it’s 3 oclock in the morning. I’m been working on music for 17 hours today. Really, these days I’m having some really amazing experiences of getting lost in what I’m making. I’m really excited about the new music I’m making. Anyways, I thought I was done tracking my album today but then as I was re-loading the things back into my studio from my recording I had a new song idea. I wrote it and demoed it all night (I guess morning) and here we are. This song is about letting go and believing the best for everything that is to come.
Sometimes It's Good
I want to do some more spontaneous blog-outs on the roll. Just things I’m observing or realizing in the moments, and probably not share. So if you’ve found this you’re an OG!
Mac Miller’s 2009 is the soundtrack.
Tonight I prayed in a way I haven’t prayed in a long time. I cried. It was so good to feel close to God in a way that reminded me of when I was younger. I have a friend, Ms. Helen… she’s actually my friend Missy’s mom (if that gives you some perspective). Sometimes I call her my Athens mom. Miss Helen has always loved me. From the time I worked at the church, she just always took the time to pray for me, to encourage me, to take me to lunch, and have me over for dinner. Tonight, she made me dinner and let me dry some laundry at her house. Later, I played the keyboard and we worshipped and prayed. I started to cry. I felt God, I felt loved, I felt hope. Miss Helen doesn’t know about all my failures, weaknesses and struggles… but tonight, I think I realized that it might not make a difference if she did. I think I realized, she would always love me.
All I’m saying really is that sometimes it’s ok to have people in your corner that think the world of you, and to not feel bad about it. And sometimes it’s ok to feel like you need to surround yourself with those kinds of people in certain times. I’m starting to see that I have a really hard time wrapping my head around the fact that people might love me enough to see the best in me no matter how I fail. I’m starting to see more and more, that love actually isn’t that fair.
*taken in Seattle in June of 2019. I love how these truths resurface in the right time. “Be The Good.” 35mm on a Canon AE-1.
IOU: Meaninglessness, Stewardship, Gratitude
As I write this I am overlooking the Caribbean from the third story balcony of my hotel in Port Maria, Jamaica, where I will be all this week. My room faces the ocean, so the sun rises through the window and the ocean breeze blows constantly here as I write. I wear no shirt. Here, a shirt is a thorn in my side. A shirt is a vibe-desecrator. A shirt is the enemy. I am shirtless as often as humanly possible. It definitely could be way worse.
It’s been a while since I’ve written, and it hasn’t been due to negligence of the blog. I love writing this blog. It is one of my great joys to put my thoughts into writing and to hear that some people out there are also feeling and seeing the things that I am. The fact is that I have been going through a lot of deep, personal growth over the course of the past few months. Growth that has been brought on by the intense revealing of my own darkness, shortcomings, and failures - what some of us might call sin. I’ve had so many thoughts regarding God, and what I felt Him doing in my life, but felt like I couldn’t say a lot of it with integrity during that time due to the head space I was choosing to live in and as a result - the decisions I was making. I have been through a time where I wasn’t sure who I was, what I really wanted to be about, and whether anything mattered. I thought for a moment that everything was meaningless. I felt blind and a little lost. God felt fiction to me. I felt so incredibly small, wondering whether my actions would change anything at all in this massive world. I felt that though I had tried my best in life to live for God, it still was so ambiguous, painful and uncertain, so I figured I’d at least get some pleasure for myself amidst all of the mess. I really just lived for me for a while. So with that, came a doubt about whether I had any authority to write about my own faith, much less write about lessons I’m learning with God that might house suggestions for how others are to go about their lives with God in the picture. It just wasn’t a good time.
However, over the course of the past few weeks, brought on by probably a thousand small circumstances that I am not fully aware of, and a completely ordained trip to Dallas, Texas, I’ve had a really personal, visceral experience with the grace, goodness and closeness of God. To put it shortly, I felt like I was a sheep that had wandered off alone, only to find myself suddenly and violently yanked back into the fold by the shepherd’s staff - unexpected, unpredicted, and unearned. Someone woke me up.
I don’t want to go into the details of this dark time in my life because one, I don’t think it’s always appropriate share your deepest darkest secrets on the internet (though sometimes it can be very beautiful) and two, I’m trying to receive this grace by moving forward in a way that recognizes and accepts who I was in my time of weakness while also acknowledging the wonderful and beautiful truth of the gospel that Jesus invites me into - that I am not my mistakes.
I wanted to write about my experience of crawling out of my hole of meaninglessness, and how this experience ties into the principles of stewardship and gratitude. I wasn’t able to reason my way out of my doubts and darkness, and I believe God had to do something deeply spiritual in my soul, but as I have begun to heal and walk out of this dark passage in my forest, I have begun to connect these crucial dots in hindsight. I would like to share these connections with you.
IOU. Meaninglessness, Stewardship, Gratitude.
As I mentioned before, the last few months for me have been a time during which I questioned the meaning in everything I had previously thought my life was about. I questioned my faith, my purpose, and whether or not trying to do life well was worth it at all. Though I am an artist, there is a really strong critical and analytical side of me, and it doesn’t take an observant person long to realize how messed up our world is. While a critical view of the world can be helpful when coupled with graciousness and the desire to use that viewpoint to improve the world around us, it can become very dangerous and destructive when wielded with a bitter spirit. I think, for a little while, I had been wielding my critical gift with a bitter heart, and all it did was isolate me and distort my view of who I was, who God was, and as a result - who people around me were. I stopped showing up to stuff. My body would be places and I would be going through the motions, but it felt like my spirit was absent. I felt like a ghost, and wished that in a lot of places I could simply disappear. I described this time in the previous paragraph as my “hole of meaningless,” and it was just that. I started to believe that everything was meaningless, so I’d treat everything as meaningless, then I would act like even more things in life were meaningless. I lost the key ingredient of respect. Respect for my on life, respect for the people and places right in front of me. I was digging my own grave.
But for some reason, and this could be what come might call “snapping out of it,” but I call, “salvation” - over the last couple of weeks I have been led to consider and revisit all of the people and places that have allowed me to be where I am today. My influential teachers, my first youth group, my first youth pastor, my beautiful college experience, my first internship mentor, my parents, my friends who have believed in me over the years, the people who opened doors for me, the people who gave me chances before I was ready, and the countless moments of grace that afforded me a way upward and onwards. I’ve been remembering all of the opportunities that I’ve had, never earned, to see the world and learn about myself and God. I’ve been trying to recount the many unsolicited encouragements, kindnesses, and breadcrumb moments that seemed to appear in the perfect time to lead me through my life. And as I have become more and more painfully aware that I did not design my own life, and very little of what I have I have earned on my own, I have came to a wonderful and demanding conclusion:
I do not get to disappear.
In the Christianity that I live in, as well as American culture as a whole, the idea of owing anyone anything is vastly foreign. In a country that so values individualism and each person’s right to realize their own personal dreams and agendas, I feel like we’ve lost some of the beauty of stewarding our lives in light of all the people and circumstances that made our lives even possible. In the name of freedom, I feel that we’ve lost a sense of belonging to a group and a purpose that extends beyond our individual identities. I believe this often times can distort our view of our own lives, leading us to be concerned solely with how our actions affect the “me” and not the “us.” In regards to my experience over the last few months, and my deep sense of meaninglessness, I found that the more I began to live like I didn’t have a responsibility to those around me, the world, and people that made me, the more and more alone and meaningless I began to feel. It was only through a deep and profound reminder of all that was sacrificed for me that I was able to begin to move out of my isolation and selfishness.
So, in light of my new perspective, I’ve decided that for me, I am going to make “owe” a non-cuss word in my life. To our western ears, “owe” is a harsh word. But the more I think about it and how much I’ve been given… it just feels right. It feels honorable. It feels respectful. I owe it you, I owe it to me, I owe to anyone who has ever believed in me, I owe it to God… to be fully awake to the opportunities and the adventures laid out before me. I owe it to myself and to the world to turn on my heart and to engage as fully as it is possible for me… to steward my days, and to steward my life. We’ve all wasted our precious life in our own ways - living out of our fears, living out of our “cant’s”, living to please people who don’t really care about us, living to fit into a cultural illusion, ignoring what we know we need to change, avoiding pain, protecting ourselves, trying to control our worlds, try to control others, consuming, pursuing endless pleasures, taking, sweeping things under the rug, sleepwalking… the list goes on and on.
So for those of us that feel like, if we were honest, we were given something good, however small or hidden… who might also feel like they are just moments away from throwing in the towel: Would you take some time to consider the fact that someone somewhere laid a foundation for you. Someone somewhere broke bread off of their own lives to feed you. Consider the idea that the world might be holding up signs for you that say, “it is worth it,” but you might not be able to see it because you can only see yourself in this time. And as you open up yourself to feel the weight of how much you really have been given, might you adopt the same convicting sentiment, that you do not get to disappear. Lord, God, would you allow the grace for a shift in our perspectives to happen… to begin to see the abundance and not the lack. Would this awareness help us to understand our responsibilities, which are our divine opportunities to affect and heal our worlds.
For those of us who are struggling to find meaning in our lives, would we combat this temptation to give up with an acute awareness of what we healthily owe, and let this awareness move us out of our selfishness and complacency. I can’t help but thinking that: if we knew just how loud God and our clouds of witnesses were cheering for us, it’d be a lot harder for us to fall asleep. It would be damn near impossible to want to disappear.
IOU.Wake up.
Limitations
Happy 2020.
I’ve been wanting to do a little writing for a little while now, I just haven’t quite had the energy to jump in. I knew I wanted to write on this topic at this time to, in some ways put a period on a chapter in my life that I feel like is closing. I have just gotten over the flu that 2020 graciously gave me and today is the first day it doesn’t feel like my brain is being cooked on both sides, so I am happy happy.
At risk of being cliche and a little sappy, I will admit… I love the new year. Yeah I know, you can change anytime yadda yadda start today blah blah don’t wait for the new year yah yah yah… yes! All that is good… But I actually really enjoy the collective hope that seems to fill the community even if just for a brief moment whenever a new year occurs. I mean, c’mon, you can’t feel it too? It’s like everything does start over in some weird way. At least it feels that way to me.
This is always a sobering time, a moment to reflect on the previous year, to see all that went well and all that could have gone better and to regain a **cue the cheese* thankfulness for life itself.
At the top of 2019 I wrote a blog called “Taking Off The Band-Aids” about refusing cheap and temporary fixes. It was a challenge to myself to leave old addictions and comforts that were only acting as band-aids for my wounds - a challenge to commit to the slow hard work of healing, and to not take the easy way out of my pain. I haven’t thought much of that post since last January but now a year later I’m thinking about it and wondering, “did I actually commit to that idea in a deeper way this year?” Like, “Did I actually do what I wrote about?” And the scary thing to admit is honestly… yes and no. While conquering some addictions I only discovered new ones, and by finding healing in one area, I only opened up other deeper wounds hidden beneath the surface. This can seem like some cruel and unusual joke but… it is life. There is always more to learn, and we will never arrive. I think this is part of what it means when we use the word depth. But anyways, here’s my take on the year and the word I’ve found to embody its lesson.
