While touring in support of Small Town Dreams, Hoge hit a career wall. He enjoyed writing songs for others and playing live, but he had fallen out of love with being in a band. After a period of introspection, he let his working group go and took off on a cross-country tour playing solo shows. Reclaiming the joy that inspired him to make music a vocation in the first place, he began writing while traveling. He reentered the studio with an ace cast of studio players and completed Anchors. The self-produced 11-track set was previewed in June 2017 by the single «Little Bit of Rust» (a duet with Sheryl Crow) and followed two weeks later by «Baby’s Eyes.» The album proper appeared in August from Eldo, a label Hoge founded to release his music, with distribution by Thirty Tigers. Hoge quickly followed Anchors with My American Dream, which appeared in October 2018. 2020’s Tiny Little Movies was a thematically and musically diverse LP, including personal numbers about failing romances and broadsides against political and spiritual dishonesty. 2022’s Wings on my Shoes was dominated by Hoge’s Americana and heartland rock influences, though it closed with the guitar-and-pedal steel shaggy dog story «Whose God Is This.» For 2024’s Tenderhearted Boys, Hoge aimed for a spare, low-key sound with the songwriter handling nearly all the instrumental work himself.