That’s how the songwriter explains his recent absence from music. The last time the rootsy singer released a full-length album — Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee, in 2009 — he had a deal with prominent indie label Domino Records. That’s done now. But Ferree never closed the book on music. April 17, he unveils a new LP whose title might offer a glimpse into his psyche of late. It’s called Cry-Fi.

“I went into survival mode when I made the record,” says Ferree in a phone call. He’s cagey about why, but he offers hints: He’d divorced his wife. Badly wounded, he needed to perform open-heart surgery on himself. So after 14 years in D.C., Ferree moved to New Orleans to heal. That’s when new songs began to spill out of him.

“I figured, might as well do something crazy like make a record when you’re trying to survive,” says Ferree, 41. “If I’m gonna die, I’d rather die singing.”

He sings a lot — and sings well — on Cry-Fi, which trades his Americana sound for the R&B and pop stylings he explored on his 2012 two-songer. But over the album’s 10 tracks, Ferree doesn’t sound like he’s dying. He sounds like a survivor.

He describes his return from the brink on “I’m A New Man,” the album’s first single.

“I woke up that morning, I wrote the song. I wrote it pretty fast,” Ferree says, “and I needed to do it. I didn’t know why.”

Ferree returned to the D.C. area to record Cry-Fi with Ben Green at Studio V in Reston, Virginia. Then to shoot a video for “I’m A New Man” (watch it above), he chose another local spot: Showtime, the downhome bar in Northwest D.C. where he once worked.

Showtime’s owner, Paul Vivari, shows up behind a keyboard in the video, a DIY affair that takes cues from old film of Mexican narcocorrido singer Chalino Sánchez. (Vivari is releasing Cry-Fi on his new label, Trick Bag Records.) The rest of Ferree’s ensemble — most of whom don’t play on the album — includes rock drummer Mark Cisneros, plus Alice “Granny” Donahue and Richard Lynch, two members of Showtime house band Granny and the Boys.

Ferree also plans to return to D.C. to play a release show April 23 at Comet Ping Pong. But he doesn’t sound ready to come back for good. He’s got more recuperating to do.

“I’m trying to age gracefully, you know?” Ferree says. “My doctor, meaning me, or life, or whatever, told me, ‘Get down to New Orleans because it’s better for your heart.'”

Benjy Ferree plays an album release show April 17 at Saturn Bar in New Orleans and April 23 at Comet Ping Pong in D.C.

The original version of this article inaccurately said Mark Cisneros did not perform on Benjy Ferree’s Cry-Fi album. He plays horns and drums.

When White’s tour rider leaked in February, the music blogosphere erupted over its extremely specific guacamole guidelines. Not only did the document include a guacamole recipe, it provided instructions for how to slice the avocados to achieve perfect chunkiness. (White has said he had nothing to do with the guac recipe, calling it an “inside joke” with show promoters.)

D.C.’s Jason Mogavero, who’s in the band Jack on Fire, got to mocking the tour rider’s specifications with pal Sam Sherwood at local watering hole Showtime.

“It was sort of like the obnoxious 2015 version of ‘remove the red M&Ms,'” says Mogavero, 30.

That conversation led Sherwood and Mogavero down a culinary rabbit hole: They started comparing their own takes on guacamole, then moved on to their chili recipes. Mogavero realized he had a lot of friends who both play in D.C. bands and possess “serious cooking chops,” he says. Then it hit him: D.C.’s music scene needs a chili cookbook.

D.C.’s most famous chili is the stuff ladled out at Ben’s Chili Bowl. But after Mogavero began reaching out to friends and folks in the music scene — soliciting both recipes and songs for a paired music compilation — he found a surprising variety of concoctions.

“At first I worried, ‘There’s probably going to be a bit of repetition…  it’s chili, how many different variations could you get?” Mogavero says. “[But] we just naturally got this wide breadth of chili recipes.”

Called the DC Rock’n’Roll Chili Cookbook, the collection includes both meaty and vegan chilis, chilis centered around beans and some that don’t touch the legume. There are also sides and soups — i.e. cheesy biscuits and butternut squash cornbread — that would make excellent foils to the hearty main attraction. Recipe styles also run the gamut, from straightforward to silly, like the footnoted, joke-heavy one submitted by the people behind parody Twitter account Fort Reno Rumors.

Together, the recipes compose a 40-page physical cookbook. The book comes with a 15-song compilation of songs by D.C. artists, including two previously unreleased tunes from indie rockers BRNDA and Mogavero’s Jack On Fire.  (Stream the entire compilation below.)

“Beat the Rich,” which formally arrives on Jack On Fire’s new album out Dec. 4, is a sardonic take on pricey craft cocktails and other trappings of gentrification. Thematically, it piggybacks on the band’s fiery 2014 cut “Burn Down the Brixton.”

Proceeds from the cookbook and compilation benefit nonprofit Bread for the City, which just made sense for a food-themed benefit, Mogavero says. He also points out that the release’s timing — shortly before Thanksgiving — was intentional.

“I deliberately said, ‘Let’s get this out in the first two weeks of November so that the money can help [Bread for the City] with the push for Thanksgiving meals.'”

Mogavero plans to host a release party for the DC Rock’n’Roll Chili Cookbook Nov. 8 at Showtime, the bar where the chili cookbook was born. The musician says he’ll have 50 copies of the compilation for sale — in cassette form, for $5 — along with 100 copies of the cookbook.

If the cookbook proves to be a hit, Mogavero says, he’s happy to satisfy people’s appetites for more.

The DC Rock’n’Roll Chili Cookbook is available for preorder on Bandcamp and will be for sale, along with cassette copies of the compilation, Nov. 8 at Showtime. Top photo by Flickr user jeffreyww used under a Creative Commons license.