The idea spawned from reading a pair of classics – “East of Eden” by Steinbeck and “100 Years of Solitude” by Garcia Marquez. I read them around the same time and I adored them both. Watching people's actions and family traits play out over multiple generations was fascinating to me. I thought about them for months afterwards. And then an idea struck me. 

What would it be like to create a family saga in the medium of records?

This was back in 2008. The original plan was to create three short releases, maybe 7 or 8 songs a piece, that each represented a generation of a family. I assumed I’d spend about three years on the project. My estimation wasn’t even close. Once I started writing, it spiraled into an 8-year, 44-song behemoth.

I began by looking up genealogy charts, dating back about 200 years, and using the gaps in information to invent stories of who these people might have been. Since you’re often left with only birth and death records -- perhaps an obituary, if you are lucky -- there's plenty of space to speculate. I also wanted to incorporate magical realism, akin to what was woven throughout “100 Years of Solitude.” I’ve always loved small bits of fantasy or surrealism in stories.

I collected all my ideas into an assemblage of a family tree, borrowing from the visual diagrams I saw in those genealogy charts. Then the visuals gave me another idea. What if there were chord charts and harmonic choices related to the various branches? What if I treated components of music like genetics, letting them evolve a bit with each new family member? This concept was really exciting to me, and it gave the project a stronger sense of cohesion.

My last piece of organization was to show time passing via production choices. To implement this, I wrote a set of rules for each album. The Roots had five main songwriting tools: voices, piano, acoustic guitar, strings and small percussion. I wanted to focus on instruments that might have been in use around the time. The Branches introduced drums sets, electric guitars, and lots of metal sounds into the mix, hinting at the industrial revolution. And The Leaves allowed for synthesizers, drum machines and samples as a nod toward the modern age.

Between 2008 and 2010, I wrote over 60 songs for the project, sans lyrics. That felt overwhelming, so I whittled it down to about 40. I divided those tracks into the three main albums, and each record had a few songs that were written during the time of recording.

The Bastards is the exception. That record became a holding pen for the songs that were eventually removed from the main three albums. But not because I was unhappy with the results. I just couldn’t find a good spot for them in the track order and I like albums to have a certain flow.

The only major change that occurred over those eight years was during the recording of The Leaves. I’d been weaving personal stories into the series from the get-go, but never directly. I’ve historically written about my life in half-truths, or by removing all personal details so that the song is reduced to a general human experience. But events surrounding my family in 2015 were so overwhelming that I didn’t know what else to talk about and I started writing about where I personally come from. I had reserved most of the lyric writing until I was in the midst of recording each album, so the music on The Leaves had largely been sketched out, but the words had not.

So the saga came to a close in a very personal way, far smaller than intended. And instead of closure, I found myself just beginning to make sense of my own family tree. A road I only recently stopped wandering down so much, over a decade later.

Bella is the daughter of Gabriel from "Southern Snow" and the granddaughter of Abigail from "The Dead Waltz." Like the rest of her bloodline, there was something unique about her. Something she kept secret from everyone, even her parents, though she suspected they knew. But there was someone she deeply wanted to tell. Her neighbor and best friend, a boy named Kyle.

Little did she know, Kyle had a secret of his own.

Kyle is the son of Frederick, from the song "The Crooked Kind", and like the rest of his family, he can hear his dead relatives. But unlike his father and uncle, he can also see them. Something mutated when the trait jumped to him. If he concentrated hard enough, he could even show other people by holding their hand.

In this song, the two kids get the courage to share their secrets with each other, something that bonds them for life.

Jim died the year before of cancer. He passed not long after the diagnosis and his wife was left maintaining a property she couldn't afford. The dustbowl was ravaging the Great Plains and the depression was in full-effect, so prospects were slim. Bailey also found himself out of work, so when Jim's window, Carmen, mentioned she planned on joining some family that had moved west years before, Bailey volunteered to travel with her.

Bailey was deeply lonely without Jim. He'd never made friends easy, the shame around his dyslexia often proving too tall of a hurdle. But he'd helped Carmen so much during Jim's illness that they'd come to know each other a little better.

Carmen didn't like having Bailey around at first. She'd only agreed to let him come west because she was afraid. After a lifetime of always seeing the two of them together, she couldn't look at Bailey without thinking of Jim, and the reminder was painful. But over the course of their travels, she started to see Bailey for himself, and he began seeing her as more than Jim's wife.

Their journey west transformed them in many ways. By the time they'd made it to California, Bailey asked if she would marry him and Carmen said yes. This songs chronicles some of the hardships they overcame on their great trip across the United States, through Bailey's eyes.

It was originally set to be the final song for Elsa and Sarah, from "Sisters", but I was the key witness in an abuse case against the people that raised me at that time. Watching all those dark details unravel took a hammer to all of my fictional narratives, and hiding my life in fiction just wasn't working anymore. It felt wrong, somehow.

