Steve Gleason REBIRTH Project Turns an ALS Journey Into Song

The Steve Gleason REBIRTH project, a 12-song episodic cycle co-written by the former New Orleans Saints safety over six months of intimate sessions, began its rollout on 1 October 2026, opening with two tracks that draw directly from a life reshaped by ALS, according to WiseVoter.

The project arrives via Ineffable Joy Records and will be released episodically, with the first two songs, ‘Soul Is Invincible,’ featuring Marc Broussard, and ‘Sonic Boom,’ featuring Trombone Shorty, available now. The cast assembled around Gleason is deliberately eclectic: Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, PJ Morton, Ivan Neville, Anders Osborne, River Eckert and Ben Schneider of Lord Huron all contributed, alongside members of E-Collective, Tony Hall of Dumpstaphunk, drummer Alvin Ford Jr., guitarist and producer Shane Theriot, pianist David Torkanowsky, guitarist Ari Teitel and keyboardist Brandon Coleman.

The Punt Block That Became a City’s Symbol

The title reaches back to one of the most charged moments in New Orleans sports history. On 25 September 2006, just 90 seconds into the Saints’ first game back at the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina, Gleason blocked an Atlanta Falcons punt to set up a New Orleans touchdown. The play became known as ‘the Rebirth’ and carried a weight that extended well beyond the field: it arrived for a city still deep in the work of rebuilding, and it lodged itself in collective memory accordingly. Two decades on, Gleason is returning to that word from a position nobody anticipated in 2006.

Gleason was diagnosed with ALS in 2011, at the age of 33. Since then he has become a prominent advocate through Team Gleason, documented his experience in the 2016 documentary Gleason and published his 2024 memoir A Life Impossible. REBIRTH, then, is neither a retrospective victory lap nor a straightforward celebration of the punt block. The song cycle asks harder questions: what persists when the future you planned for dissolves, what remains when the body changes in ways you cannot reverse, and how a person moves forward when the past cannot be revisited.

Steve Gleason REBIRTH Project: Six Months in the Writing

As USA Today notes, the 12 songs were co-written by Gleason across six months of sessions, beginning in October 2025. Work took place in Slidell, Louisiana and in North Idaho, where Gleason grew up, drawing in part from poems he had already written. His wife, Michel, provided feedback on some of the project’s most personal material. Gleason produced REBIRTH alongside Stephen Rehage and Jim Salters, with recording sessions held at Esplanade Studios in New Orleans’ Tremé neighbourhood.

The making of music under the conditions ALS imposes is itself a kind of statement. ‘Music is one of the ways I access parts of myself that ALS cannot touch,’ Gleason says. ‘I can’t play guitar anymore, but the need to express myself has endured.’ He is direct about the difficulty: ‘Making this felt impossible. Which is generally where the good stuff begins.’

There is something in those words that connects to a longer tradition of artists working within radical constraint, from the late orchestrations of Ravel through to the latter recordings of artists who found their physical range narrowing but their expressive ambition undiminished. REBIRTH is not trying to stand in that lineage self-consciously, but the parallel is hard to avoid when a songwriter describes literal impossibility as the condition of creation.

A Concert, a Coin Toss and a Second Line Procession

The project’s anniversary dimension will be marked in person. On 5 October, when the Saints again host the Falcons on Monday Night Football, a second line procession will move from Lafayette Square to Champions Square ahead of a special REBIRTH concert. Broussard and his band open the show before Gleason joins special guests for the first live performances of songs from the project, including ‘Soul Is Invincible’ and ‘Sonic Boom.’ Gleason will then take part in the coin toss and lead the Superdome’s ‘Who Dat’ chant before kickoff.

Fans can follow the episodic rollout at rebirthsongcycle.com, where each instalment will be accompanied by behind-the-song videos, interviews, alternate versions, demos, photos and other material from the sessions. The next songs are due as the rollout continues across the coming weeks.