In 2019 I produced a bunch of records, finished my own full length record “Never A Waste,” toured Germany with my original music, saw the Eiffel Tower, visited Seattle, went on tour with Will Reagan, travelled with Common Hymnal, and had countless joyous moments with friends. In the same year I burnt out on music, burnt out on producing, burnt out on people, burnt out on myself, battled a newly discovered anxiety, struggled relationally, lost touch with some of my core values and identity, wrestled with God.
I saw so much this year, on both sides of the coin.
The most jarring and probably the most important experience of 2019 for me, though, beyond anything to do with traveling, music, or “dream come true moments,” was this strange and eerie feeling of I can’t. I turned 26 this year, and for the first time, I was able to feel the subtle limits of age, time and life, begin to press in on the edges. In my early twenties, I saw everything as malleable. All the rules, all the designs of life, the things that said “you can’t do that.” All of those boundaries seemed like suggestions. In your early twenties, If you are lucky enough, you have virtually limitless energy, ample resources, the autonomy and the freedom to explore and take risks in virtually every area of life. I see this now, but I was so blessed to have had the opportunity to go to college where I did (Go Dawgs). It was like a playground for me. I dove deep into design, music, engineering, producing, film photography, relief printmaking, screen-printing, bookmaking, ministry… all these things. And at that time, I had the capacity to just do everything. Looking back, my energy level just baffles me now. I’d go to class, produce a song, and then work an a 2ft by 4ft watercolor painting on wood for the rest of the night, develop film, make prints, go to band practice, then go out with my friends after and do it all again the next day. Crazy. And in that environment, the thought “I can’t” never really crossed my mind. Not in a proud way, I just think that my environment was such a perfect incubator for me to explore all the things I was interested in, and in a beautiful way, I never thought to question the opportunity that was in front of me.
But this is the great shadow that I had to begin to look at in 2019. This was the year of realizing limits. It was a year of realizing that that 22 year old kid who had the energy and the capacity to do 30 things at once, couldn’t exist for much longer. I am seeing that most of the dreams I had for my life when I was 20 haven’t come true… and that in reality, most of them aren’t going to come true. As a “dreaming” generation, especially coming from privileged backgrounds, we tend to interact with our dreams as if they are owed to us. As if by having the courage to allow ourselves to want a dream, that we are entitled to see them come to fruition. I saw this begin to hurt my life in a lot of ways this year. For example, with music. In my mind, by 26 I’d be a world superstar by this point. I mean, it only makes sense right. God owes me this much at least. But what happens when you’re still making indie records and touring with your friends in your truck, driving 3 hours to play for 20 people, at the age where you thought in your dreams you would be playing stadiums? That expectation is going to kill you. I started viewing myself as “being behind” and just lost gratefulness for what really mattered: the opportunity to make music and to go on adventures with people I care about. I’m seeing that nothing in this life is promised and to just be happy about any good thing that comes my way.
2019 was also the first time in my life where I began to realize my physical limitations. I need to sleep now to function. It’s weird. I can’t eat McDonalds chicken nuggets anymore without having meat sweats for the next two days. My body has decided suddenly to hate alcohol and grease. I have to take care of what I allow into my body - physically, emotionally or spiritually. I’m not that strong. I am affected by these things, and it affects my life. I don’t have the energy I used to. I dealt with some health issues this year that were out of my control that made it nearly impossible to play music in front of people without wanting to pass out. This was so jarring. For the first time in my life, I simply couldn’t will myself to be stronger, to push through, and to be well again. Things were no longer that simple. I was learning quickly that life was not going to be as easy as “point to something you want and you will get it in the mail 2 days later.”
As someone with many aspirations and a long list of interests, learning the lesson of limits felt like a death sentence. I spent a lot of this year kicking and screaming, not wanting to yield to the inevitable… that time is moving. I am changing - my body, my mind, my priorities, my values - are all changing. I wanted to be 24 forever. But after a while, the shoe no longer fit, and I was forced to evolve, powerless against my life’s tide.
You may be feeling that you can’t be all that you wanted to be. What a terrifying thought to even entertain. But think about it. In every single area of our lives we fall short. We all wish we were better - a better friend, a better singer, a better writer, and better this, a better that - whatever it is for you. Maybe you thought you’d have a better job, a bigger house, or a more impressive life. But the truth is, we all have our limits, and we simply will not see everything that we dream of come to fruition. And I want to argue that this is ok. And not just ok, but an invitation to live with a deep purpose and meaning.
Sorry if this seems like a hopeless thought, I have found it to be quite the opposite. Learning to embrace my limitations and the inevitable death of some of my dreams has allowed me to refocus on what really matters. Love and relationships. I don’t know if I can explain it how I want to, but as this year has loosened my white knuckle grip on needing to get everything I want out of life, I’ve begun to see the beauty in the people and places God has given to me. Suddenly, everything has meaning because the dreams that were beyond the mundane have begun to disappear. I mean, this is my life happening here. And I don’t know if this is selling out, growing old, or just getting tired of constantly being let down by the notion of having “big dreams,” but everything feels more meaningful to me now. There’s not so much pressure now. I don’t have to me impressive. I don’t have to make a global impact. I don’t have to be superhuman. I just feel like I’m living a real life. When you come to terms with what you aren’t and what you can’t do, and make peace with the little space God gave you in this world, you realize the great power within what you are and what you can do. And that, is a life well lived.
I know it wasn’t a “2020 vision change the world this year” post, but it is the reality of my time. And wow, what a wonderful time.
Thanks for reading,
AB
An amazing accident. Holga 35mm.
Perpetually Prodigal
More late night thinking. It’s 1:22AM Christmas Eve, I suppose Christmas now. Waiting on Santa, wondering if he’s going to make it up to Lawrenceville tonight. Atlanta traffic surely is unpredictable. Boy I sure hope he didn’t take 285.
Tonight I thought about the story from the bible about the Prodigal Son, one that church folks would be very very familiar with. The summarize the parable, a son take a bunch of his dad’s money and goes out and wastes his life on the world, only to return home to a great celebration thrown in his honor - to welcome him home. The father runs to him, embraces him and he stumbles home, and restores his purity and honor. It is such a beautiful story and a picture of a deep love on display. I want to be able to give and receive that level of love at some point in my life. I think we’re all on a journey to that place. If you want to be.
When I would hear the story of the prodigal son used in a church message or illustration, it always seemed to be portrayed as a metaphor for a singular big moment in our lives, when we come to our senses, come home and party in the father’s house for the rest of our days. The conversation seemed to center around just one moment in a persons life where they suddenly experience the love of God and are able to turn the entire ship of their lives around 180 degrees in the other direction. And then I wondered why grace was such a difficult thing for me to ever grasp. It always seemed that, based on my actions, I was either still out wasting my life or inside the father’s party as if nothing ever happened… and I never really knew which it was.
I was thinking tonight that while the metaphor is used most often as an illustration of massive revelation or a definitive turning point in the life of whoever would identify as the “prodigal son,” I realize that I go through this process like 5 or 6 times a year. I’m going through it right now. And sometimes I feel crazy and sometimes I wonder if I’m really “in this club” because of all the stuff that’s buried underneath here… everything I’m tempted to do or think, or ways that I just don’t understand God, myself and the world around me - but something about this story has brought me peace and hope. What if being a prodigal son doesn’t necessarily mean you hit rock bottom once when you were a teenager and everything from that point on was an easy decision to stay in the father’s house? I know it hasn’t been that for me. I’ve run back to the father’s arms a ton of times. Sometimes for big mistakes and a lot of times for all the tiny mishaps that happen along the road of life. I’ve been at the father’s party and left early to go to a human party (literally and figuratively), then came back the next day wondering if the father’s party was still rockin.
I felt like writing this because at 1:42AM now on Christmas Eve of 2019, I just needed to remind myself to take the pressure off to have only had one big prodigal son experience - that this journey of becoming like, knowing, and ultimately loving Jesus is truly a journey with many seasons. And maybe this parable actually encompasses our entire human journey as a whole, as well as very specific turning points in our lives. We are fickle creatures, saying and believing one this and doing the exact opposite, sometimes within the same day or even the same hour. And sometimes we find something good but in our brokenness still need to go out there and test that light against the darkness. That’s how I feel sometimes anyway. But, in a beautiful way, up til this day in my life… the light has always won, and that’s just one more beautiful thing to me about God.
The prodigal son might be more about a process than a moment. It’s more about coming to the end of yourself in a thousand little ways than becoming perfect overnight. To anyone who feels like a perpetual prodigal, this is a beautiful place to be, I think. It means you’re still being changed.
Merry Christmas everyone.
AB
This Picture
I just got some film scans back from some rolls I shot over the course of the fall. Getting pictures back is one of the most exciting things to me. You never know what you might have forgotten, and it’s fascinating to be reminded of the things that were so compelling that I felt the need to capture them.
When I saw this picture, I was stopped in my tracks. Stunned. and I don’t know what it is about it… it just absolutely amazed me. Something about this photograph made me feel something very deeply - something telling of my own life and experience in this very moment, something about who I am right now.
I wanted to post it to instagram then felt like that cheapened it for me in a way. But I felt so compelled I just wanted to write this somewhere I can look back on later, and share to any of who you have followed the blog.
This is one of my favorite photographs I have ever taken. It’s… beautiful in so many ways. To me it feels like every leaf is moving… and moving in a synchronized way. Everybody’s dancing. I’m having a really hard time describing this, but everything in this photograph is home. This photograph feels like my life.
That’s all I can even say right now.
Thank God for these bread crumbs that are left along this long forest path - what seems to be and endless and mysterious search for communion and faith. This is a kiss on the forehead.
My November Update No Fancy Title
Hey everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve written. About two months to be more specific, so I thought I’d take a moment this morning and write an update about what’s going on and what’s coming up for me. In some ways I’m just writing this for myself to help myself remember all the gifts that have come my way in the recent times. I think, at least for me, it’s really really easy to stop being thankful when you’re working towards a goal or a dream… always feeling behind or like you need to do more. I’ve been feeling that way so much lately… So I want to take a some time to re-center and gain perspective.
About Me Music
My output has been high… since the last time I wrote I went on a little tour run, and have been releasing music and videos along the way. I have entered one of the more challenging time periods of my record release, feeling like I’ve lost some momentum or lost some of my stamina. The last song I released I had forgotten that it was even coming out, if that shows you anything about where my head is at right now! So, with that being said, I am in a time where I’m needing to refocus and slow down in some regards.
