March 18th, 2023 - “Bar Gigs and Black and TikTok”

Every now and then, I have a moment where I realize that I have been overzealous about a belief and I have been wrong about what I thought, and this is one of those times. When I first got into music, I found myself playing bar gigs where I played mostly cover songs. Doing so, I felt like it was pretty purposeless because ultimately it did not lead to being able to get my music out. However, in recent years, I have seen a number of my friends playing these type gigs, and mixing in originals, and I’ve had to reconsider this belief. It seems that if you are able to play your original songs to an engaged audience, then you end up getting to achieve two goals: 1. you get to promote your originals and 2. you get to earn money doing this, which will help you keep the lights on until your songs are heard by a larger audience. Coming to this realization, I’ve felt a need to acknowledge that I was wrong on my previous belief in thinking that bar gigs were never helpful. I think that in certain occasions, they can be productive, and if you are someone who I told not to play bar gigs, I’d like to acknowledge that I was wrong on that. The next thing I think I have been wrong about is TikTok. When I first heard of it a couple years ago, I downloaded it, and I noticed that it had a lot of pretty vulgar stuff on it, and so I got off of it pretty quickly. However, years later, an artist that I produced ended up getting signed based on one of her TikTok videos, and after seeing that I’ve had to reconsider. So I guess where I stand on it now is that I do still think it has some vulgar stuff on it, and I do think the world would probably be better without it, but given that it is here, it seems to be a pretty important piece of the puzzle for an artist to learn how to use if they are gonna be in music.

March 25th, 2022 - “Being a Christian and Wrestling With the Christian Industry”

Before moving to Nashville, I lived in Los Angeles. I remember I was excited to come to Nashville because I thought being around more Christians would make it easier to walk in faith and strengthen my relationship with Christ. Since the move, I have struggled with figuring out what to think of the Christian music industry. I’ve heard statements such as “Let’s write a worship song and make bank.” I’ve also heard young artists come to me asking if I have any “Christian music connections”. It just always feels funny to me. In Matthew 21:12-13 it says “12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[a] but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’[b]” I guess I wrestle with trying to figure out how the Christian music industry is any different than what they were doing in the temple. Because I don’t understand it, I have not ever been able to get myself to partake in it, and I always end up sidestepping projects like that that come my way. I wanna be clear, this town has been really good to me. I’ve been given great opportunities and been able to work on records I never dreamed I’d be part of. I guess it just always bothers me that I don’t know what to do with the Christian music industry. I will say this, I have had some really good experiences in churches that felt very genuine and authentic in the worship, but I’ve also had so many bad ones where I had to pray “Dear Jesus, I don’t like this song, but I want to worship You, please show me how.” I wanna be clear that God is good, and Christ’s faithfulness has nothing to do with what is at the heart of the Christian music industry. This is not some deconstruction article. I know the world is broken, and this could very well just be me recounting some experiences about that. I also know that I am by no means perfect as a human being, I’ve got my stuff where I need to be checked. I have just been struggling with this, and I wanted to open up on it to see if anyone else felt the same way. I’d like to become part of the solution rather than the problem, and so I’m trying to get a better understanding of it.

July 20th, 2022 - “Something I Learned About Life While Editing Guitars”

In an ideal situation, all the tracks of a song line up perfectly together, and you can feel the song move, as the beats flow in synch with each other. However, sometimes a guitar track has to be adjusted at certain moments to make sure that it works with the rest of the instruments. You may run into a section where the guitar is rushing, and you need to push the track back. However, this could present problems later down the song, putting drag on the sections of guitar that did not need to be pushed back. 

When I first moved to Nashville, I read an article on how to deal with this, and it instructed me to always be looking at both the present and future moments of the song, in order to make sure that my present edits do not cause future mistakes. While this works great in theory, it does not work in practice. I was never able to get into the groove of each moment of the song, because I was never in the moment. I was always looking down the future of the track trying to anticipate future problems. 

For a long time, I avoided these adjustments all together because it stressed me out to keep my ears bouncing between the present and future of each track. Then one day, I decided to scratch the whole checking-into-the-future part. I started taking each beat as it came, and I found the process to be significantly easier.

