about the songs (what they're about)

"Hard Times, Go!"

sometimes you're going in one direction and you just keep going. then something happens and you start to re-evaluate everything. you look at the places where you're failing. maybe you can do better? you try to figure out what has motivated you to get where you've ended up. it sounds like a downer, but this is where everything starts. this is your chance to be extraordinary.


"Stars Collided in our Hearts"

my friend Brian Kelly from the band Aeroplane Pageant has this tune where the refrain is "we didn't dream enough in this house." the line keeps haunting me these past few months, as my wife and i are making plans, to break with the past and set out on a new adventure. we got ourselves into a tricky situation. this song is about getting caught in that place, the sense of desperation you feel.

i felt like the song was kind of dark and very much about a relationship with 2 people. I thought it could use a little light and i asked my friend Maia Macdonald to sing on it, and she did an amazing, beautiful job. You can check out more of Maia's music here: mitten.bandcamp.com and here: maiamacdonald.bandcamp.com

"Dreaming Wide Awake"

My wife Liz and I wrote this song together. We've been together since we were kids, and we've never collorated on a song before but the process was super fun. this song is pure escapism. i thought the subject matter of a lot of the songs i've been writing lately was sort of heavy, and i wanted to write a song that was romantic, and dreamy in the way Van Morrison songs are - the ones that take place in this magical pastoral setting, where it usually rains, and the rain makes you better than you were before.

"Head Underwater"

the freeway divided our hearts was a line that i carried around in my head for a while. I'm fascinated by how our sense of place relates to how we identify ourselves. I guess I'm talking alot about dreams in these songs like I always do, and what happens when you follow along a path that isn't what's truly in your heart. you end up having to back track, and that's where the awakening is. that's where things start to happen. Up until then, we're all just floating along, doing what comes easiest.

Bryan Bruchman played guitar on this track (as well as on Dreaming Wide Awake) and the instrumental section towards the end is one of my favorite moments on this record. Science!

"he brought a guitar to a knife fight" (instrumental)

Sometimes, I feel ill-equipped for the "real" world.

With Every Heartbeat (Robyn Cover)

This past fall, I fell into a pretty intense obsession with Robyn, the killingest pop star on the planet. When people talk about great songwriters, there is frequently a bias towards acoustic guitar strumming that you hear in starbucks or whatever. or people who are putting some new lyrical spin on Bob Dylan's swirling impressionism. I love all that also, but I find what Robyn is able to do within the conext of a 3 and a half minute traditionally structured pop song, with her sick beats and concise storytelling, to be sort of mind-blowing. the characters in her songs feel completely developed, like you're watching a movie - but the language is simple. it always serves the melody and never gets in the way.

Anyway - this song is one that hit me hard immediately. it's from her self titled LP - and we had fun putting our own spin on it as a sort of tribute.