Tom Pieciak is a songwriter propelled forward by the concept of home. Finding one, leaving one, building one from scratch. All In Motion, the debut from his atmospheric indie folk ensemble Sleeping Trees, is an album unafraid to show its roots while also bending skyward in search of newness. At the end of the day it’s a coming of age story, and those always need a central figure. On All In Motion that center is Pieciak. 

A mild-mannered, old soul Marylander plunked into Southern Indiana for a Jazz Trumpet degree, Pieciak found unlikely allies on the fringes academia and within the townie-packed small community of Bloomington, cutting his teeth with strangers and acquaintances alike in a weekly country music pick-up band at well known basement bar The Blockhouse. 

As his time at school wore on, it was clear that a mere glance forward was only revealing a path that struggled to hold his attention, while failing outright to hold his heart. Life outside of the conservatory grind, meanwhile, felt rich with exploration, and it was this life that Pieciak began writing about using an acoustic guitar and the formative language of his teenage favorites: early 2000s introspective consonance peddlers like Robin Pecknold and Justin Vernon. 

All In Motion’s opening track “Yellowwood” is a poetically earnest love letter to Bloomington named for its native, low-branching tree. It’s the kind of tune we might hum mindlessly while kicking down an out-of-the-way neighborhood sidewalk. It’s one you’ve heard before and rewritten for your own amusement a thousand times while doing the dishes of the day. An understated introduction, Yellowwood’s a cappella three-part harmony is rendered in stark mid-range tin to draw us in. There’s more here than meets the eye, it seems to tell us.

“I wanted to write a simple folk melody that explores the idea of finding yourself in a place that feels right,” says Pieciak. “ When I moved to Bloomington I found myself feeling empowered and motivated to write this music even before I knew what it would be. The kinds of people I met felt like my kind of people. They love it here too and they strive to maintain its beauty, seemingly out of a natural respect for the environment.”

Lay my head on the soft moss ground

And tune me into the birds

Hold me close and keep me sound

For I’ve just roamed into town

Far more than inspiration came from the people in Pieciak’s orbit though. The first year of Sleeping Trees, captured in peak form on All In Motion, represent a fully formed crew: Trevor Webb (guitar, voice), Nadia Reist (keys, bass, trumpet, voice), Brendan Keller-Tuberg (bass, vocals, keys), Chuck Roldan (drums), and Peter Doyle (pedal steel, guitar).

“The people who made up the original lineup seemed to just fall into my lap,” says Pieciak. I didn’t need to think that hard about who to ask to play this music.”  The group is a seemingly unlikely mix of high-art players, indie rockers, and honky tonk shit kickers—an honest representation of what Bloomington, Indiana has to offer. The album itself reflects that swirl of seeming contradiction, and Pieciak’s material is all the better for it. 

“Narrows”, a song inspired by a trip to Zion National Park during a time of considerable personal uncertainty, might be the track that encapsulates the sound as a whole. Duel fingerpicked acoustic guitars pluck gentle arpeggios as Doyle’s pedal steel yawns ambient in the high register before Pieciak asks the ultimate self-reflexive question: “What will I make of this?” Soon Doyle’s steel is joined in spirit by a lush string section, while tightly doubled harmony vocals and sly auxiliary percussion lead us into a sixteenth-snare-groove made effortless by Roldan’s crack sense of human time, dropping out and restarting at just the right moments for maximum dynamic effect. The strings flourish around the lead, which weaves between the steel, which never overwhelms the fingers-on-steel-intimacy of the acoustic guitars. This kind of dense arrangement, presented without feeling gigantic is easier said than done. It’s a tightrope walk only a group of skilled arrangers can pull off. As a unit, Sleeping Trees are just that. Much like the subject matter of “Narrows” itself, which shrinks the concerns of the individual in the face of a larger continuum, the group sound of All In Motion is an impressive thing to let wash over us. 

After all the canyon walls are bigger than they seem

And I’m still waking up to the same sun

"May/June” is the big cathartic exhale after the series of questions and anxieties explored throughout the record. “That time of year always seems to be defined by a season of change,” laughs Pieciak. “The bubbling potential energy of spring that gives way to the frenetic noise of summer.” Indeed, the certainty of the laid back echos of 70s AM gold in “May/June” eventually gives way to a bombastic middle-section dissolve, ripe with scrape-laden free-time dissonance, but returns into the refrain at top energy. All in motion.

Conceptually, Sleeping Trees has already moved into new territory, reincarnating itself to mirror, react to, or satisfy the direction in which Tom Pieciak wants to take it. The shifting lineup is the most tangible evidence of that, and the fluidity is something Pieciak insists is built into the compositions themselves—at times calling for a solo, duo, or large ensemble arrangement. That, of course, could potentially feel counterintuitive to those tied to the ebb and flow of the All In Motion arrangements as they are on record, but given the bandleader’s larger background in jazz and improvisation, it’s honestly just par for the course. If there’s any one thing a listener could glean from Pieciak’s lyrical concerns, it’s that there’s an excitement to putting our faces to the wind and walking forward into the unknown. 

By David Brown, 2025