To catch you up to date, I have released 5 songs from my new album “Never A Waste.” I am choosing to release my songs one at a time as a way to take advantage of streaming platforms and how I feel like most people consume music in this digital streaming age. So, in the end, it will be a full album available, it’s just each song is coming out on its own. But up to this date, 5 have been released. You can listen to them here. On the other hand, I have pressed vinyl albums for this record, which I am so so pumped about. Having a vinyl of my own music is something I’ve always dreamt about, and this body of work felt so right to press down into this format. So, “Never A Waste” is officially on vinyl. You can pre-order your record on my store here!
In other news, I am performing an album release show at the Georgia Theatre (in Athens, GA) next Tuesday, December 3rd. I have been working on this album for a year at this point, and finally have finished most things pertaining to the music. I wanted to have a time to gather people and share all I’ve been working on as an artist. I can’t wait for this night… especially because I’ll get to play the electric guitar, which I haven’t gotten to do a lot in recent shows. So, if you’re around Athens, come out next Tuesday (Dec. 3rd).
About Me Life
On This day, November 25th, 2019… I’m tired, I’m feeling very slow. I’m feeling restless in a lot of ways. I feel lacking. I feel like I’m so far from where I want to be in almost every area of my life. I’m feeling the full presence of my inability to perform or to see a higher perspective. In this, I know I’m being guided and molded, which is my hope in everything that happens in my life. But, it is where I am. Once again, I am finding that all my illusions are being revealed for what they are: reflections of something deeper and more meaningful.
In the recent month I have found myself growing increasingly exhausted with the internet - how I use it to fill my empty moments or to feel validated or to feel connected to things or people. And the reality is that if I’m honest with myself, I don’t feel really connected to much of anything through it. I know the social media conversation has been beaten to death, so I won’t bore all of us with something that we already know, it’s just I feel like I’m on a journey personally and feel like my life is evolving and growing hungrier for real meaning and connection. The illusions are failing. When I first started releasing all this music, I’d constantly be checking my stream numbers and instagram mentions. And it was so exhausting. It never felt like enough. I always wanted more and I wasn’t thankful for what I did have, but was overly concerned with what I lacked. But strangely over time, I’ve just stopped caring so much. In this place, I’m reminded of a time even just a few years ago when I didn’t know what streaming numbers meant or even felt entitled to having a lot of people press play on my songs. I just simply did music to do music. And this is where I want to return to. I think in some ways, I’ve lost my true self within my desire to succeed, and I want to go back.
And even as I sit here, I feel a pressure for this blog post to amaze you and to be tossed around the internet and in different friend groups all around the universe. But I am reminded… does it matter? I am feeling the pressure to have so much to say - something profound or something revolutionary. But today just feels like today. and I just feel like a person with a lot of feelings but not many words to explain them. and I’m leaning, very very slowly. That this is ok. Thank you for reading my little bread crumb today, talk soon.
-AB
Pain & Responsibility (Before the Sun Goes Down)
I am currently on a flight back home from my time in California. It has been such a special and fruitful time. This is a really full time for me. With the new music rolling out, preparing for upcoming shows, and creating all the content surrounding my new album, I can say that it definitely has been a lot more demanding than I initially thought it would be. But… this far into it, I find that this is the case for most things that are important.
Through the midst of all this exciting news and all my releases, I wanted to take a second and reflect and also give an update on what’s going on with me personally, hoping that I don’t lose the practice of writing about my spiritual and personal growth. I feel like I have been so occupied with letting everyone know music is coming out that I haven’t just had a second to discuss other things with you. Which I miss. I’m going to take a second to update you on all the adventures and good news recently, then I’m going to end with a thought I’ve been thinking about and growing in recently: The idea of responsibility.
So what’s been going on?
In August I started releasing my new music. This is art that I have been working on for the better part of a year, and it feels amazing to finally be able to share it with the world. So far, I have released three songs out of nine. These nine songs will ultimately compile into the full length album titled, “Never A Waste.” I am sorry if it feels like it’s taking forever to roll this stuff out, but I am trying to be strategic in releasing these songs… since I only have one opportunity to release them. Due to the music industry’s shift to a majority streaming model, some seem to believe that releasing songs one by one is a more effective way to put songs out as an independent artist. One of my friends Will told be it’s like releasing blogs versus releasing books. As a small indie building from the ground up, you just keep writing blogs until you’re strong enough to release a book. I like that idea. So, I’ll just be releasing one song at a time to let each song have a moment to shine. I really, really love every single song on the album, and feel like I put 100% into the creation of each piece. Some artists seem to think the singles route is a sell-out or something… but I’ve grown to see it as being smart, patient, and giving all my work equal opportunity to be experienced and shared.
I’ve started playing shows again too. A couple weeks back I played a very special show in Milledgeville. It was the first time I had returned to a city to play again from my first tour last year, and it was one of the first times I could see growth in front of my eyes. Growth not necessarily in terms of numbers (though a lot of people showed up), but growth in terms of meaningful interaction and response to the music I’m making and the message I’m hoping to frame. This show was so so so special… it’s so hard to explain. During one of my songs, “Miles” I heard little hints of people singing along with me… and then when I invited everyone to sing it if they knew it, the whole house filled with voices. It was SURREAL, people knew the words! This moment made me cry because I had such a special moment where I saw that my life’s story was touching people and helping people engage with God in their lives. This show in Milledgeville was such an encouragement to me, and made me feel even more so like I could really do this thing.
House Show in Milledgeville. (photo by @brookshnsn)
Morgot’s Release Show, Santa Ana. (photo by Steve Limones)
House Show with David Brymer, LA.
This week, I’ve been in Southern California. I came to play for and open for my dear friend Margot Osborne, whose record I produced back in April of this year. I also had the chance to open for my friend David Brymer up in L.A. and lead worship with my friends over at O.C. Worship Nights. The week definitely felt like a sprint, but it was restful and encouraging in many ways as well. I have had multiple people in California that I met this week express that my music impacted them. I was interested to see how my songs would communicate out there, and I was pleased to find that a lot of people seemed to really connect to the music too. One of the ways I described this week in California to my friends Noah and Margot was that I felt like what I was doing was given dignity. I don’t know if that quite translates… but simply put, I felt like the songs I was singing and the person I was becoming really mattered. It mattered to the communities I met, it mattered to my friends, and it really mattered to me. My life is continually receiving dignity. Also, yesterday, I took a drive out to Joshua Tree National Park. I had never seen the desert before so I decided to go see what the hype was all about. It would literally be impossible to try to describe this experience here, so I won’t even try. It was soul-shifting.
I’ve come back to Georgia with wind in my sails, excited to continue creating and growing. I believe more and more in what I’m doing as I keep walking and taking chances. In October I am opening for some of my musical heroes, Will Reagan and Andrea Maria, on their Vacancy and Low Tour. I will be playing in Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville, and Greenville. I have been listening to Will’s music since my first year in college, and a lot of those songs were the soundtrack to my spiritual growth… It’s kind of surreal to have had the pleasure of meeting and working with him this year, and then this?! I am so grateful for this opportunity and am ready to rock in October. One of my dear friends (and favorite guitar players) Brandon Hampton will be accompanying me on this leg of the tour. So, if you’re around these areas, you can grab tickets on my “Shows” Page.
Last music update. I will be pressing vinyl records for the first time ever! This in itself is a dream of mine, to have one of my records on vinyl format. I felt like this album, with everything that went into it, was deserving of this to celebrate the process. This is one of the most important things I’ve ever done in my life. Anyways, that is REALLY exciting and those will be ready in December. If you see me around town I won’t have my left arm or leg because of how much these cost to make, but hopefully I will be able to break even on them. And if not I’ll just have boxes of these puppies to hang out with and show my grandkids. Anyways, that’s coming in December. Here’s a little mockup of the art for you. This is the only place that has seen this yet :)
So now that we’re all caught up on that stuff… what I really was excited to share…
Pain & Responsibility.
I am a Christian. I really do believe that my life’s course was altered in the most beautiful way when I chose as a young person to commit to following the ways and person of Jesus. I feel that God is an inseparable part of my life. I cannot un-see and un-experience everything that I have with God. Life proves to be difficult and doesn’t give me much hints that its nature will change, but somehow I know that God is good. I see life and the world through a lens the hopes to focus on faith oversight, which gives me an ultimate hope for my own life, the lives of my friends and family, and the world’s broken systems. What I wanted to write about stems from things I am learning about in my own life and the current idea that I have been chewing on and exploring. This idea has been challenging me to my core, but I’ve found an incredible sense of freedom, sobriety, and purpose through committing to learning about this. I am hoping that this will read as a subtle challenge, and I hope that it will be an encouragement that causes us to pause and reflect on ways we can grow through the difficulty of our lives. Also, since I am writing about moving forward through pain, I am wanting to be sensitive to all of the situations that may be represented out there. I have no idea where you have come from and what you have been through, and some of us have been through some incredibly traumatic and painful situations. I know the answer is far deeper and far more complex than “just go ahead and heal,” so I hope that you hear this blog as me offering my experience for you to take or leave, rather than a blanket statement trying to tell you how to live your life. Again, I don’t know anyone else’s full experience, but I do know my own. And this process of taking responsibility through my pain has changed my life for the better. It has restored my vision and given me a grace not only over my own life, but over the world around me. It’s changed how I see and experience the world. I feel free and empowered as I’ve taken steps towards practicing what I am writing about today. So, that’s my preface to this blog: “Pain & Responsibility.”
Life is hard and people are messed up. We can all agree on this. So how to do we make our way onward and upward through this mess? How do we trudge through all of this nastiness and darkness and come out the other side as whole, useful, loving people? How do we continue to have hope and a direction through countless hurts, failures, and unfulfilled expectations? These are the questions I have been asking myself. Why do some people grow? And why do other people stop? Why did some of my friends become so mad with life and mad with the world? And why do some of my other friends seem to be growing and thriving despite similar challenges? What keeps us from being free?
One thing that I have observed recently as a massive barrier in the way of growth, healing, and ultimately freedom is the failure to take responsibility through one’s pain. I am finding that the people I know who seem the most stuck in their lives are also the people who seem to have taken little or no responsibility over their own mess. Conversely, the most healthy, useful, and loving people I know seem to have taken a sense of ownership over themselves, despite the degree to which they have been burned. These people seem to have an awareness of their own weaknesses and failures, and seem to have travelled down through multiple iterations of forgiveness, understanding and grace. They’ve given themselves over to refinement. In all this I’ve observed that when we stop engaging with this invitation into refinement, we tend to become master blame shifters, since it’s far safer and easier for us to push all of the responsibility onto the people and situations that have hurt and failed us - instead of asking ourselves the daunting and challenging question, “what’s my role here?”
