What My Typical Day Looks Like
Caleb asked if I’d write about what a typical day is like for me. Probably like you, mine changes a bit depending on the week or season, but for the most part, here it is…
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Life Stories
Reflections on my upbringing, fatherhood, and trying to be a better person.
What It Was Like Starting Out (Recording My First Songs)
It wasn’t what I expected. What I expected was a recording studio you’d see in the movies or in Rolling Stone magazine. Huge rooms with vaulted ceilings and sliding glass doors. A sound engineer smoking cigarettes over a mixing console.
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How My Taco Bell Coworker Helped Me Deal with Stress
Jim was my coworker. He and I worked together at Taco Bell. I was in high school. He was probably in his early 40s, a single dad of three kids. Serving late night burritos was just one of many jobs he had.
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Nail Guns
Imagine you work construction, framing houses. But what you really want to do is play guitar and sing songs for people. You’ve just recorded your first album and are releasing it in two months. Of course you know your fingers are important, so you’re as careful as you can be around dangerous tools like, um,
Want to Walk Out to My Studio with Me?
After I’ve taken Silas to school, after I’ve talked with Heidi about the day, while August is still sleeping and Lorentz is eating, I walk to my studio in the backyard. Come walk with me (and see if I spill the coffee)….
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From Gibberish Snippet to 100 Millions Streams
What you’re hearing is the exact moment right after I had the idea for what would eventually become “Making All Things New,” my most popular song. As of right now, it has been streamed on Spotify almost 100 million times. I don’t say that to brag; I say that because based on the iPhone recording,
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That Time I Used PowerPoint to Design My First Album Cover
I bet you didn’t know that I created my first album artwork in Microsoft PowerPoint, did you? I bring this up to say I didn’t know what I was doing. I also didn’t have any money in my Wells Fargo checking account to hire a graphic designer. I did, though, have one of those old
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Why I Used the F-Word in a Song
Below is an email thread between me and a fan who was upset after hearing the f-word in my song “Hello, Lou”off the album Passages. He graciously said I could post our email exchange as I thought it might be helpful for others who had the same concerns.
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How My Dad Won the Olympics
My family didn’t own a TV, so my dad would rent one for must-see events. To the best of my knowledge these included Operation Desert Storm and the Olympics. We rented the TV set from Frank’s TV and Repair. It looked like the kind science teachers would wheel into classrooms on days when they showed
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John Denver, the Dungeon, and Thanks for Being Here
My dad had an office in the basement. He never used it. In fact nobody really used the basement. It was like a dungeon. Musty and dark. The laundry was down there. So was the deep freeze. That’s about it. So as it were, the basement was the perfect place for a 15-year-old boy to
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