April 9th, 2022 - A Conviction of Mine

Recently I wrote a song called “The Wire”, which is about how it’s easy to to sit back and make judgements on people that you don’t understand, but the more difficult thing to do is to talk to them and try to understand what’s going on. I’ve seen judgements like this happen in the world over the past couple years, and it’s made me upset, but I realized that I have done the very thing that I despise so much. One of the things that bothers me more than anything else is in the world is Christian celebrity culture. I don’t like the idea of trying to use the Church to propel ones-self into fame. I also don’t like the idea of using the Church as an industry for profit. I know that it’s a grey area and can be tough to understand, but I see instances that look like this all the time in Nashville, and I sit back and talk about how much I dislike it, but I rarely go talk to the people and ask them about what’s going on. So I’m not saying that I now agree with the whole CCM, Megachurch, "lets-go-write-a-Christian-Worship-hit-song” culture. I still don’t like it, but I think that I have been going about dealing with these feelings in the wrong manner. I think I should get better at asking questions and trying to understand issues before making judgements. Maybe a better goal than pointing out things that are wrong would be to try and open a dialogue to think of ways that things can get turned in a direction that feels more right.

February 14, 2022 - Music as a Gift

Today it is Valentine's Day and I am waiting for my Valentine to get here so that I can take my best shot at making steak for us. I took my best shot at finding a couple things she might like, and I’m sure she’s done something pretty special like she always does. She’s a really good gift giver. For example, she gave me the new John Mayer record on vinyl this summer, and then got me a Noah Gundersen vinyl for Christmas (an artist who I had never even told her I was a huge fan of, but she just knew me that well). My brothers are also great gift-givers. I never knew how much easier life could be with AirPods, but they knew I was slow to pick up on new technology, and could benefit from them, so they got me them for Christmas. Young artists often ask me what "lane" or "genre" they should pursue when making songs, and I tell them that they need to look at their songs as gifts. When you give a gift, there is only one person that you are thinking about, and that is the recipient. You want to make something good and make sure that it gets to the person who would benefit from it. Gift givers don't care about going down in history as reputable gift-givers, because they are thinking about the recipient, not themselves. What if people could think about songs that way? 

November 9th, 2021 - A Hard Line to Walk

Recently, I have been getting more involved in a church, and the opportunity to help out in the worship department has been coming up. I’ve wanted to be open to it, but I’ve also wanted to wade through some stuff that I have been feeling so that I can do it with a clear heart. I did some research and this article is me processing some feelings on it. I hope this resonates with readers, so that we can open up constructive conversation and hold onto our faith rather than letting it fall away based on things that we see and don’t agree with. There are a lot of great verses about worship in the Bible. One that really stands out to me is Psalm 57:7 “My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music.” It’s pretty obvious why I like this one so much. I am a deep feeler, and a lot of times, I don’t know what to do with all my feelings, so music is a great outlet for that. C.S. Lewis says “We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.” This resonates with me big time. The Lord is by far the best entity we could ever worship, and we get to enjoy that experience of being able to worship Him. We don’t do it because we HAVE to, we do it because we GET to. The same way that I enjoy a Killers concert more if I pound my fist, I enjoy worshiping by clapping. I don’t know why I do it, but I always find myself doing these little mini claps in double time any time that I am getting into a worship song. I see people worship a bunch of different ways, and I wanna make it clear that everybody has their own way to worship and no way is right or wrong. One thing I have noticed though, is that I often feel funny if I see things that seem showy. Whether it be in church or on social media, I can’t deny that I feel funny when I see it. I have had trouble pinpointing why for awhile, and so I recently did some research to see if I could figure out what was going on in my heart. I found Matthew 6:1, which says “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” Because I’m still new to it, I have no idea what it is like to be a worship leader, and I think the line of being passionate without showy is probably a hard one to walk, but I think this verse above will be a helpful one for me to think about.