For me, my life began to change rapidly when I began to walk towards forgiveness in my relationship with my dad. It still has a long way to go, but in 2017 I made a conscious decision to try to reconcile our relationship. Facing my dad was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. This is a man who was emotionally and physically abusive towards me and my mom for a lot of my teenage years. He was the one who was supposed to speak into my life and provide a space for me to grow, but instead was someone who would regularly tear me down and tell me that I was never going to be good enough. In many ways, I still feel his absence. And his words still ring throughout every part of me. And for so long, I was so mad and so bitter. I used his absence and his abuse to justify unhealthy ways I was relating to myself, to others, and to this world. Honestly, it felt good to me mad. I loved giving myself the “no dad” pass whenever I would act out of that pain. But eventually, I was faced with a choice… to continue living in the reality that I had always lived in, or to believe that God might have a new reality for me if I was willing to go through His process. I was invited into my responsibility. For me, taking responsibility in this case meant coming to terms with how deeply I had been hurt my by father, but from there making a conscious decision to not let my painful upbringing dictate the rest of my life. I chose to take inventory of my own heart, regardless of the depth of offenses I had experienced - and I chose to release this person from the grips of my inner bitterness and hatred. I realized that, whether I liked it or not, I was given a responsibility because of the damage my father had inflicted on my life. No I didn’t choose it, but the situation was mine nonetheless, and I had face it and grow through it…or my bitterness and anger would still be telling me how to live today. My process with my father is a much longer story for another time, but I look back and see how important forgiving him was, and in some ways committing to that process laid the foundation for the idea of responsibility I am trying to communicate today.
I say all that to remind us that we simply cannot control how the world or the people in it will act. We didn’t choose our families, and we didn’t choose the specific people and places that surround us, or the environment that formed us. And if you sit and think about your life up until this point, the more you will see how so much of it was out of your control. The people who’ve hurt you, and ways they’ve let you down, the crippling losses that you still cannot wrap your mind around - you couldn’t prevent those things from happening even if you tried. And even the situations that you feel like you did choose that ended up burning you so badly… how could you really have known? We are far less autonomous than we allow ourselves to believe, and the idea of control over our own lives is, in many ways, an illusion we pretend to live in. However, What we can control is how we respond to all of it, and how we will move through the inevitable confusion, frustration and mystery that surrounds us each day.
Perhaps we have all found ourselves in this story: When we were given a life we were given this little lot of land with a home and a garden in the yard. With this little lot came a deep sense of purpose and responsibility - a responsibility to care for it so it can yield resources to give life back to the Earth, God, and those around us. The soil came primed. In our youth we planted many seeds. We had hope and joy, and we believed in our garden and looked forward to seeing it grow and flourish throughout the years. We had no fear in planting more seeds because we had no fear or knowledge of death. We’d never seen plants die before. But as we got older, we saw death. We saw our plants dying in front of us. Our own plants died, we watched our neighbor’s gardens struggle. And even though we tried our best to take care of our garden - watering it, pruning it, tending to it carefully… our plants still continued to wither. And as we all experienced this death together, we grew confused and angry. Some of your neighbors came into your garden and stole from it. Others trampled on your garden on their way to their own destinations. You tried to give some of your garden away, but people you trusted were clumsy with your gifts. But, they didn’t know what they were doing. The sense of ownership you once felt got harder to hold onto. You were hurt. You were hurt so bad you even started stealing from your neighbor’s garden - something you still try attempt to justify to yourself. Then, in all your loss, you built a wall around your life… convinced that your garden was hated by the world. You blamed the weather, you blamed your neighbor, you blamed your friends who promised they would help you water the garden but then they forgot. You blamed your parents for never giving you the proper tools to do it right. You blamed the church and all the failures who fill it, who, if you opened them up and took a good look, would look a lot like you. You blamed God and tired of His mystery. Then you become embittered, stuck within your own walls, unable to see that you still have a choice in all of this mess - That you have the power to choose - to keep planting, to keep watering. To keep praying, to keep seeking, to keep letting your neighbor in, even if it scares you to death. You’d gotten so mad that you couldn’t even remember the last time you asked yourself, “how can I respond? Do I matter here?” You forgot that you had an option out of this. How many of us have found ourselves here? Within a dying garden, alone and afraid of the world. Resenting people, questioning the goodness of life? Keenly aware of everyone else’s failures, but somehow blind to our own weak spots. If we hide from our responsibility, we end up here.
I rarely talk about the devil on here because it can sound really weird to some people, and a lot of people, including myself, have been confused in the past because some environments I was in equated every hard thing with the “devil” when actually it was just life being hard, and then it all got weird and over-spiritualized and very confusing, because suddenly everything that didn’t go my way was the devil but looking back it was actually God being kind… yes… all this confusing Christian stuff. But anyways, I do believe that there is a force working against our good and our growth into a higher, more loving perspective. There is a force that keeps us from communion and unity with the Father, because it knows the incredible light and power that comes from that place. And for our sake I will just call that force the devil. But I think that one of the greatest victories for the devil in our lives is if he can keep us in irresponsibility, which inevitably leads to anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness. If we can live in our blame-shifting and anger for the rest of our lives, then evil wins. We’ll never grow beyond our own perceived hurts, which disables us from being real and vulnerable with others. We continue to be blinded by our own anger, unable to move on with our lives to engage with solving problems that our outside our need for personal justice. If evil can keep us embittered, it can keep us crippled.
There is a very beautiful word of advice in the scriptures that I have been thinking about. In the book of Ephesians Paul warns us: “Be angry, but do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.” What possibly could this imply? For me, the writer is acknowledging that we will have pain. We will all be wronged throughout our lives, with many reasons to be angry. But he also gives me a course of action and a responsibility through these difficult experiences. To take this verse literally would be super-human, but I think the encouragement in it is so worth considering. How many painful situations in our lives have we lived with, slept with, and held onto for hundreds of sunsets? How long have we convinced ourselves that the bitterness and anger in our own lives was something that other people ought to deal with instead of us? How many of us have come to believe that our bitterness would somehow magically work itself out over time? In my experience, time helps us to forget, but it doesn’t heal. For me, I have been in a time where I’ve decided to face my broken relationships head on. Hurts that have happened over the course of many years that I thought I would one day forget if I kept pushing it under the rug… This has looked like a lot of awkward conversations, nervous coffees, and vulnerable texts… but something in me just knew that it was time to be brave and take care of my garden again. To own my plot of land. And to make peace with my brothers and sisters. And I’ve been finding that with each conversation, I find a new sense of ownership and grace. As I pushed past my fears, I began to encounter the truth of what really happened… which is turning out to always be different than I thought. This has been my way of not letting another sun set on my anger. This has been my way of saying to myself, “pain, fear, and our shared mistakes will no longer writer my story.” This has been my little way of taking responsibility.
As I end this blog, that slowly became a book, I would like to leave you with this. Time is moving on. Days turn into months that turn into seasons that turn into years that turn into your entire story. It is all happening much faster than we could understand… and our lives don’t plan on stopping. I know that you have been wounded in countless ways. Deep and indescribable ways. Ways that I could never really know, but in some ways can understand. This is the nature of our world and its fractured foundation. People know not what they do. But… think about what would happen if the responsibility for your freedom, health, and joy shifted from everyone else to you? What if you no longer needed to wait on the world, your friends, your communities, your circumstances… to align perfectly for you to become whole yourself? What if before the sun set on this day, you could begin to pursue healing in your fractured life? What if you had a choice in all of this? And as you’re reading this… certain people and situations come to mind, I’m sure. Pay attention to those. Within those wounds, God has hidden a gold mine for you. Gold that can only be found by digging past the crust of denial, avoidance, blame-shifting, and bitterness. Facing them will terrify you, yes. You are uncertain of what might happen and the discomfort and additional pain it might bring into your life. But… if you knew of the freedom that was on the other side… wouldn’t it make it all worth it? I am hesitant to offer very specific practicals, because every situation is different, but I do want to encourage you to, again, pay attention to people and places that your bitterness and anger tend to flow, and then follow the trail. Have an honest conversation, spend some time, make amends, take up your side.
What are the responsibilities you can own before the sun goes down?
Thanks, as always, for reading. Hope it helps. Love AB.
*note about the photograph: the blog image for “Pain & Responsibility” was taken in Frankfurt, Germany with some of my best friends in the world. I chose this image because it represented the communion that we share in our relationships and how we’ve gathered around the table to share meals together over the years. I feel that this picture, at this time in my life, represents so well this revelation I am having about working through my mess. These friends are examples to me of people who are doing the hard work in their lives to grow past their hurts. And as we do this together, we can bump into each other and hurt each other, but I am so proud of who we’re becoming - people who don’t quit and people who fight for love and for each other.*
My Time Will Come - Behind The Song
I wrote this blog post on December 19th, 2018. I had no idea even then what this song would mean to me and to those around me. Many months later, it is out for everyone to hear. I just re-read this post and sat heavy in my chair. I just went to church, walked home, it’s 70 degrees outside… Something about right now feels so, so, so right. It some ways, I do feel like a special time for me has come. What a journey we are on. Enjoy this look into how this song was written. Thank you guys.
Dec. 19, 2018:
I probably wrote “My Time Will Come” on a Tuesday. I remember having too much time on my hands, and the combination of my insecurities, fears and circumstances had landed me in a pretty down moment. I have good days mostly, but sometimes, for reasons unknown to me, life can feel especially unmanageable, unpredictable, and down-right terrifying. I often struggle with a deep feeling of missing out, that I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that somehow because of my weaknesses, addictions, poor decisions, and general sinfulness, I’ve somehow derailed God’s plan for my life. Am I not good enough? Am I missing out on the best for my life? Am I missing the point all together? Why am I not there yet? Why am I not whole yet? Why do I still struggle? Is something wrong with me? These were the immediate questions in my mind that day, and truthfully, most days.
I remember sulking up to my room in my little apartment on Baxter St. I sat down and began plucking the chords to the song. And within fifteen minutes, this song poured out of me. I haven’t touched it since. I never thought twice about the song or that the song might be any good. If anything, I thought this song was going to be a little extra song on my album that no ever listens to that I look back at and go, “wow, that was a bad day.” But, just as God does, He works often completely contrary to our expectations, and “My Time Will Come” has seemed to connect with so many people already on a deep level.
There is a story in the New Testament about a man who happens upon a treasure in a field. When he found it he ran home and sold everything that he had to buy the field. As I’ve grown and tried to walk with God, I have had this experience of forgetting the treasure I found. I feel like I’ve lost so much of my purity, my convictions, and my love for God. Sometimes I have this feeling that I miss God. I’ve turned away so many times. I’ve replaced Him with so many other things. I’ve used Him for other things. I’ve done things for Him that were really for myself. I’ve forgotten the treasure that I had in Him. There are a lot of days I want to quit and do my own thing. It’s so much easier that way. But it’s these same days that I feel like God is holding on to me by a thread. And, as I write and reflect on these feelings of failure, doubt, anger, and confusion that seem to surround me in so many moments, I still feel a hope in the depth of my heart. And that is God. And that is faith. It’s the coal that sits warmly in the ash that used to burn so brightly. A star in the sky.
