Carry the Fire connects Dustin Kensrue’s solo catalog with the historical Staple Records roster. Its April 2015 physical entries name Staple Records, Workhorse Music Group and Vagrant Records, with different catalog numbers for the CD and 45 RPM vinyl. The Christmas album discussed alongside it in the label’s announcement followed a separate Vagrant release path.
Staple News is independent, with no connection to the Staple Records label that used this domain and none to Kensrue or Thrice; how the site came to sit here is set out in About Staple News. Facts below come from the label’s own dated posts and from Discogs entries, which are community maintained transcriptions of what a release prints rather than label documents.
What sits under his name in the database
The artist list read for this article carried eight titles: a self released live CDr in 2006, Please Come Home in 2007, the Christmas record This Good Night Is Still Everywhere in 2008, The Water and The Blood in 2013, Carry the Fire in 2015, a live covers album and a companion EP in 2016, and Desert Dreaming in 2024. That is what one list held on one date, and it is a starting point rather than a discography.
Two of those records are documented here, because two of them are the ones the label wrote about.
Announced from inside the studio
The label’s artist page carries a press release dated 13 November 2014, written while the record was still being made. It calls the album the follow up to his 2007 solo debut, sets it for the following spring on Staple Records and Vagrant Records, and says he was engineering and producing it himself.
Kensrue is quoted on how the songs accumulated: bits and pieces bouncing around, recorded and revisited, most of them forgotten by the time he listened back. The ones that stuck, he said, were the most persistent from the previous eight years. The same release dated three commitments around it, including a Thanksgiving show in Atlanta, a December run on the Where’s The Band? tour, and a slot confirmed for the following March in Austin.
Two dates for one release
The label posted that the album was out on 22 April 2015. All three inspected release entries record 21 April 2015. Neither date is settled here, and both are reported with the source that carries them. The label also linked an interview about the album and Thrice ahead of release.
WH59, WH60, and three colours
The physical issues split across two catalog numbers, and both carry three imprints at once. The CD is WH59 under Staple Records, Workhorse Music Group and Vagrant Records, in gatefold digisleeve packaging. The LP is WH60 under the same three, and it is cut at 45 RPM in the inspected entry.
The red LP entry records a first pressing of two colours in equal runs, 1,500 red and 1,500 orange, each with a download card. A white pressing is entered separately at 1,000. Both vinyl entries credit Kensrue with engineering and production and Brian Eichelberger with the mix, which is the one role the label’s own announcement does not mention.
The Christmas record went to vinyl on a different label
The same November 2014 press release dated a second thing: a limited coloured vinyl reissue of his 2008 Christmas album for 9 December 2014, with every purchase carrying a download of a newly recorded carol cover.
The inspected vinyl entries name Vagrant Records and catalog number VR636. The December 2014 entry matches the announced date and sets out four colours across two presses: a hand numbered first press of 500 red and 500 green, then a second press of 500 white and 500 blue and white swirl. The repress is also entered as carrying track by track notes written by Kensrue.
Check the playing speed and the issue
For Carry the Fire, the 45 RPM field is useful information to check before playing the LP. It also distinguishes the vinyl entry from the WH59 CD entry more clearly than the album title alone. Match the format, catalog number and colour description together when comparing a copy with a database entry.
For the Christmas record, check which pressing the listing claims. The first-press note describes hand numbering, while the second-press note describes different colours. The shared VR636 catalog number does not settle that distinction by itself. These are descriptions transcribed in community entries, so a photograph of the actual offered copy is still needed to inspect its markings.
The Workhorse and Vagrant names also appear on editions covered in our Senses Fail release guide. Their presence helps trace the catalog, while the individual entry supplies the format and issue details.
Corrections and gaps
Built from three archived label posts, six release entries and two version indexes read on 6 September 2026. No chart position and no sales figure appears, because none was checked against a chart source. No copy of any pressing was inspected, so every colour, count and credit here is what an entry records rather than what a sleeve prints. Our editorial standards cover how to send a correction.