October 26th, 2021 - Christian Struggling with Christian Music Industry

About eight years ago, I moved to Nashville from Los Angeles, and I was pretty excited about the prospect of being around more Christian music, but if I’m being honest with myself, it has caused a lot of wrestling within me. I have held off on writing about it for a long time because I always wanna glorify Christ and His kingdom. However, I started thinking about it and wondering if maybe there are others out there that are like me, people who love Jesus but sometimes feel lonely sitting among the lights and fog machines and wondering why they aren’t feeling the same hype that they see all around them, or maybe wondering if all the hype is always genuine. In hope of trying to shed some light on these feelings and build a bridge, allowing me to acknowledge these hard feelings while still acknowledging my faith in Jesus Christ, I googled “I am a Christian, and I don’t like CCM music”, and I actually found some great articles on it. One of the best ones that I read talked about how most modern CCM songs don’t accurately capture the experience of being a Christian. The Bible is filled with Psalms of praise, but also with Lamentations, and then also in Ecclesiastes, we have acknowledgement of some really hard truths. I have wrestled with my faith for years, and I can’t say that I won’t wrestle with it again, but I do know that God is good. He has spoken to me through people and life circumstance in very direct ways, many times in my life. I’ve had to make a point to remind myself of those moments during times of doubt. However, during those moments, what I need most is someone to be real with me and relate with me on hardships. I wanna be clear on one thing: this is not a blanket statement about all worship and CCM songs. Most old hymns and also some modern worship songs have spoken to me directly. For example, the first time I heard “Jireh”, it was a version of Justin Bieber singing it, and it immediately brought me to tears. The fact that someone who had reached the top worldwide in the music industry chose to turn his audience towards Jesus Christ our Lord and savior is beautiful. Also, the lyrics “I will be content in every circumstance” allowed me to acknowledge the hardship of life and look towards Jesus. Another great example is Needtobreathe with their lyrics “From my shallow grave, I've prayed to find, The strength to crawl, the strength to climb, Up to the surface, untie my hands, Sorrow had a purpose but it's time to stand”. I guess if I were to sum it up, I’d say that my experience as a believer has been that life is hard, and God is good in that hardship. Sometimes I worry that the stuff I hear at church points more towards saying, “now that you’re a Christian, life will be easy”, and trying to make myself feel that way is only more confusing.

March 18th, 2021 - Music, Hope, and Wonder

Below is the cover of Battle Born, my favorite Killers record. I feel bad for the girl who had to carpool with me to the church retreat the weekend after I was first introduced to the album. I cranked my Camry’s speakers for everything they had. Let’s take a look at the cover. A picture of a horse booking it through the desert with a storm brewing above. Better yet, the horse is beating the hot rod. The hot rod has fuel and science on it’s side, but the horse has heart. The underdog wins. We live in a broken world, and music is a gift from God that can inject hope and wonder into even the most hard or mundane situations.

March 13, 2021 - Build Your Habits, Build Your Career

In 2012, I was barely making ends meet living in Los Angeles, but I was determined to make a career as a producer. Though young, I spent time on my music every day, and felt prepared to take on whatever project lay ahead of me. Partnering with a studio in the valley, I was determined to find an artist to develop with them. Pursuing this, I made a point to search for new artists every day. Whether it be online or in-person, I made sure to never skip a day. After a couple weeks, I landed a meeting with my first major artist, Tiffany Alvord. They told me the vision for the project, and I went into melodic overdrive! I remember on the way to the studio, bouncing around melody ideas in my head, hoping they would like one of them. We ended up getting that project, which ended up leading to more projects, which helped kickstart my journey as a producer. The reason I tell this story is because I don’t think you ever get to a point where you can say, “Now I am ready, here comes day one in the office as a musician!”. Every day is different, and you have to create your structure to face each day. If you can build two key habits, then you can trust in the process. Habit one is to spend a little time every day getting better at your craft. That way, you can feel confident facing whatever project may come your way. Habit two, is to spend a little bit of time every day looking for new opportunities. Whether it means spending time looking for venues, looking for Spotify playlists, or looking for new artists to work with, you will find progress if you keep moving. Because I am in the middle of reading a book about Winston Churchill, I’ll end with a quote by him!