As I’ve shared “My Time Will Come” with others, I have realized that I am not alone in my feelings of longing, incompleteness, grief and even bitterness towards things that haven’t happened yet for me. I realize that we are all waiting for our time to come. I realize that no one has arrived, and that no one is whole yet. I see that no one really knows the answers, especially those who seem like they do the most. We’re all messed up. We’re all on our way. We’re all still waiting.
The inner dialogue that my happens in my spirit every day occurs between my hope and my doubt. Both exist, fully alive and fully active. But through all the pain, unknowing and confusion - and as I continue to realize how dark, unable, and capable of evil I truly am - I hear the hope in my heart plead each day, “Don’t give up. Your time will come. Don’t become bitter. Your time will come. Don’t turn back. Your time will come. Don’t turn off your heart. Your time will come.” Would I learn to wait and wait well - full of love, hope, patience and kindness.
And that was it.
It is beautiful to look back on this. Thank you guys for reading, for streaming, and giving me feedback on this song. I have felt so loved and encouraged through you. I feel like, it my little way, I am getting to put my fingerprint on the world and on the conversation regarding faith, doubt, and the struggle that is real life. Again, you can stream the song of Spotify and you can also check out the Official Music Video on YouTube.
Love you.
"My Time Will Come" now available!
It’s out now! Wow guys, what a special and incredible time. I get to finally start sharing what I’ve been working on with you. So, without further adieu, give my new song “My Time Will Come” a listen, available on all platforms. Here are are links to Spotify and Apple Music. Thanks everyone! My music video will be dropping soon as well…
A Year In Review
On July 9th of last year, I had a dream in the middle of the night about a house that I could move my studio into. It was a space where I wanted to family and friendship to grow, where artists would be inspired, empowered and impacted in a deep way. It’s a long story, but the next day I found a house on Reese St. and invited my friends Zac and Joe to live there with me, and all the details to acquire the space fell together. As I approach a year of recording, producing and creating music full time, I have felt very nostalgic. I have been reflecting so much on the last year - things I have loved, things I would do differently, and all the lessons that have come from my time producing albums at Bloom Sounds and making music as an independent artist.
I thought it would be cool to take a moment and reflect on this calendar year since I quit my day job and tried to do this music thing for a living, and I also wanted to include some of my favorite film photographs along the way… to create a photobook of sorts of some special times in the studio and on the road. So, in chronological order, here was my year in music!
Beginnings Tour (August 2018) wow, exactly a year ago, Zac Crook, Carly King (The Little Strong) and I embarked on our very first tour. Independently booked, we played sixteen shows all around the southeast. There could be a small book written about how special this time was, and how deeply I cherished that time. Not that it was easy, but the specialness of the experience and what it taught me was invaluable. I felt like I grew twice as fast during this time… learning patience, persistence, and just how to run a tour and connect with people in different places.
Lion’s Den Recording (August 2018) The first recording in the new house was Lions Den’s first EP. This is a group of people I hold so dear to my heart. We decided to go ahead and record the songs we had been writing together before Bobby moved to Portland. So, we scrounged up some mics and asked some of our friends to join us. The house was so packed, but we made it work. The journey with Lion’s Den this year has been insane, as we’ve all traversed many things individually but have gotten to lean on each other and work through our live’s together. I can’t imagine this year without these very special people. I engineered, mixed, and performed on this album, called “King Of Every Seasons,” which you can listen to here.
Humility (August 2018) - This is a picture taken during the making of my single released on September, called “Humility.” It took me two or three days to finish this song from start to finish. It was one of those things that seemed to just create itself. This is a photo of my dear friend Shelby Frank helping me finish the song with some harmonies. I wrote, produced, engineered, and mixed this song, and you can listen to it here!
Common Hymnal (September 2018) What could I possibly say? This was one of the most insane weeks of my life. This is a photo of a group I am a part of called Common Hymnal. It is different than I have ever experienced. These people have also become such special people in my heart. During this week in Nashville, we basically rehearsed and recorded music for 5 days straight stopping only to eat and sleep. Literally. We’ve been releasing this music already, and you can listen to it here! I play electric guitar on some of these songs, and am a songwriter and collaborator within this group.
More Producing! (October 2018) In October I worked a couple of records, including a single for Sarah Howe, and EP for Garcia Free and a Christmas EP for Rawls Grimsley. The above photograph is of my friend Annie Leeth, who is an incredible music and engineer. I think here, we were working on Sarah’s single. At the end of October I met Rawls and helped him do his record. From that point on we became such special friends. I don’t think I was shooting film during that time because I can’t find any of us together. But, this was a special time for sure, my friend Will and I have officially dubbed the last week in October as “Rawls’ Week.”
Starting My Album (November 2018) In November I embarked on creating my first full length album as Andrew Blooms. I recorded my first two songs “My Time Will Come” and “Never A Waste” up in Knoxville with Will Reagan, Brandon Hampton, Abe Choi, and Gray Hauser. This marked the beginning of an insane process that I had yet to perceive. I thought I was going to finish it in February, but have only just finished it last week (July 2019). But it has been so worth the wait.
New Years with Family & Friends (January 2019) Got to ring in the New Years playing keys for one of my favorite groups, Family & Friends, at Variety Playhouse in Atlanta. It was a dream come true to team up with these guys, as their music has inspired me for a long time.
Producing Carly King (January 2019) Being a part of Carly King’s music has been one of the most special opportunities as a producer. She is a force! This year, we got to work on a couple singles, “We All Need Loving” and “Lily of the Valley.” I am so proud of this friend, and the values and beliefs she is continuing to embody. The photo above is from arranging some string parts on “We All Need Loving.” I produced, engineered, and mixed this music.
Producing of Elijah Johnston’s “Wonderful” (Jaunary 2019) - One of my favorite projects to date. Being able to be a part of Elijah Johnston’s first studio EP was a treat. Such beautiful music. You can listen to it here.
Ryan Carr and Brandon Hampton play on “Never A Waste” (February 2019) In feb my dear friends Ryan Carr and Brandon Hampton came all the way to Athens to help perform drums and bass and add some additional producing on my album. We worked on my songs, “My Time Will Come” “Reasons Why” “Tethered” and “Humility.” Can’t begin to describe how thankful I am for them!
Producing Brendan Abernathy (February 2019) I have been mentoring Brendan for about three years now. When we first met, he was just finishing his freshman year in college, and decided this year to pursue his dream in music and release his first solo record. I have been so proud of how he is taking risks and going for it. We had so many conversations leading up to it, and it is so encouraging to see him choose a path that requires more risk and faith. Brendan is releasing his music here. I produced, engineered, mixed and played additional instruments on this music.
Producing Jacob Mallow (March 2019) Jacob interned at the studio in the fall of 2018, and over the course of that time became one of the most special people in my life. His story is for him to tell, but I see so much hope in his life and future. When Jacob approached me about producing his EP in the spring, I was delighted. We’ve just recently finished the mixes, but you can hear what Jacob has released here. On the upcoming music, I produced, engineered, mixed and provided additional instrumentation.
Mixing and Producing in April (April 2019) In April, I stared a full length instrumental and poetry album for my friend and poet Artist MD from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I created twelve soundscapes and beats to serve as a backdrop for his poems. This music has not yet released and I didn’t seem to take any film from that week. The above picture is of me and my friend Kevin Dailey, who is is a genius producer and engineer in Nashville. We met through Common Hymnal. I love this guy so much, and he helped mix a lot of my songs on the new record.
Producing Margot Osborne (May 2019) In May, Margot Osborne and Noah Rubin flew all the way out here from Orange County, California to do her EP with me. I was so honored to be a part. This week was one of the most fun weeks I’ve had making records. We ate, drank, made music and played basketball. What more would you want? Margot has begun releasing her music recently and her first single can be found here, which will be followed by a five song EP. I produced, engineered, and mixed this project.
Germany Tour (May 2019) In May, I went on tour in Germany. It was a deeply impactful experience that I stil l don’t quite understand. It was humbling, eye-opening and I believe set something in motion in my life that will change it forever. We met so many incredible people there, and saw some some of the most beautiful sights you could imagine in Europe. Shelby, Kerri and Rawls were crazy enough to go on this adventure with me. Pictured above is our last night in Frankfurt with our friend Jan and Lena.
June and July. This summer has been a lot of mixing, and also a lot of re-evaluating. Again, it’s been such a time of reflection after a busy year… sifting through what is working and what isn’t… what’s been healthy or unhealthy.
SO, WHAT’S NEXT THEN?
This year, I’ve produced 8 EP’s, 2 Full length albums, and a handful of singles - which makes upwards of 70 tracks that I have produced, engineered and mixed. I have also been on the road with Andrew Blooms, Lion’s Den, and Common Hymnal. My studio also has developed somewhat of a consistent internship, where students from the University, or sometimes just curious musicians, get to shadow and help around the studio during projects. So, needless to say - It’s been a busy year. I’ve grown a lot in my craft. I’m proud of how I’ve pushed and reached. I’m happy with the work I’ve made and all I’ve learned.
But as I round the corner of my year, I’m tired. I reflect on how much all of this has cost me. And as cool as it might seem from the photos or instagram or whatever to always be making music and working until the wee hours of the morning… it definitely has come with a price. I began to realize in April or May that ever since I stepped out to do music full time last August, I had put myself on this insane hamster wheel of striving and work. For eight months I never set any boundaries for myself. I had to succeed. I had to make it, no matter what. My work days had no end time… it was just until I was tired. And after doing that for a long time, it caught up to me. I crashed, burnt out, and found myself disillusioned with making music and the original vision I had for myself as a producer. My vision was to serve, to create a safe environment, to encourage and inspire… but after a while I grew weary. I began to resent the very work I loved because I never learned how to say “no” and rest, and trust. But that’s where I want to make my ground zero, and that’s what I’m returning to now.
So as I moved forward, and thank God for every moment and opportunity to make music this year as Andrew Blooms and Bloom Sounds, I want to adjust my posture and return to my work from a place of security, love and trust… not fear and anxiety of where the next opportunity will come from. If anything, this year has made me sick of the perpetual race… the feeling of not doing enough or being enough… or not being as far along as I should be. Whatever that means. I’ve actually taken a part time position doing coffee at my favorite local shop, a choice I made to slow down and to get myself out of the studio a couple days a week. It has been a critical decision, as I’m already a few weeks in and have loved getting to interact with customers and co-workers and delve back into craft coffee. i’m giving myself space to rest, to not constantly be under a mix deadline or pre-production mode for the next album, and have found this decision to be such a healthy one for me right now.
I am expectant for my album to come out too. I have been working on it slowly and persistently over the course of the last year, making sure it is coming out just like I envisioned it. I have a feeling, so deep down, that this next album is going to play an important role in our cultural ecosystem. I chose to be extremely honest, and I am hoping it will pull others out of their darkness too, as making the album did for me.
