Where things are at with music

Two weeks ago, I promised to give you an update on my music.

You may have noticed that, last week, I failed to keep that promise.

You also may not have noticed (and, let's be real, that second option is by far the more likely one). Either way, I'm sitting down to write this week's post with the knowledge that I didn't write one last week. I'm only slightly sorry. Last week, I was in Nashville with my brothers, and I was too busy losing 18 straight games of pickle ball to think about much else.

Here's what it looked like.

Well, that's what it looked like when Tim and Tom played. When I played, it looked like one of my brothers hitting the second shot of the rally past me with metronomic consistency. (I'm not being hyperbolically self-deprecating when I say I lost 18 straight games.)

(Yeah I'm slightly bitter.)

Anyway, this week, I'm going to try and belatedly keep my promise by telling you where things stand with with my music.

The only problem is that I'm not quite sure where things stand.

I guess I'll start at the beginning.

Here's the very first voice note version of the song I've worked on for the past month. It's called "Haze".

Like most of the songs I write, "Haze" is based on everyday experiences that I've worked overly hard to wring metaphor from. I wrote it in the early months of 2021, pretty shortly after moving to Denver, and I sang the version embedded here around that time, sitting in our bedroom on a winter night with my phone propped against a book so that the speaker was facing in the right direction.

That season, those first months after our move from Frederick to Denver, was probably the hardest one that Alli and I have experienced in our five years of marriage.

To a degree, we both felt overwhelmed – Alli from trying to adapt to grad school, me from trying to meet relational needs within the new normal of being my company's only remote employee. I also had a keen sense that time was passing. I felt distant from my family, more so when my uncle was diagnosed with cancer. Under everything, I felt a discomfiting certainty that, despite the fresh start we'd gained in moving, things in the world and in our lives were just gradually getting worse.

Probably the simplest way to say it is that we felt lonely.

I wrote the song to help myself believe what I think is a true hope: That things really are bad, but that somehow, they really will be better – and that it's not only in spite of, but through the downhill decay of death that God redeems all things.

Here are the lyrics:

The ash was falling from the sky into your hair
And there was diesel smoke from 18-wheelers hanging in the air
So we couldn't see the mountains
Through the haze out to the west
Spending our days just south of Denver
Looking for ways to catch some breath

Do you ever feel like you're going downhill?
Do you?
I've been hoping at the bottom of the valley there's a river
Running through
Going downhill, too

I called my brother on the East Coast after dark
He said "Knowing that you're dying's gotta be the hardest part"
I hope these endings all
Are someday gonna end
And when the fire finally burns out
There will still be something left

Do you ever feel like you're going downhill?
Do you?
I've been hoping at the bottom of the valley there's a river
Running through
Going downhill, too

I hope someday that all this haze will disappear
And we will finally see the mountains
After all the smoke has cleared
And we will drink from holy water
And the world will be made new
But until then
We're going downhill, too

Do you ever feel like you're going downhill?
Do you?
I've been hoping at the bottom of the valley there's a river
Running through
Going downhill, too

I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I've never loved this song.

I wrote it quickly one night after talking to my brother Tim on the phone – we spoke about getting older and about our Uncle Larry, who was dying. My immediate impression was that the song was an honest expression of my feelings, but also a lesser version of a song I'd written before. Still, I sent the voice memo up there to Tom, and when he told me he liked it, it made me like it a little more.

So, this summer, when I committed to creating art again, it felt like a reasonable first song to record: I liked it enough that I could get excited about working on it, but not so much that I'd be too disappointed if my first attempt at making music in three years produced a mediocre recording. I was giving myself room for error; I worked on "Haze" with the thought that I wasn't firing my favorite shot first.

And that brings me to this kind of sad, kind of funny place. I just don't like the version of "Haze" that I've made.

I'm not going to show it to you. I spent like 40 hours recording it, and all of the time shows in an unflattering way. My friend Dan Busche did a nice job of mixing my efforts, but still – the track is overproduced without quite capturing the core of the song.

And so, instead of pushing it out to sink, I'm going to try to salvage it. I'm not sure if I'll ever get it to a place that I love, but I'm reasonably confident I can get it to a place where I don't cringe listening to it.

All of this is to say: You're going to have to wait a little longer to hear new music from me. I'm sorry.

I'll end with two encouraging thoughts.

First, the good news is that I've finished tracking a second song, and I think it's better. It's called "Prius" and it's much simpler production-wise; I tried to do less with the track, and the result is that I like it a lot more.

Second, "Haze" is, at its heart, a song about holding to future hope in the face of a failing world.

So it's kinda fitting to hold to hope in the face of a failing song, right?

Yeah, I know. It's a stretch. I told you I have a tendency to work overly hard at wringing out metaphors.

Thanks for bearing with me.