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\n\tOrville Peck<\/a> thinks often about what would have happened if he died that night in 2023 of a self-inflicted overdose, heartbroken and hopeless at his New York City hotel. It was the evening before he was supposed to play to a sold-out crowd at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, kicking off his Bronco run <\/a>with one of his biggest concerts yet. His team found him the next morning and issued an ultimatum: get clean, or he\u2019d be on his own.<\/p>\n \n\tBut the show had to go on. Peck put on his fringe, leather, and mask<\/a>, and powered through a dynamic 19-song set as if nothing in the world was awry. Then he canceled his tour<\/a>, packed his bags, and checked into rehab.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI was in one of the worst places in my life, for sure,\u201d Peck says, seated in the stars and stripes-themed dressing room backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, where he\u2019ll be making his Opry debut in a few hours. He\u2019s in a pair of ripped jeans and a ringer tee, his signature mask now just a wisp of tan leather, the rest of his face in view. \u201cI was a bad addict, a coping alcoholic. And I had this spiral moment, where I went back to my hotel and tried to take my life. It was a big turning point for me, with a lot of realizations to come. It was something that needed to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHis forthcoming album, Mule<\/em>, begins with this moment of darkness. Namely, with a trio of his most beloved influences and collaborators \u2014 Emmylou Harris, Allison Russell, and Noah Cyrus, \u201cthe three witches of Macbeth<\/em> of my country music<\/a> story,\u201d as he puts it \u2014 singing a bluegrass hymn that imagines what would have happened had Peck never woke up that morning in New York. Out Sept. 18th, Mule<\/em> tells a chronological story of the worst year of Peck\u2019s life, when he broke up with his partner, succumbed to the depths of addiction, went to rehab, got sober, and faced a reckoning with both the public and private versions of himself: not the masks he wears as costume, but the ones we all use to cope and frame how we appear to the world.<\/p>\n