The list of people to thank is endless. If you’ve been in my life, read the blogs, hired me to work with you, believed in me, but most of all just been my friend… thank you!
Here’s to year two.
The Courage To Begin Again
I’ve been wanting to write on this idea for a couple weeks now, I just haven’t known quite how to jump into it. It’s something I’ve been chewing on and reflecting on in my own life, and as I’ve explored I feel like I’ve come to some helpful conclusions for myself, which I would like to share with you now.
But first, here’s a quick update of what’s been up with me:
In June, I got to go out to LA to participate in a Common Hymnal writing camp, and see some family that I don’t get to see very often. I also got to reunite with my friends who are a part of Common Hymnal who live all over the country. I am enjoying these folks very much and I learn so much from being around them… not only about music, but about God and life… how to live it well. I also got to visit Seattle, and there was able to see one of my best friends Bobby and another brother Sion from Vancouver… both of whom drove ours to meet up… even if only for a little while. I also got to see my friend Caroline, who I went to high school with. She works for Amazon now.
Both of these trips were such a gift, getting to see these amazing places and reconnect with my friends from all different walks of life.
Traveling aside, my life right now consists of very similar motions daily. I’m mixing a lot of music right now, fishing up three records this summer as well as some live material for a campus ministry here in Athens called Wesley. I’m also putting the finishing touches on my own record, which will be my first full length release as Andrew Blooms. My days typically look like the gym or reading in the morning. Interns and the artists arrive around 10AM, we mix until lunch. Eat a great lunch. drink some coffee. Talk about weird funny stuff. Mix until the brains and ears are mush. Then meet up with some friends in the evening. Or like tonight, I’m having some time to sit and write. The summer here has a wonderful pace, since there are less people in Athens than when school is in… So everything, including myself, breathes a little easier.
Inwardly, I am in a phase of restructuring. The pillars I had built for myself - the ways I’ve carefully forged my identity around my efforts, image and my creations - have been crushed to dust… and I am no in a place where I “feel” I have nothing left to give. The things that used to work for me… the systems I’d created to avoid pain and to avoid reality have failed. I’m tired. My year has caught up to me. In some ways I have lost sight of who I am and what I’m about. Slowly, growing more tired over time. Tired of trying. As my friend Tom said to me last weekend, “I’m just tired of learning.” Boy do I get that. I’ve recently experienced some debilitating anxieties that have made it unable for me to lead worship or perform in front of people… A fear I never thought I would ever experience. I’ve been sick and exhausted, to a point where it’s made it difficult to engage with people as I want to. For the first time in my life… I’ve felt the inevitable - That I am limited. I am out of control. I am small. And time is moving.
But in some wonderful way, I’ve been stripped and left only with myself. Without the mask of the stage, without the mask of my abilities, and without the mask of seeming like I have anything figured. It’s brought me to a curious and wonderful place. It’s brought me to an honest place, where I’ve been forced to look at myself through an uncolored lens, a truthful lens. And the truth always sets you free. And this is the starting point from which I would like to share this idea:
The Courage To Begin Again…
As I think about the social pressures that I’ve grown up with and continue to feel as I grow up, I observe that we are all terrified of being wrong. We don’t want to feel wrong, we don’t want people to know we’re wrong, we don’t want anyone to call us out for being wrong. We don’t want to say the wrong answer, project the wrong image, or say the wrong thing. And as we grow up, there is this subtle pressure to become less and less wrong. As if when you were 18, you were allowed to be 50% wrong about everything, and if you’re 26 you need to have figured out enough stuff to be down to at most 30% wrong about things, and by 50 you’re supposed to be wrong about only 15% of all things. I’ve observed it all around me, for the longest time… That most people do anything and everything in their power to make sure nobody knows how much they don’t actually know. Not knowing the correct answer has become a taboo - an indication of a lack of faith, intelligence, or some sort of moral discipline. When actually, the humility required to live a life willing to be led and corrected, or “wrong,” generates the soil that is required for a significant life marked by forward motion, growth and most importantly - unconditional love.
I’ve found that the pressure to know exactly what we’re doing creates a paralysis and an unwillingness to enter into critical times of reformation, redesigning and redirection. The fear of being or appearing wrong to others actually keeps us from the healthy and necessary process of being humbled, reshaped, corrected and ultimately refined into a more purified image of who we are supposed to be. The fear of being wrong about things hardens the heart and doesn’t allow space for the process of pruning, which always is intended to make space for fuller and more beautiful fruit to grow.
I felt so passionately to write about this because I’m afraid I’m growing hard. I’ve felt it over the years… leaving college, entering the “real world” and starting my “real life” (which has actually been happening this whole time)… there’s this thing in me that is less willing to re-learn… less willing to return to the drawing board, to take a step back, to re-evaluate and be honest about what’s really going on beneath the surface - scared to death to begin again. It’s like I’ll be embarrassed or found out that I’m actually this hurting, terrified child trapped in a 26 year old body who actually has no true grip on anything in his life. It’s as if now, since I’m an real adult, there’s not as much grace to have taken a wrong step, had a bad season, been in progress on things or to have tried something that failed… But I’m in a place in my life where I’m looking back and finally allowing myself to admit, “wow, I was really wrong about that.” This place of honesty and sobering reality could only take place after all my idols and pillars came crashing down, leaving me with nowhere to hide. This is how I’ve been wrong for so long:
I’ve been wrong about motivations… doing things “for God” when they were really for me.
I’ve been wrong about my own righteousness… that behind close doors, I embody the very things that I judge in other people.
I’ve been wrong about drugs and alcohol… using these things to escape my reality and my pain.
I’ve been wrong about what’s important in life… that you thinking I’m amazing isn’t going to satisfy me truly.
I’ve been wrong about friendship… that my friends might enjoy me and that I’m afraid to loose them.
I’ve been wrong about my dad… that things might not be his fault.
I’ve been wrong about what love is… that it’s about serving and not just finding someone to fulfill my dreams and desires.
I’ve been wrong about what it means to be important… that it’s more important to serve and not be served.
I’ve been wrong about God… that He might actually love me.
the list could go on… I’ve been so dead wrong about so many things in life so far.
What I’m trying leave you with is this encouragement: Get honest with yourself. Be willing to lay everything on the table, knowing full and well that you will be wrong about most of it. It’s not about having a perfect life, and it’s not about only hitting the bulls-eye on everything you do. It’s not about people sitting around somewhere talking about how flawless and amazing you are. It is not about being right. This is about growing into who you were made to be. This is about holding the things in your life loosely - in a posture that welcomes the humbling work of the Holy Spirit to prune, correct, and guide you into new levels of meaning and usefulness. It’s about becoming true. It’s about becoming free. It’s about learning how to love. I’m at a place where I no longer see the use in pretending that things are not there in my life… The bad habits, the addictions, the anger, the confusion, the loose ends, the doubt, the constant and unrelenting tension between what I see in real life and what I hope is true about God… everything I’ve pushed under the rug for so long. I didn’t want to appear wrong. I didn’t want to appear weak. I didn’t want to appear like I was struggling. But if there’s anything I’ve come to know… is that we’re all struggling. And if we continue to struggle in the dark, we will never heal. So with this in mind, I beg the question: How will we choose to move forward?
Are you willing to be honest? Are you willing to return to nothing? and are you willing to be wrong? Are you willing to let all of your constructs fail… to begin at ground zero again, no matter how far along you are in life, welcoming the winter to see the spring? Are you willing to revisit all you’ve learned to say and believe with the courage to ask yourself, “Might there be a better way?”
What a vulnerable and beautiful place to be. As I type these last words, I am praying. That having read this you might not feel so alone in your journey upward… and that somehow you might have found enough courage to begin again.
The Big Why
Saw the time stamp of the last post I shared while in Germany. Over a month since I’ve sat down to share on this medium. I don’t think I’m going to actively share this one on socials and email… but maybe it’'ll be just the right few of you to stumble upon it and hopefully what I’m about to say brings out some value somewhere. Even if just for me.
It has taken so much resolve to get myself to this place of writing this blog post. I feel like my tank for sharing and vulnerability just… emptied. Sometime over the last month, I’ve just grown so tired. So tired of trying to keep up online. So tired of sharing. So tired of making sure all my posts and pictures are good enough for people to like. Tired of counting followers. Counting plays. Counting other people’s likes. Just counting. Watching and counting. My body is tired. I’ve found myself dealing with some health issues that have slowed me down and shown me some things I have been neglecting to take care of. Even as I type this, I fight nausea from looking at this computer screen. My mind, my heart… are so stretched.
In short… my soul is catching up to me.
I have found myself in a moment of deep questioning and searching. And as the majority of my energy, focus, and being have all been dumped into making this album I’m working on, here in the last phase of finishing the album… I’m haunted with the ringing question… Why? Why am I doing this? Why do I care so much about this thing? Why do I need it to succeed so badly? And why am I so afraid that it won’t? Do I believe what I’m about to share with you? These are the questions that stop me mid-breakfast…staring into my eggs. I stand outside of the shower soaking , paralyzed in fear… trapped in these insane unknowns.
“Art goes sour when the ego gets involved. It happens slowly overtime…when we forget the initial joy of loving something for the sake of loving it. When art becomes a means to an identity, or when we use our successes to patch up wounds that success was never meant heal, we lose sight of art’s beauty. When art becomes a competition instead of a nuanced language to be celebrated, we forget the power of our own uniqueness and the specialness hidden in our own voice, as our efforts become aimed at becoming the best instead of becoming our true selves. Then, when we become the best, we begin to see people around us as either threats or servants to our own ego, rather than stories to learn from. We lose the art of living and the art of relationship. We lose the heart and we lose the love we so innocently began the adventure with.”
The truth is… I have suddenly and rapidly found myself struggling deeply in my life. As I have committed to facing the truth about myself and my world, this is another step in the process. There are many layers to me, and why I am the way I am. There’s so much amazing stuff in there, and also so much mess. I am digging deeper and uncovering more layers as to who I am and who I am supposed to be. The recent weeks have not been a joy, but rather bleak, heavy, and humbling. I am not all I thought I was.
But this also means I might be way more.
Never A Waste (Live at Bloom Sounds) - New Music Sneak Peak
A sneak peak of what’s going to be on the new album. Here’s a little live performance of a new song, and title track of the record… “Never A Waste.”
MAI IN GERMANY: EVERY PATH'S END
Helllooooo everyone! Hello me. It’s late here in Braunshcweig, about 2AM as I write this. We have just arrived this evening, after quite a drive from Paris this morning. I’m kicking myself to sit down, reflect, and share a little bit on my blog. I am so thankful for all of your support and being excited with me for this opportunity to be here… so I wanted to be sure to share this with you guys. I am learning each step of the way and having a lot of fun out here. We haven’t played any shows yet, the first being tomorrow. Since arriving, we have been to Paris and driven through the French and Belgian countrysides to arrive tonight in Germany. Here are a few nuggets.
