As a legal dispute between Burton and EMI delayed Dark Night of the Soul, Linkous returned his focus to Sparklehorse. On September 25, 2006, he released Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, a collection of pensive ballads and pop anthems stitched together from old outtakes and new recordings. Linkous devoted the release to his friend and old roommate Bryan Harvey, who was brutally killed along with his wife and two daughters inside their home on New Year’s Day in 2006, during a weeklong murder spree in Richmond. The tragedy sent the entire city into shock, including Linkous, prompting him to stock up on more guns for his own protection.

To promote the record, Linkous assembled a touring outfit that doubled as a safety net, including a grieving Hott, still reeling from Harvey’s death. “Mark and I let some tears fall, especially in the beginning of that tour,” says Hott. “We comforted each other with hugs and reminiscing about Bryan.” Before hitting the road, Linkous grabbed coffee with former Go-Go’s bassist Paula Jean Brown, a recovering addict, to gauge her interest in not just touring, but helping him stay sober during his first shows since 2003. His initial anxiety eased during a successful European tour that lasted for two months. But in February 2007, on the night of Sparklehorse’s show at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, Linkous’ longtime label informed him that they would no longer be doing business together. The news sucked the life out of the room backstage. On the heels of sold-out shows overseas, dismal sales from his American gigs placed the remainder of the tour in doubt.

“He had the feeling where your heart’s been broken, like you’re de-animated,” says songwriter Jesse Sykes, whose band the Sweet Hereafter had opened for Sparklehorse that tour. “I’m sure it felt like he had been kicked in the throat. From that night on, he would come out to play and then disappear onto the bus, and that was that. He was just gone.”

Despite the circumstances, the tour went on, even though Linkous came down with flu-like symptoms. Around his bandmates, he maintained his sense of humor—equal parts dry and goofy—though it couldn’t fully mask the fact that he was struggling. After a Coachella performance gone awry, one of the final full-band Sparklehorse shows, Brown chatted with Linkous about whether life as a musician—lugging gear to gigs without a label’s support, battling the pain in his legs while performing in the sweltering sun, seeking to stay sober at festivals with free-flowing drugs—was worth it.

“You know, sometimes it’s all I can do not to just walk out of the house and into the woods and not come back—go follow the foxes and the critters out there and just curl up and die,” he told Brown after the show.

For the next two years, Linkous pursued different kinds of gigs—he played guitar on tour with Austin lo-fi legend Daniel Johnston; collaborated with electronic composer Christian Fennesz on the ambient record In the Fishtank 15; and scored an instrumental piece for a David Lynch documentary. Sparklehorse was set aside.