A Life Well Lived: Remembering My Mother, New Music on the Horizon

Writing: Digging Through the Archive

With the passing of my father in late 2024, I began digging through the archives of my life: pictures of the family, high school, years of touring, press releases, and articles in newspapers and magazines. I’ve been digging through my catalog and listening to songs that I’ve written throughout my life. It’s been a fascinating and rewarding process, it’s been good for my soul!

I have discovered many songs that I wrote and recorded on my four-track cassette recorder, in my parents’ basement in the early 80s, when I was 22 years old. Dozens of songs were recorded while in Nashville, from the late 80s through early 90s. Songs written in hotel rooms, captured on my Sony Walkman, span throughout the 90s, and songs written and recorded on my first ADAT machines span the early 2000s. As I move through each song, I made a folder of the ones that were complete, the ones never recorded, the ones left behind.

Out of curiosity, the songs that were fully written and recorded, I ran through the AI program SUNO, to see what would unfold. I was fascinated! It took songs of mine that were recorded on acoustic guitar and placed them within the context of a band. I even sampled selected takes of my voice, so what I heard only amplified the heart of each song.

Throughout each song, the melody lines were more varied, like a vocal instructor, planting seeds and ideas for me to learn. The years I spent sifting through records, trying to find examples of vocalists that I could learn from. My favorite artists Bonnie Raitt, Ann Wilson, Stevie Nicks, Aretha Franklin, and Janis Joplin, the list goes on and on. So often their songs were out of my range. I always struggled to sing. I worked hard at my vocals, just like stealing licks from all of my favorite guitar players; over time, I made them my own.

What a wonderful gift this has been! So many new ideas for me to begin to work with! Now, I have time to practice, do the hard work, and see what I’m made of! With years of playing comes experience, things that talent, training, and hard work are sifted through.

Finally, I had scanned through the obvious song titles that I remembered, and as I listened to my favorites, the ones that spoke to me the most, I realized that I had gathered more than enough material for a new record. Songs in their raw form do not come with an expiration date. Like the blues, each song is a ball of clay that can be shaped and re-shaped throughout your life and then handed down. 

Each song is just an idea with a melody, sometimes lyrics, supported by a chord progression, to be played fast or slow with a steady driving beat or with the groove like what Led Zeppelin’s famous and infamous John Bonham would introduce.

So now it’s time to begin a new journey, new music! I have much work ahead! A tailored set of ideas for me to work with. Like a blacksmith, back to the anvil, I shall go.

I’m excited. I no longer have to wait. The time is now.