Circle and Square

Eric Brace and Thomm Jutz are back with their second record, Circle and Square, ten songs woven together with their familiar gorgeous acoustic guitars and harmonies. They're joined here and there by talented friends Mark Fain (bass) and Lynn Williams (drums), while enriching the sonic landscape is pianist Finn Goodwin-Bain.

The need to create is inside all of us. The impulse comes when we let our imaginations roam free -- free like twilight bats, butterflies, city rats. hell, pick your uncaged animal metaphor. The point is, we all want to sing and dance and draw and write.

Eric and Thomm do that a bit more than most (except for the drawing and dancing, if we're being honest). They can't help writing songs and singing them. couldn't stop if they tried. And why would they? And what would they do if they did stop? They'd sit around and mope, wondering why they weren't writing songs and singing them, something they've both been doing at the highest level for decades now. And they've been doing it together for ten years now, first in a trio with their late musical brother Peter Cooper, and lately as a duo, since Peter's death in late 2022.

The first Eric Brace & Thomm Jutz album, Simple Motion, was #1 on the Folk DJ chart in March, 2024, and now it's time for their second record to be set free into the world.

Circle and Square is out on Red Beet Records Jan. 16, 2026, featuring exquisite artwork from Mary Ann Werner (to whom Eric happens to be married). The record's ten songs are about that very thing we were talking about in the first paragraph: Creation.

In an era of destruction (a mess of tornadoes and hurricanes, the East Wing of the White House, coral reefs, democracy, the list is long.), Eric and Thomm use their most powerful weapon -- songwriting -- to cast their artists' eyes on the act of creation itself, the very opposite of destruction.

As they roam the world strumming and singing, the two always make time for art, and seeing Diego Rivera's murals in Detroit sparked a song, as did Max Beckmann's powerful paintings in a museum in The Hague. American painter Thomas Hart Benton's magisterial final work, "The Origins of Country Music," gets a close look in a song Thomm wrote with the great Shawn Camp.

Their appreciation for the fabled packhorse librarians of eastern Kentucky sparked a song about inspiration hiding in a saddlebag ("On the Back of a Horse"), while another song exhorts us all to keep our metaphorical skylights open so that the ideas of the universe come tumbling through.

Thomm and Eric also wrestle with time zones ("10 to 4"); the destructive legacy of TVA dams ("Fontana Dam"); the curious prevalence of repeated shapes and Jungian archetypes ("Circle and Square"); and their own grief at the loss of Peter Cooper ("Nothing Hurts").

In these ten songs, Eric and Thomm have created a manifesto for imagination over indifference, music over silence, beauty over despair, and creation over destruction.

Circle and Square is perhaps just what you've been needing to hear.
Give it a spin.

1: 10 to 4
2: Thomas Hart Benton
3: Diego in Detroit
4: Circle and Square
5: Nothing Hurts
6: Fontana Dam
7: Beckmann in the Frame
8: On the Back of a Horse
9: Life of the Mind
10: Wide Open

Number of Discs: 1

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.