“O God, it’s happening again I turn on the news – I can’t keep watching. Buildings on fire, people are crying, Desperate because there’s no solution. Where do you run, between Love and a Gun?” Michael lays out a stark choice in the title track of his latest EP album, Love and a Gun. “It’s impossible to have watched the news at any point this past year and not have your heart broken and your hope challenged. Music has always helped me process the things that break my heart.” Fortunately, it’s not just the bad stuff that can break hearts. “Thankfully, hearts can be broken wide open with brimming love, too”. In this new EP, Michael vacillates between tender acoustic love songs, like the one to his kids (“Best Love”) that would melt any parent’s heart, to heavy electric guitar-laden blasters that cautiously criticize the surrounding culture, such as the track, “Your Attention”, where Tiernan goes after our modern addiction to our personal electronic devices when he writes, “Dog on a leash, tied to the beat, and each new piece leaves you hungry. But you gotta know every post in some stratosphere. Craning your neck, lack of respect, you presence is a preset I never get, what’s it gonna take for you to put that goddamn thing down?” Overall, the album is a mix of steel and heart, as the title suggests – the heavy mixed with the light-hearted, the hopeless mixed with the hopeful. Tiernan’s 6th studio release, “Love and a Gun” was produced by Andre de Santanna, who is currently nominated for 2 Grammy’s at this year’s 2017 awards for his production, performance, and writing work with Herb Alpert and Ziggy Marley. Santanna has produced Tiernan’s last 3 albums, and this outing features the talents of keyboardist Will Herrington (Lukas Graham), electric guitarist Jaco Caraco (Miley Cyrus), Andre de Santanna on bass (Sergio Mendes, Herb Alpert, Jason Mraz, Bushwalla), Tamir Barzilay on drums (Macy Grey, Tal), along with Gabe Steiner and Aaron Leibowitz on trumpet and saxophone (the Vibrometers), with a feature by Armenian cellist Artyom Manukyan.