the piece as winter giving way to spring, with the harp becoming the cardinal and the guitar the warmth of the returning sun. The metaphor is audible. The harp’s luminous high notes glimmer above Filkins’ fuller, deeper strumming, gradually turning the composition into a celebration of seasonal renewal.
And then there is “Arboreal Glen,” where Aaron Dolan’s whistle rises above Filkins’ crisp, fingerpicked guitar. Bright upper-register notes and audible string scrapes give the opening a tactile immediacy before the whistle enters like a distant birdcall. The two voices gradually become harmonic partners, forming one of the album’s most striking marriages of landscape and sound.
For all its varied instrumentation, however, Dog Eared Days remains unmistakably the work of a singular guitarist whose relationship with music has survived various careers, multiple outside responsibilities and long stretches when recording simply wasn’t possible. Filkins spent years in radio and education, but insists he never truly left music behind. Listening and playing, he says, have been part of his existence for more than five decades, “akin to food, water and breath.” That may be the simplest way to understand this album.
Filkins hopes listeners might discover “a moment of joy, reflection or perhaps introspection” within these pieces. What makes Dog Eared Days special is that it doesn’t dictate which one. Like a well-worn book with its pages turned down at fa vorite passages, it leaves room for the listener to linger, wander and remember. Its melodies carry the imprint of Northern Michigan, its textures echo birds, water, trees and wind, and its title ultimately honors a dog whose sixteen years became inseparable from a family’s own story.
The music is organic in every sense of the word: acoustic, tactile and made by real people playing real instruments, but also inwardly generated—a sonic extension of a life fully lived. Filkins calls himself a sonic meanderer. On Dog Eared Days, that meandering turns out to be the destination.
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