3 on Thursday
Songs, stories, and things worth noticing. Every Thursday.
Thursday, October 1, 2026 · 5 min read
🎨📅 On sale now: My 2027 watercolor calendar is here! Twelve original paintings, one for each month. If you’d like one for yourself—or as a gift—you can order one here:
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🤝🌾 This week’s newsletter and story are sponsored by the Stinar Family in Warren, Minnesota, in honor of all the farmers starting beet harvest this month. Thank you, Stinars—and thanks to all you farmers!
1. THE STORY
Chapter 1
Memoir in progress · October 22, 1996
Dear Daniel,
You don’t know me, but I saw you play a concert last summer, and I bought your CD after. There was an address on the back of it and I’m hoping this gets to you. I’ve never been to San Francisco, but it’s cool to think this letter will soon!
At the concert, it was just you and your guitar in a small coffee shop in Minneapolis. We were visiting my relatives and my older cousins took me to see you. They are fans and talk about your music a lot and know a lot of bands that I’ve never heard of and that aren’t on the radio.
Anyway, when I watched you, something inside of me sort of clicked, like I could maybe play guitar, too, even though I’ve never really thought about playing the guitar. My parents made me take piano lessons when I was younger and I didn’t like it, so part of me thinks I’d just be that way with the guitar, too. But there was something in the way you sang and played that made me think I needed the guitar in my life. I’m not saying I’d be good or anything, or that I could be like you. That’s not it at all.
I think part of it is that I just quit hockey, so I don’t have a lot to do after school.
I started skating before I could even remember. Maybe 3 or 4. I’m 15 now. I live in a small town in northern Minnesota and it was actually a big deal to quit. Not because I’m super great or anything (I’m just ok), just because I’ve been in it for so long. Hockey is everything in this town, and if you quit, it’s kind of frowned upon, like you probably won’t amount to much in life. I don’t really believe that, but I do wonder sometimes if I made the right choice.
People at school have been talking about me quitting and asking me why, and I can’t tell them the real reason, because I don’t totally understand it myself. I just get so nervous sometimes and it’s been getting worse and worse. I just tell people that I needed a break. Mr. Olsen, the varsity head coach, pulled me out of trigonometry class yesterday to ask me about it.
“Why’d you quit? You’ve put in so much.” He said it in a nice way.
Then he said I could skip Bantams and play junior varsity. I think he said that because he knows I had a falling out with the Bantam coach, so I agreed to practice with the junior varsity team tomorrow, but I’m not hopeful. Those guys are way older and bigger than me, and I doubt I’ll fit in.
I guess I’m writing this to you because my life feels so weird right now. I need to get this stuff off my chest. People don’t talk about their feelings around here, and I’m too embarrassed to write in a diary. I don’t want my parents to find it and read it.
Tonight I was listening to your CD, and your music is really personal and makes me feel a lot of stuff, and I kept thinking more about everything, and also the guitar, and that’s when I saw the address on the back. I hope it’s okay that I don’t put a return address on the envelope. I don’t want to take up your time or make you feel like you have to respond. I also, to be honest, don’t want you to know who I am. I guess mainly I just wanted you to know how much your songs mean to me, and thanks for making me want to learn the guitar. My grandpa has one and I’m hoping he’ll let me borrow it and maybe teach me a few things. I will probably suck for a long time, haha!
Love,
Aaron
P.S. I hope you are famous someday, if that’s what you want. I don’t know if that’s what you want, though—being famous seems weird, but I just want you to know I think you deserve to be. My cousins said the same thing. When I listened to you in that coffee shop, there was a bunch of noise and some people were talking, but you kept playing and singing about how you weren’t sure if you were doing life the right way, and that’s something I wonder about all the time. I could feel myself starting to cry. It wasn’t because I was sad, though. It was because I didn’t feel so lonely. Your music makes me feel so many things inside, sadness but some happiness, too.
2. LISTEN
Quick update on the album. I hit some snags exporting files from here in Vietnam (nothing to worry about), which means the mixing and mastering have been delayed a bit. I’m still deciding on the album title (let me know if you have ideas!) and the artwork. I’ll put some references up on our shared page soon.
In the meantime, you can keep listening to the premixed, unmastered versions of all ten tracks in The Listening Room →
3. NOTICE
When was the first time you heard a song or piece of music that made you feel something deeply?
Support
For more than twenty years, I’ve been able to keep making songs, stories, records, and other things because of people like you. If something I make adds a bit of good to your life, you can help keep this whole thing going.
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