PARIS
Our first stop after arrive in Paris at around noon was to meet Matt Marvine downtown. Matt works for Integrity Records and is a Pastor in France. He took us to Crepes and told us about his life and what he feels like he is supposed to do in Europe in regards to music. It was refreshing to hear his love for his people and God. I was inspired from our lunch to think more deeply and care more… just about everything. I felt like we got spoiled because we didn’t have to fumble through ordering from the menu (though) we still did… and we felt so welcomed here. Then, later that evening… we saw this:
An obvious highlight. It is something you couldn’t even explain. When I saw the Eeiffel Tower I had a true, soul moving experience. Again… it’s something no words or pictures could explain. It just simply felt insane. I can see why Paris is portrayed as a romantic place now. I couldn’t understand it before I was here… but something about the beauty, the history and the environment makes you think about love. And as I much as I love Shelby and Kerri… I couldn’t help of think of what it’d be like to be in this place with your person. What a thing to do. I’ve thought about love a lot. Maybe I’ll share in extra credit if I can stay awake until then.
Today, we got up and left Paris and drove to Germany. I dread long drives, but this one was the most beautiful drive I’ve ever taken. We ended up taking the GPS’s suggested route to avoid toll roads, and it took us through the most incredible towns and rural roads. This picture is us after finding some delicious Pain Au Chocolat in Peronne somewhere up in Northern France. as we continued our drive to Germany. This is again, something that I couldn’t even explain… but the scenery was so moving and refreshing. I was experiencing something truly remarkable.
After driving through Belgium, we decide to stop in Calogne to take a look at the Cathedral and have some German food. We ended up having Schnitzel and Kolsch. After that, we continued our drive to arrive here three hours later.
Braunschweig
(fast forward a day). We played our first event on Sunday evening at Tom’s church. Tom is an amazing guy I met in Athens when he was working for Habitat Humanity there. I think that was three or four years ago. It’s crazy how our paths have crossed again. Tom helped set up the shows and has opened up his family’s home for us to stay at here in Braunschweig. Tom is a part of Braunschweig Friedenskirche, a local church here, and we were invited to play at their evening service called Fiesta. We played a mixture of modern worship songs, Lion’s Den songs, and one of my own, “Humility” at the end of the service. Honestly, I got really nervous beforehand… thinking to myself… oh wow what have I done. But as we were leading worship, I was able to catch a glimpse of something truly beautiful. Folks from all across the world… literally, singing songs together and praising God. This was an incredibly special moment, as I was able to witness that vastness of God and even see how music could truly be a universal language. We met some really amazing people at the Braunschweig Church, Lukas and Hannes even joined us and were part of the band!
Tom!
Us with Hanna and Lukas.
EXTRA CREDIT: EVERY PATH’S END
My favorite and most scary part of doing this. But also the reason why I like to blog and share about my experience. As cool as the sights and experiences are, I believe there is something more valuable to share. The painful, difficult and growing dynamics that are happening beneath the surface… this is what binds all of us together, and really what makes experiences like this one worth any while. The extra credit:
It’s nothing like I expected. It’s nothing like it seems to you. The stuff you see online, the videos and pictures and the “this is so amazing” parts… Is all good and really true, but it’s not the full truth. It’s not that I am not thankful to be here, or that I’m feeling like I’m in some ways lacking, not at all… in fact thinking that would just be plain stupid. I mean yesterday we drove through rural France. But, I believe, there are things to learn from this experience. Deep, meaningful things to learn and things to grow out of. And something that we may have begun to understand by now is the fact that all growth requires death. It requires stretching. discomfort. destruction of ego. destruction of pride. It’s all very painful.
I am being confronted with a challenge within myself to take a look at the why behind the things I do. Why do I do music? Why did I come to Germany? Why do I write songs? Why do I play shows? And for some reason, behind all the way out here… away from all my comfort and familiarity, surrounded by insecurities, doubts, and fears… the question “why” has been raised so loud to a point where I had to begin to answer. It is terrifying to be honest with myself about this, as I have begun to bravely look at my selfishness. So much of what I do, how I think, how I portray myself to you…is all about me. It’s all for me. Every road, paved towards myself. To fulfill my dreams, to fulfill my desires and my need to be somebody in this world.
So many of my pursuits are an illusion, wrapped up in Godly and righteous looking language and facade to fool you into thinking I’m a more amazing, talented, righteous, or loving person than I really am. Something about being here has slowed me down, and has allowed me to look at myself directly in the eyes. It has allowed space for God to speak to me and meet me in my stillness and weakness.
Before our first show in Braunschweig, I thought for a few moments that everything I had tried to do was in vein. I was haunted with this question, “why the heck am I even here? Why did you try to do this tour in Germany in the first place?” I was riddled with anxiety and shame as I realized… Wow. I did this whole thing… I brought my friends over here, routed the shows, made cool graphics, shared it on instagram, posted stuff about it… for me. So you would love me. So you would see me. So you would be impressed by me. So you would admire me. And within a matter of moments, my soul broke. My heart broke. and in a moment of deep fear, thought… “wow, this whole thing is going to be a complete waste… all bout you.”
But you know what’s so amazing about us as people with a choice? And also the incredible grace of God? Is that we have the opportunity to humble ourselves, listen, and respond to love. True love is the invitation into something more fulfilling and meaningful. Something that will heal our own lives and in turn heal the world around us. Love is a different path. And in that church service in Braunschweig, God met me with so much grace and began to lead me into something new. He blessed us with the incredible experience of being loved by the church community, getting to spend time with them, learn from them, and just observe the dynamics of their friendships and mindsets. If you want to be humbled, experience unconditional love and hospitality… these are things that these folks have modeled and challenged me with.
I am coming to terms with the harsh reality that I am a product of a “me first” environment. One that values self over any other thing. America, as I’ve experienced, idolizes success, productivity, and influence… above connection, community and hospitality. Everyone is fighting for a spotlight as if it’s going to heal them. We are desperate for attention and meaning. Being here is illuminating these things in my heart in a reckless fashion. It’s so obvious.
But as I’m being broken over my own motives, I find healing. I find grace. I have time to grow. I have time to readjust and I’m not held to my moments of selfishness. And though, if I were honest with you, so many of the paths coming into Germany were about me… it can change. I can change. My heart is clay and not stone. And it is a privilege to change and to admit these things, to you and to myself… because then, I find the chance to begin again. I want every path in my life to end at others and to end at God. I want to continue the hard work of giving my life away, even in my motivations. I want to be the kind of person who slowly repaves my roads to go away from me… to point to someone greater, to point to something more meaningful and beautiful. I want to take part in the world’s healing, even if it’s just to a few people. And I’m realizing now, that it’s a lot harder to do that when I’m designing everything around me to fulfill my own dreams and desires. And what’s most incredible about this is that even as I’ve pivoted a few degrees in my heart, made the slightest change in direction… I can already feel love grow for the world around me. As I shift the focus and attention off of me.. I see God. I see the people in my life. I see my neighbor. And in this outward position, I find true healing.
Where do your path’s end?
AB
Nasvhille & Sheffield - Never A Waste Album Update (#5)
A photojournal, if you will. Last week, I ventured up to Nashville to reconnect with some good friends and work on my record. I am in the “mixing” stage of the album, which is the process that happens after everything is written and recorded. Mix engineers take the raw audio of the song and polish it up, balance it, and create a general sound. It’s like giving a chef a bunch of ingredients to make into a meal. Chef Kevin Dailey is helping mix three of my songs, and I spent a week with him in his studio. We had a blast last week, and was a much needed change of scenery. I got to see one of my favorite bands at the Ryman, went fishing, accidentally broke into someone’s air bnb, went to a soiree, ate tons of Pho, and played a show in Muscle Shoals, AL and met some new incredible friends. There was too much strangeness, fun, and spontaneity to try to describe in words…
So without further adieu, my photojournal.
So thankful for these people being along for the ride. Here, we are at Kevin Dailey’s studio, working on some mixes.
Death Cab For Cutie at the Ryman
Meeting Arvid from Denmark, seeing brother Brandon again, and taking this smoothie mustache picture strangely initiated by Malcolm Du Plessis.
We found ourselves at a live recording at Layman Drugs, where this beautiful Tree Audio console lives.
The Common Hymnal Soiree. Arvid shares some of his beautiful songs with us.
Fishing in Franklin. I told my Brit that on my first cast I would catch a fish. And I did!
After my week of mixing in Nasvhille, I took a quick drive south to play a show at The Chapel in Sheffield, AL. There, I was greeted by some of the warmest and most hospitable people I have ever met! The show took place in this beautiful old chapel, and it was one of those experiences I will never forget. Special shoutout to Andrew (not me) for hosting the show and inviting me out and Daniel Smith for opening up the show. We all even stayed a couple hours after to just sing together. Through this time in Sheffield, I was reminded to slow down, spend time with the people in front of you, and just to enjoy every experience you find yourself in. What a gift.
I’m wrapping this one up quickly, as I am about to leave for Atlanta to pick up my friends Margot and Noah, who have come all the way from Southern California to make a record with me! Margot’s songs are beautiful and it will be an honor to work on them with her and Noah.
A week from today, I go to Germany to play a little 8 show tour with my best friends. A lot of fun news there for sure.
Thanks for reading!
Ups & Downs
Over a month since checking in for real. They are redoing our roof today at the house so, no recording and no listening. A Blessing in disguise. I wanted to take a second a write a little update about what’s been going on in my world, and all the lessons hidden in everything around. Some big. Some small.
I turned 26 this month. What a thought to be closer to 30 than I am to 20. I still feel 22 in most ways, just with more responsibility and less safety nets. Less people who are checking in on me, less people pushing me to grow. The world grows bigger and less attentive to my problems. Old things dying, pushed into their graves by the new and the unknown. It’s almost as if over the last three years, I’ve set out on an adventure of my soul… learning about what’s really in there, and figuring out who I am when no one’s looking/watching or caring. It’s a terrifying journey, but such a crucial one. As I’ve unturned the stones in my own heart, I’ve found more treasures and more bugs than I could have ever imagined… and am thankful that I’ve uncovered those dark places. Because it is true what they say… what is brought into the light loses its power.
The Album
I am continuing to work slowly and carefully on “Never A Waste”. I looked at my google calendar and saw my original release dates for everything. HA! What was I thinking?! I was hoping to have this out by late March of this year, but as it turned out, I am needing much more time and space to create this work the way I want. I have finished one song, which I believe will be the single, and am exploring the master now. I am finishing tracking on the second “batch” which I will have mixed in Knoxville and Nashville. Next week, I’m going to spend a week up in Nashville mixing a few of the songs from the record with my friend Kevin Dailey, who I look up to very much. I can’t wait for this week of exploration and growth. The others are being mixed by Garrett Sale who is killing the game so far! Originally, I was going track, perform and mix everything, but I have realized the value of letting it go and letting some fresh ears hear the songs at that point. As I’ve already experienced, it is easy to get overly obsessive with small details of the process and you can easily start to feel like you’re going crazy. It’s like trying to put together a puzzle where if you move one piece, all other 999 move slightly too… and eventually you realize it will never be truly done. Sounds fun right? Making an album is both the best of and worst of times.