It was strange watching one my oldest coping skills disappear, so I tried something different. I wrote from my own point of view instead.

Annabel was born far stranger than anyone else in the family. As a young girl, she had a fascination with tasting things. She always said there was so much information in them, be it plants, meats or objects. She would sometimes taste, say, a piece of pork, and she'd tell people all about the pig's disposition, or what its favorite foods had been. As a little girl, this read as precocious and harmless. But she didn't outgrow it, and she increasingly leaned into tasting over talking. By the time she was ten, people no longer found it charming. Her immediate family didn't mind, but they also had no idea how to communicate with her.

What appeared as a sudden disappearance to her brother had actually been carefully planned for years. She was happiest alone, in nature, with no human drama to sift through. So she left to build a home amongst the trees.

She moved often. Once someone stumbled across a strange woman living in the woods, it was only a matter of time before the word "witch" was being thrown around. She had a good sense of when it was time to go, and she rarely lived in any patch of forest for more than a handful of years at a time.

This song follows a young boy named Cedric. He's dying of leukemia, and he could tell from the look his parents had around him that he didn't have long. He'd heard rumors of a witch in the nearby woods, one with odd powers. In a last ditch effort, he decides to seek her help.

To his shock, she reveals herself, hears his story, and after some deliberation, bites into his flesh and sucks the cancer from his blood. He is saved, but she must leave and find a new home, yet again, as a thank you for her good deed.

This song is told through Annabel's eyes.

His return from war was a difficult transition. He'd somehow escaped the shell shock he watched consume so many fellow soldiers, but his time abroad changed the way he viewed the world. His hometown felt so small, their viewpoints unbearably limited. But he was never one to rock the boat. Though it made him feel like an absolute coward, he fell right back in step with his old ways.

Outside of leaving for the war, he'd always done as he was told. The only thing he couldn't make himself bend toward was finding a wife. So he used the stories of war to fend off those particular pressures, but was otherwise obedient.

This song follows his internal dialogue as he meets another man, a musician named James, and they become lovers. Within the year they leave their small town together, heading north, telling everyone they met along the way that they were just relatives. That James was just helping out his cousin, since Richard was having trouble holding down a job after the war.

The story worked. They eventually settled off the coast of New York and lived together, quiet and content, for a very long time.

I wrote this while I was sick. I had a fever and was passing the time while stuck on the couch by toying around with my parlor guitar. I recorded what I was playing with a small dictaphone, thinking it was just another demo.

It might have just been the fever, but this little back and forth pattern kept giving me a strong mental image. One of a woman tending a garden, in the orange glow of magic hour, perfectly content.

They settled down in Colorado, after their caravan was raided, and started a family.

Henry died of infection six years after their youngest son was born. He'd been working around the property when rusty nail gouged his knee. He'd always been slack about getting his shots and the tetanus proved fatal.

So, yet again, Genevieve found herself a widow. Only this time, she had three children to feed. She wasn't broken the way she'd been when Conor died, but she was tired in a way she had no words for.

One of her sons, Wyatt, narrates this song. It covers their journey from Colorado to the California coast.

Genevieve never marries again. But she loves her new home near the ocean, where she quietly raises her three boys and finally finds peace.

His bastard was named Patrick, after the fake name Abel had given the girl on the night they met. He'd only been in town for a short stint and left without notice. The pregnancy proved devastating for her. At her family's insistence, she left her newborn son on the steps of the local orphanage.

Patrick was not treated well in his time there. When he was eleven years old, he'd had enough and decided a life on the streets would be preferable. Within six months he was collected by Atticus, The Gilded Hand.

He was one of the abnormal children that Atticus always sought, and he was the most intriguing. But what The Gilded Hand believed to be his finest prize proved to be his undoing.

Patrick, like his distant relative Abigail, was a sleepwalker. He would often wake to find messages written on the walls of his cell, in his own handwriting, and they always come true.

One morning he wakes to find The Gilded Hand dead at his feet, his tiny hands caked with blood. And by means he does not understand, he has broken the dark machine that the Gilded Hand was creating.

While gardening one quiet morning, her spade hits a metal box. It had been buried there by Stone, long before, while sleepwalking.

Leslie found the diary fascinating. She was a writer by trade and immediately transcribed the text with her typewriter. The child responsible for these words was far wiser than boys his age. His descriptions of his family and the nearby town were sharp and insightful. The final pages clearly showed that he knew he was dying, but was more concerned for his brother and mother than he was for himself. In his words:

"I thought that I'd be terrified, but it's worse to watch them watching."

Leslie became obsessed with the diary, and where it came from. She dug into the family's history, cobbling together their family tree with whatever records should could unearth. Though she got a lot of the details wrong and had to fill in the gaps with imagination, the project eventually turned into her bestselling novel.