Over the last ten years Andrew Peterson has quietly carved out a niche for himself as one of the most thoughtful, poetic, and lyrical songwriters of his generation. More recently he’s established himself as the grassroots facilitator of an online literary and songwriting community (www.RabbitRoom.com) and an emerging fantasy novelist as well (The Wingfeather Saga). But it’s still ultimately that sense of rootedness that listeners, readers and fans seem to respond to most deeply—because Andrew’s songs (and books) remind us again and again of simple, solid things like love and friendship and hope and redemption and beauty and how our stories were meant to be shared, and how the darkness will not always hold sway, and how we, being human, need to hear those things over and over again, because otherwise we become disconnected from the very stories we’re living in. All of which brings us, in a roundabout way, to our real starting point, because somehow, Andrew Peterson’s new, twelve-song project, Counting Stars (produced by Ben Shive, with Andy Gullahorn) manages to do all that without ever leaving home.