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb." - Winston Churchill

February 9th, 2021 - Time and Money

When it comes to building a career as an artist, time and money are your two most important assets, and consequently it is crucial that you always be evaluating the value of anything you are putting time or money into. If you are spending hours studying for a music class, ask yourself “Will the knowledge I am getting right now help me move my career forward, or would my time be better spent marketing myself and booking shows?” If you are spending money on a music marketing service, ask yourself “Is this the best place to invest my money, or would it be more effective for me to use it create my own content?”. Even when it comes to production, while you are hiring session players, studio spaces, engineers, and producers, ask yourself “Can I save money by doing some of this stuff on my own?”. Of course, make sure that you never sacrifice quality, but for any areas that you feel confident in your abilities, I say go for it!

November 29th, 2020 - Decide that “You Are Enough”

For as long as I can remember, I have battled with wondering whether I am “enough” as an artist/producer. However, I’ve spoken with some of my heroes who are legends in my mind, and they have told me that they struggle with the same thing. Seeing that makes me feel like maybe this feeling doesn’t ever go away. Maybe being “enough” doesn’t have to do with what you have done, but with what you choose to do every day. If you are an artist, and every day you wake up and decide to bring something new into the world that wasn’t there before, then I don’t see how that could be anything other than “enough”. Maybe it’s time for you to make the decision for yourself that you are enough, and send some love back to the person underneath who has been striving so hard to meet the self-imposed demands weighing down. You are enough.

March 11th, 2020 - 3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Accepting an Opinion about Your Song

Everybody has opinions, sometimes they are valuable, and sometimes they are distracting. Over the years, I’ve learned three questions to ask yourself to help you filter the garbage from the good.

1. Who are they looking out for? Sometimes people speak with intention of personal gain rather than friendly support. Take the two instances for example.

The Note-Giver - The note-giver gives notes to songs that don’t need notes as a way to try and make themselves look like an expert.

The Intimidated Peer - The intimidated peer is afraid that your song may be better than theirs, so they look for something wrong with it.

2. Is their definition of good the same as yours? Before getting upset about what someone thinks about your songs, take a look at their recently played list on Spotify. If you’re a hard-rocker, do you really care if the pop dude thinks your song doesn’t have enough vocal samples? OR if you’re the pop dude, do you really care if the metal guy thinks your songs don’t have enough guitar solos? Value the opinions of the people that love the music you love, but don’t get caught up trying to please everyone. 

3. Do they want the same things out of music as you? I’m guilty of this one. For a long time I looked down on people that I thought had “given up on the dream”, favoring stability over adventure, but after living some more years, I’ve learned that everybody has different needs for different periods of life. The 35-year-old, singing dad with three kids and a wife to support, may have different financial needs than the 22-year old, single troubadour.

February 25th, 2020 - Start Where You Are

I’m coming up on my 10th year of working in artist development, and over the years I’ve seen a lot of situations of people making good decisions and also others of people making bad decisions. I am by no means an expert on the music industry, but I do have a lot of ideas that I think are worth considering for new artists, and thats what these posts are about.

Today, I’d like to put out a pretty simple concept to think on, and that’s the idea of starting where you are. I often hear young artists say to me, “I would pursue music if I just had the right opportunity”, and my answer is always “the opportunity has already arrived”. Every person has a different set of advantages and disadvantages going into a music career, and the only way to move forward is to accept that and start with what you have rather than wishing for something else.

When I played in bands in high school, I had a lot of friends who had big budgets for fancy records produced, and I felt like it wasn’t fair that I didn’t have the “right opportunity” to make the record I wanted. If only I had the money to make a record, things would be easier, but I decided to start where I was at. I saved up $150 to produce a 3-song demo for my band, Signature, for $50 a song. It turned out the songs were not good enough to get any attention, but they were valuable in helping me learn my definition of “good” and giving me something to strive for.

Over the years, I’ve made lots of records. For some of them, I’ve hired someone to produce it, and for others I’ve self produced it, and none of them have been perfect, but all of them have taught me something. I think the only way to move forward is to act on whatever opportunity you have and make the most of it. Most times, there is something on the other side of that opportunity that you wouldn’t be able to see if you didn’t take it.