Painting the Silence. Title track. 

I've only done this once before. I think it's kinda boring to name your album after a song that's on it. Most of the time. It's just a thing I have.

Anyway. This album title came from a quote "A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence."

I loved that. So that was the title of the record long before it was even formed. This song however had no title and no words until this autumn. And I LOVE THIS SONG.

I mean I like all my…

This is one of the oldest songs that made the album. I had just moved and it was a warm day in March. I took my guitar out onto my deck and started messing around. Came up with a cool melody so I recorded into my phone. This is one of those lucky moments when it just--clicked. If I played you the phone recording you'd see that nearly all the lyrics came out at once. 

When this happens I'm always baffled. I didn't sit down to write a song. I had no idea in my head. It just came out. Maybe I'm just a…

This is my roots rock song. 

Tom Petty just passed away. I was so sad. I remember having his album 'Full Moon Fever' on near constant play one summer. And what musician wouldn't KILL for a 'Freefallin'? I don't know any. I would.

Tom Petty and John Mellencamp are two of my favorites. There's just something so honest and accessible in their music. Later the first Counting Crows album hit me the same way although a little more down in the mouth there was still 'Mr. Jones' and 'Rain King'. My band used to…

Fallen is a great song to see where the album could have gone. Who knows I might have a bunch like this hee hee.

This is one of the oldest pieces of music on the album. Actually just the acoustic guitar part. I came up with that little riff--man--probably during the 'Myself Again' record. I always thought it was cool. I never got it to go anywhere so I mainly used to play it just sitting around as a cool picking exercise. Even then most of the time I would trip myself up with the turnaround. I started…

I'm all the way done. So over the next few weeks leading up to the official release of the full album I will be posting the songs, in order, so you'll be able to hear them.

Tomorrow you'll be able to pre-order the album. There will be a few different options.  One for everybody!

Find it Out

I remember the day I came up with this. It was winter time and I was in my studio which was in my basement at the time. I have big windows looking out into the yard and it was one of those days where it snowed like…

Life is funny. 

We struggle. Try. Fail. Get up. Try again. Move forward. Sometimes things turn out exactly as we planned. Sometimes we get to where we wanted to go but the road there is very different than we envisioned. Sometimes we end up somewhere completely different and that is the perfect place for us to end up.

This album has felt like that. All of that.

When I first started working towards a new record my plan was to make a stripped down acoustic quiet pretty album. I had just finished 'Ria'…

So yeah it's been 7 years since I put out an album. What the hell? How did it go so fast?

Busy:

Not that nothing got done. Between studio recording, half finished tracks an iphone 'idea' recordings I have well over 200 song ideas. Sometimes I have to remind myself of this since it's easy to blame 'writers block' or something like that when I get down about not being done. A lot of the songs that will be on Vol 1 were nearly finished in 2011-2012. Right after 'February Sessions'. 'Find it Out', 'Fallen'…