Skinny Dipping in January👙

+ "Crushed"out now on Spotify & Apple Music!

New Song Release

First things first, The Narrative released the third song off our New Anxieties EP and one of my personal favorites, “Crushed.” I hope you find 3 minutes and 30 seconds to check it out today. There’s one more song to follow this one up and then the record will be completely released!

“Skinny Dipping”

Sticking with the theme from my last post, not all progress needs to take forever.

Soren and I recently wrapped up a new song for Blue Hour called “Skinny Dipping” (the title of the post makes sense now doesn’t it?) and I’m beyond excited to have a track like this as part of my collection of new songs.

It all started on November 5th. I went to the studio that morning hunting for inspiration, unsure of how things would go, and hoping that there might be a cool idea floating in the universe that maybe I could catch if I just showed up to work on music that day. Turns out… yes. Here is my little demo from that morning.

I sent a text to Soren that said “New idea just for funsies, a chill chorus I think. Remember that movie The Virgin Suicides? It’s sort of reminding me of that.” Soren listened and responded with his typical enthusiasm about my writing, so I had to follow up by saying "We can listen but we don't need to chase every idea I have.”

See, just a few days before that, I had completely derailed our session on a song called “Rings” (which I performed at a writer’s round in Nashville on 1/12) to follow my inspiration on a song called “Apparition.” We followed the thread on that song until it was completely written, recorded, and ready for mix in about 24 hours. So, naturally, I didn’t want it to seem like I was just going to walk into the studio every day with a new half baked idea and let it derail whatever was on our schedule. Besides, this new demo was so fresh that I didn’t even know how much potential it had. Was it good? Was it crap? I didn’t know. But Soren did! We put it on the list and knew that it was one to work on… and we did!

Soren called in some talented friends… here’s Owen adding sax to the track.

…and we decided we needed some live bass (thanks Paulie!)

…and here’s a little snippet of how far we’ve come from my little demo up top to where we are now:

There is something magical about taking an idea, something completely intangible, and turning into something real. I’m so grateful for all the people that help me turn my ideas into songs, including my family and friends who book flights to see me, put social events on my calendar, remind me to hydrate, and help me figure out what to eat for dinner. Those are other, very important ways, that ideas become reality.

Thanks for being a part of my life and for keeping me in yours.

P.S. I have 200 subscribers on this Substack! Should we set a goal to grow it to 1,000 by the end of the year? Or should we go big and say 10,000? Audacious to even think about, isn’t it?