The Same Brand New Moments
a song about life
The writing process for this one was interesting in that I had the melody before I had an idea of even what instrument it would be with. I ended up going with electric guitar so I could truly utilize all my instruments on this album.
In the earliest stages of this album, my thought was for there to be a song for every holiday (I had Thanksgiving, Christmas, and graduation already covered). It went from holidays to moments very quickly, but this song started out as a New Years song. Every start of a new year is a time to reflect on the years past in my mind, and as one does that, it becomes very clear how much of our lives are just reiterations or repetitions of the same moments. I wanted to reflect that in a song.
In the first iteration of this song, it was missing the last verse/chorus, and in some ways, was a bit depressing... Sisyphean, some might say. But, there is truth in that last verse/chorus. If we are, as humans, going to keep making the same mistakes and feeling the same feelings, we should put our trust in the one who makes no mistakes, but also went through life just as we are. He's been here before.
The more I've thought about it, our lives are made up of these same moments, presented each time in this brand new way. That's not a bad thing, though. We grow. We learn. Some moments get easier with practice and some get harder with frequency, but that is how this life on Earth is. And, until I get to heaven, I want to keep living these same brand new moments.
Special thanks to my dad for tracking drums on this one!
Let Us Give Thanks
a song about thankfulness
Just like Departure, some of you may have already heard this song! I wrote this back in 2021, recorded it in my room and then posted it to my YouTube channel with a cool lyric video before sharing it with my friends and family. It was my first real toe-dip into song writing: I had a cool guitar part and a message that I thought was important, so I made a song.
I have been inspired by so many singer-songwriters over the years. Now, some of my biggest inspirations are Ben Rector and Matthew West. Listening to a lot of music and growing up in an encouraging and musical household helped me have the confidence to write and record this song and ultimately this album.
The story of this song has actually already been written for the most part in my blog here about Christmas not being celebrated before Thanksgiving has happened (other than Christmas in July (on July 25)... I'm cool with that. Thanksgiving truly is my favorite holiday and, while I'm glad it already had a couple songs, I'm happy to add to that small collection.
A Basic Christmas
a song about simplicity
This song is short, it is relatively simple musically, and it is to the point. This song was also written and self-recorded before the album, but not too much before. "a BASS-ic Christmas" is a collection of Christmas song covers over on my YouTube channel. Over the past four years, I have recorded five songs (making them appropriately "bass"-y) every December to add to this collection. In 2022, I wrote and recorded A Basic Christmas to be an intro of sorts to my other four songs that year.
Stemming from my views about Thanksgiving, I believe Christmas is overhyped. I love Christmas, don't get me wrong, but all the decorations, all the hubbub and travel, and all the commercialization has taken away from Christmas being about family, a break from worldly things, and ultimately about our savior being born. When I sing "a basic Christmas, a simple Christmas like the ones before" I'm not just talking about Christmases when I was a kid. I'm talking about the very first Christmas and Christmases that truly model the simplicity of the holy celebration of our savior's birth with loved ones.
Maybe you're like me and you're not going to listen to this song until December or maybe on July 25th, but when you do, I hope it instills a sense of peace in simplicity.
Special thanks to my dad for tracking jingle bells on this one... it wouldn't be a Christmas song without them.
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At the beginning of part one of these stories behind the songs, I said that this album represents me. Yes, a country song, a rap song, and a pop song don't typically all belong on the same album. Nor should there necessarily be a Christmas song or a Thanksgiving song on an album that came out in September. But, on my playlist of around 300 of my favorite songs, there are songs that do not belong on the same playlist together. That playlist actually only has one song from any given artist. Musically, my album is representative of that: my tastes in many genres.
I think the greatest tie between all these songs as an album, however, is a life. In this case, this life is mine, but the moments are not. Every life has moments of leaving, celebrating, praising, mourning, loving, losing, thanking, wanting, and having. Every life sees multiple variations of these moments. I wrote these songs over a year before they were released and I don't think they are any less applicable and emotionally-tied to my life, and I hope some of you that listen see the ties to moments in your life as well.
These three blogs are meant to accompany the songs, not substitute for them, for in the very nature of music, more is communicated emotionally than anything I could ever explain in writing. "The Same Brand New Moments" is available wherever you stream music. Thanks for reading, thanks for listening, and go live the moments.
One final special thanks to John McJunkin (recording engineer), Ryan Buckland (mixing/mastering), and the whole team at GCU for helping me bring these songs to life, to my dad for tracking drums and percussion, to my uncle for letting me record his song, to all my music teachers past and present for teaching me how to play and sing, and to all my friends and family that have encouraged and supported me along the way. Y'all are the best.
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