But all that aside, I am learning how to wait and how to be patient during this process. I always want things to happen overnight, but am being forced to slow down, work slowly and faithfully, and not rush the end product. What’s hard is that I’m just so excited for everyone to hear this album. I believe in these songs and what they might mean to some people out there! So, thanks for waiting with me yall, I think it will be worth it.
Bloom Sounds
The studio is boomin. I have a lot of incredible projects on the horizon that I am excited to work on and so far in 2019, I have been blown away at the specialness of this place. I’ve gained some of my best friends through this studio and have had some incredible moments with my artists. The house has become a little cocoon of creation. I’ve spent hours and hours and hours in this room, mining into new things with my friends, discovering sounds, discovering new thoughts and new ways of creating. I am watching the people around me blossom, take risks, and really go for it with their music and it is such an honor to be a small catalyst in those steps.
Extra Credit: Ups & Downs
In the spirit of vulnerability, sharing life, and sharing lessons… my extra credit as always. (If you’re new to the blog, I try to include little extra credits at the end of each post, as a reward to the readers out there). I had an experience last week where I broke in half. Right in the middle of everything going seemingly “well,” I had a moment where all the things I had taken on and said “yes” to, overwhelmed me and brought me to my knees. I woke up last Thursday, went to the studio as usual, and then my mind began unraveling. I began to think about all the things I had to get done, all the people I had to answer to, all the things I was dropping the ball on, and all the people I would eventually disappoint. And in that moment, all of these things I hadn’t tended to in my spirit came in all at once and I felt like I couldn’t breath, think, or wrap reasoning around my worries. It was like a tunnel was coming in around my mind and I was paralyzed. This was such an awakening moment for me, as I realized, I had given every last inch of myself away to the people around me, to planning things, and to the tasks at hand. I was burnt to a crisp. So from there, I took some time away from work and from my phone and computer and tried to understand what was happening. This never happens to me…I’m not an “anxiety” person. I’m a happy person. I can handle all things… and on and on and on… trying to run from the truth about what just happened. And I’m still doing that. But, all this to say, I’m in a process right now of learning that more is not always better, and that if I don’t rest, I will crash. And in a larger sense, being at peace with the Ups & Downs of life. It is just inevitable. This is a part of it. Sometimes we get broken down. It happens. But these are wonderful opportunities to take steps back, re-evaluate, and adjust. It is actually a good thing to come to the end of yourself, to be brought to your knees, to realize your inability and your limits, because it is there that God meets us in a really special way. The journey of growth is a see-saw between being shattered and being pieced back together. It’s as if the same pot needs to be shattered over and over again, the shards growing smaller and smaller, to increase its resolution. This is the process that we are in, the tearing down and the building back up.
I’ve learned to have grace for myself in these times. When I find that I’m not all that strong or wise or awesome as I thought I was. When I don’t have control. When I get overwhelmed and when I get frustrated. These times are the soil for something stronger to grow. I am learning to not despise the ugly and desperate parts of me, but to pay attention to them and to be attentive to the ways they leak out of me or in this case, break me down suddenly. I commit the breaking of my life to God and trust that He, as He always has done, will work through me.
There is so much fear surrounding the reality of who we are in our present state: in process. It is every person’s reality. It’s yours, and it’s mine. Learning how to live, learning what’s good, learning who we are. I’m terrified of what you might think of the confused, weak, and ugly parts of me. I’m terrified of seeming like I don’t know exactly what I’m doing. I’m afraid that if I have weak moments like I did last week, that that’ll become what you think of me. I’m afraid to admit, even to myself, that I’m not so perfect after all. But as I take a moment to remember where I was was, where I am now, and where I hope to be going, I am comforted because I see the process of my life and how everything has led me here, which helps me understand that every difficult thing before me now is also leading me forward… and that’s how it all ties together. So whether it is I am up or I am down, I move forward regardless. God moves me forward. The river moves me forward. And this is how it goes.
Spring Shows
Hey everyone! I’m playing a couple places throughout the spring. Some new places and some familiar ones. If you are around these places, come on through and bring a friend! Here’s where you can find me singing my songs over the next couple months! I’m excited to play more.
3/21 - Jams For Justice at Legion Field (UGA)
https://bit.ly/2UJXvDd
3/22 - Backyard Boogie (Athens)
https://bit.ly/2Jl4Jft
3/28 - Emma’s House Show (Dahlonega) *message for details
3/29 - Tour Stop UGA: Branding Panel Guest (I'm speaking at this one!) https://bit.ly/2TRUpAR
4/5 - Hydrolove Concert @ The Pit Barn
https://bit.ly/2uhpEWI
4/19 - The Chapel (Sheffield, AL)
Humility and Taking The Hard Way Through
Forcing myself to sit down and write. The last few weeks have been jam packed with so much. Leading worship with my friends, a lot! Producing… a lot! and working on the album… a lot! It’s been so go, go, go that I wanted to take a second away from the studio and all that and just write about the deeper things I feel like are happening in this time. I have such a sense of God’s guiding and nudging right now, and have been observing Him move all around me in my friends and community. As my friends and I have gathered often recently to share life, whether it be eating dinner, making cheese boards, leading worship, or recording music… this theme of humility seems to be on the forefront of our conversations, and seems to be a thread that connects all of us right now. I am trying to unpack it.
A couple weeks ago, we were celebrating my friend Blake’s birthday. And we forced Blake to tell us what he was proud of in his own life, and he said “I’m proud that I never took the easy way out.” And this sentence has been following me, stirring deep inside me, and filling me with so much hope and gratitude, all at the same time. This sentiment woke me up to something, and I felt like it shook me a little bit… and it was in that moment I began to realize the value behind that choice, and how lucky I was to be surrounded with friends like Blake. Since that time at dinner, I began to look at all my friends and community that I have here in Athens - and have really just been in awe of what God has done and what He continues to do in our lives… and how one things binds us all… the choice to take the hard way through. None of us are perfect by any means, but, we are committed to figuring things out, working through our own pains and messes, and surrendering more and more to God as time goes on.
I’ve been thinking, humility can be defined in so many ways and has many facets, but what I am observing and feel like God is showing to me and my friends is that a lot of humility is the willingness to throw everything you once thought you knew to the wind. If we aren’t aware and constantly humbling ourselves, we can begin to cling to ideals and thoughts about God, ourselves, and the people around us as absolute truths. Then, when our lives and experiences challenge those ideals, instead of being open to change, we discount them. In our pride, we begin to build our walls. To keep the uncomfortable out and to keep the familiar in. And sometimes, we start putting those people or ideals into a category that is “beneath us.” And this is a really scary place to be. In any moment that we think we know the entire answer about a person or situation, humility has left us. In any moment that we find ourselves thinking, “I’ve already learned this” or “I am better than this,” humility has left us. When we stop asking questions. When we stop serving. When we stop learning. Our humility is gone.
As I’ve grown into my mid twenties, I’ve seen enough people give up already. I’ve seen so much compromise. I’ve compromised. I’ve seen friends lose hope. I’ve seen friends close their doors forever. I’ve seen friends walk away from God. It’s hard to see that. It’s hard to realize that I’m right there too a lot of the time. But, after thinking about this and observing it over the last few weeks, I’ve come to realize the common denominator between all my friends who’s lives are dynamic and growing in depth, character, and genuine impact. It’s not their strength, charisma, prestige, or platform or anything like that… It’s simply their humility. It’s their awareness that they themselves are the least of these, that they don’t and won’t ever have it all together, and they still have much to learn. It’s their willingness to go through the process of life patiently, even when they can’t see results every day. It’s their slow growth in the same direction, inches at a time. It’s their resolve to do the right thing when no one is watching. It’s their unwavering commitment to hope, even as the tides of life continually try to rip it away from them.
I am not sure all of this fell together quite as clearly as I had hoped but, I think at the end of it, I just wanted to share this beautiful realization: Just keep going. Don’t give up. It will be worth it. I’m in a position right now where I can just see really clearly all the fruit that comes from not giving up. All around me, and all around my friends who have prioritized serving God and following God above everything else, through thick and thin. If you could see who they are becoming, you’d see that it’s worth it. Don’t get me wrong: It’s really hard. like really really hard. And sometimes you look around and go, am I an idiot? But man, if you could see just what kind of young men and women I know and I get to go on adventures with and live life with, you would know it’s worth it. Our time is spent serving, exploring creativity, laughing until we can’t breathe, loving each other, leading our community, making meaningful memories… making histories… we’re not just wasting time or filling our moments with nonsense waiting for the next season to save us. We’re alive, we’re being changed, we’re moving forward. We’re being formed into who we were meant to be. In so many ways, my friends are saving my life. Watching them grow with God through every season has given me a hope to do the same.
In this moment I can perceive two paths. One of continual humbling, bending, breaking, and renewal - all happening simultaneously, which leads to a broken heart’s revival that pumps life into emptiness that surrounds it. The other path: one of bitterness, confusion, constant striving, constant reaching and ultimately leading to a life where possibility, light and love are choked out and change is no longer possible. Would we be so brave as to continue to submit ourselves to the hand of God, the invitation to a childish dance, and to the idea that we have yet a ways to go but even then, we are in motion. Would we continue to choose the hard way through - loving justice, committing to truth, and yielding to the gentle hand of Jesus that molds us as we continue to soften our hearts. Would we grow in wisdom but not in pride, yielding the lessons we learn along the way as gifts, that we never earned, to be shared with the world around us. Would we learn to be quick to forgive, quick to hope, and quicker to love, taking the first step towards the people around us. Would we no longer wait for the our fractured environments to suddenly heal themselves before we offer ourselves fully to become a part of the solution. Would we choose to live in a downward direction, knees buried in the ground as a symbol of the position of our hearts towards each other, honoring each other above ourselves. How wonderful an opportunity that awaits each person - to trade yourself for something greater. To lay down your life in thought and deed so that something greater might come from it. Would we continue to believe.
Would we live in humility, taking the hard way through.
New Show Announced! Caledonia Lounge (Athens, GA) - Feb 21
YES YES YES. Here we go! I am excited to announce that I will be playing a FULL band show in February. Joining be on this bill will be my good friends Zac Crook and Conner Brooke, who are both doing incredible things. I am really looking forward to working through new material with the band and playing my original music again.
Thursday, Feb. 21. Doors at 8PM, Show at 9PM.
Tickets are on sale now and you should buy them in advance! Maybe we can pack this thing out. Tickets are here!