Today is release day!
My new double sided single "Who Will Listen When You Pray?" is now streaming everywhere!
I haven’t released any original music for over a decade. For those of you wondering what I’ve been doing: I stepped away from working on my own music to work behind the scenes on other people’s music. In that time I’ve recorded over 40 albums and co-written over a hundred songs. I’ve also been music editing for film and composing music for film and ads.
Why am I telling you this? Why did I decide to release more of my own music? Why now? Well, I’ve never been one to share on social media the way many people routinely share. It’s just not in my nature. But I’ll make an exception in this instance because I'm hoping some of you will find what I'm saying to be useful or maybe interesting.
I’ve always been compelled to write songs. I’ve been writing songs since I was in my early teens. I never figured that it would be the kind of thing that I would do publicly. But I got lucky and one thing lead to another and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to play my music publicly for decades.
What I’ve learned in this period of focusing on other people’s music is that the compulsion to express myself never went away. It’s just that I stopped releasing the music. The songs just keep coming, now more than ever.
So I’ve given up. Or more like I’ve given in … to the compulsion or maybe the obsession to express myself. I have no commercial aspirations, but I’m realizing more and more that the expressing is in and of itself ESSENTIAL, to me certainly, and if the result of this expression happens to be useful to anyone else, then all the better. That’s the reason I’m writing this: I’d really like to be a voice that reinforces the idea that self-expression is valuable in and of itself. Not tied to any external validation. Not because of streams or awards or acclaim or any metric, but because we’re expressing an essential part of being human. I think in the current political climate globally, this needs to be underlined even more strongly. In a world where being a passive compliant consumer is subtly and not so subtly encouraged and in some instances required, creation is a radical act. It requires hope. The hope I’m talking about is best articulated by Vaclev Havel:
"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing, regardless of how it turns out.”
I know that all of this may take a bit of a leap of faith, but I don't think so. Having a relationship with an artistic practice is an enormous gift. People go their whole lives searching for something to pour themselves into wholeheartedly, so to have that is an incredible blessing.
So thank you to everyone out there who is creating, publicly or not. Thank you to everyone who is supporting that creation, whether it's by giving your partner or friend the space or time to do some gardening, or by buying a painting, or joining an artist’s Patreon, or maybe it's running a music venue when you could be making more money doing something else, or maybe it’s being part of a live show, on stage or in the audience.
Thank you.
So there you have it. That's where I'm at.
I have new music.
I have it for me.
And it’s ready for you too if you’re curious.
I hope it’s useful to you in some way.
