This Sunday won’t be Evan Weiss’s first time in Baton Rouge.
 

In fact, he’s quite familiar with the city, as he said in a breathy voice over the phone, directly after a long hike in the hills of San Diego.
 

It’s not a topic that the 27-year-old songwriter talks about very often.  On a short tour in late 2010, after playing a show in a sweaty club, Weiss called it a night and turned off his phone.

He woke up the next morning to countless missed calls and texts, enough to frighten even the calmest of people.
 

Mitch Dubey, a close friend of Weiss, had been murdered in his home the day before.
 

“He was the kind of guy that radiated positivity to a lot of people,” Weiss said.
 

As chronicled in the song “Connecticut Steps,” a track off of Weiss’s previous release, “Proper,” Weiss then slept in the passenger seat of the band’s touring van to Jackson, Miss. where the band played a show to a nearly empty room, a terrible ending to a terrible trip down south, Weiss said.
 

With his performance tomorrow night at Spanish Moon, Weiss is seeking to change his experience with Baton Rouge.
 

Earlier this year, along with his project Into it. Over it. (an ode to the previous “52 Weeks”), Weiss released “Intersections,” a record that’s earned the band a hefty dose of new fans as well as the continued acclaim of old ones.
 

“I was hoping that it would get hit by different people and outlets that I hadn’t in previous years,” Weiss said.
 

Part of this new direction included production work by Brian Deck, notable for his work with Modest Mouse and Iron & Wine.
 

According to Weiss, this record’s production style was much different than that of his old releases.  Instead of working on the record as a whole, Weiss, the band and Deck focused in on one song at a time, making the record much more clean and calculated.
 

The writing process for “Intersections,” though, was not so different from past releases.
 

“It was similar to the last record.  We started writing in the winter time and Nick, the drummer who played on both records, used the first song we recorded as inspiration (for the rest of the record).  It kind of creates one giant thought,” Weiss said.
 

It’s with this thought that Weiss brings his latest release to the road.
You can catch Evan Weiss, with his project Into it. Over it., on Feb. 9 at Spanish Moon.