I came out of retirement just in time for the pandemic. I hadn’t released new music in years.”

Dave Hulegaard, Port Townsend singer-songwriter

And it had all been going so well. 

Port Townsend singer-songwriter Dave Hulegaard had just marked his return to the world of live performing after a 24-year, self-imposed exile from the stage, to rousing success, when reality itself skipped a beat. 

COVID-19 turned a lot of lives upside down, and although he admits to having it comparably pretty good, Hulegaard said in an ironic way the timing of the health crisis couldn’t help but seem just a little personal. 

Sheesh, everyone’s a critic. 

“I came out of retirement just in time for the pandemic,” he laughed. “I hadn’t released new music in years.”

Undeterred, he spent quarantine in the studio, collaborated with several of his artistic inspirations via the internet, and will release his new song — “Silver Stars” — Friday, Aug. 14. 

The tune is, he said, an “unabashed love letter to the ’90s,” and features contributing performances by bassist John Thomasson (who has played with Little Big Town and Matt Nathanson), drummer Brandon Dickert (of Save Ferris), and cellist/string arranger Yoed Nir (who has played with Regina Spektor and Paul Banks).

Virtual collaboration was, Hulegaard said, a completely new experience for him. 

“I discovered there is this network of musicians across the world,” he said. “You can do everything over the internet. It was really exciting, finding musicians that had played with these bands that I loved.” 

It was a much more supportive and encouraging experience than his last collaboration. 

Hulegaard still recalls the incident perfectly: an admittedly lousy gig, as part of a group with an admittedly pretentious ‘90s name, in Portland back in the quaint days of yore (1996, to be precise) earned such harsh mocking from the night’s headliner, a band he very much admired, that Hulegaard, mortified, stepped away from the stage. 

He did not, however, step away from music. 

And, playing as Twelve Days of June, he amassed quite a library of material in the years to come, even releasing one album, “A Bittersweet Season of Lament.”

The stage, though, remained a sore spot.

Then, in February, Hulegaard threw caution to the wind and exorcised old ghosts when he played at the Manresa Castle Hotel as part of a special “Love Stinks” Valentine’s Day show. 

The tone of the event was perfect, said the lover of downer rock and sorrowful songs, because “I got all the depression you need.” 

But the crowd was the opposite of depressed — and so was he. 

“I used to be so nervous,” Hulegaard said, “but this time I just got up there, with a room full of people, and was totally fine.”

He opened with a joke, quickly found his groove, and later said it felt “kind of familiar and kind of surreal at the same time.”

He followed with an intimate performance at Port Townsend’s Cellar Door a couple weeks later, before his comeback was promptly derailed by the coronavirus. 

Now, “Silver Stars,” the first of three slated new singles, and the probable core of a future album, will serve as the latest offering from Twelve Days in June. 

“It’s very easy to get your music hosted somewhere,” Hulegaard said. “When I first started the goal was to get your music on a CD; that was the dream.” 

These days, listeners can find Twelve Days in June on Spotify and via www.twelvedaysinjune.bandcamp.com.

And, hopefully soon, on another local stage.