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Jacob

I told someone the other day that I write songs because I have to. They were surprised by that statement. I’ve been hearing the classic “don’t forget me when you’re famous” phrase more often now, to which I usually laugh awkwardly and mumble various versions of an extra humble but mostly sarcastic “yeah right!” or a simply demure “nah, bro.”

Actually, I’m not afraid of being famous. I have a feeling I won’t love it much, but the bigger platform and expanded reach is what intrigues me the most. What I am afraid of is not writing songs. I tried that once and it was an unmitigated disaster. I was miserable. I realized after enduring that lonely desert wasteland that songwriting wasn’t just something I did to do, it was part of my very essence. If I didn’t, I’d die. A slow, miserable death.

The wasteland years weren’t a total waste though. I discovered the two reasons why I have to write songs.

I’m not in music for the money. I’ve heard too many stories about how difficult the music industry is and I’ve experienced enough of my own already to know they’re not lying. Nonetheless, I’m driven to try my best to succeed. I wouldn’t be doing myself justice if I didn’t give it my best shot. I’m wired to critique the bajeebers out of myself and constantly be working toward new goals. That probably will never change. Any so-called success is just icing on the cake. Any money earned is going straight back into making new music. No, those are not the reasons I’m in it.

The month of March has become my recovery month. I’m completely useless for the first couple weeks. I’m drained, I’m emotionally exhausted, and I’m usually scrambling to renew my car registration, which inconveniently lands in March, and try to remember where the pile of unpaid bills got stashed. That’s all because February is my songwriting furnace. I write throughout the year but February is crunch time. For 28 gloriously grueling days, I dig as deeply as my heart can bear and attempt to write as many songs as humanly possible for myself, the overall goal being at least 14.

There’s always a moment about halfway through my February where I reach the bottom of the barrel. Every year, when I think I’ve scraped the last drop out of whatever creative juices I had in me, I realize that I still have half a month to go and I haven’t reached the goal yet. It’s that moment where the coolest thing happens. I somehow dig deeper than ever before, past all my preconceived ideas and notions, through all the baggage, between all the rules, into the vast expanse of an unknown prairie, and a new song suddenly springs forth. I think the best part is that I’ve done this enough times where I already know how it’s going to go. I already know it’s going to happen. And it still surprises me because the song comes from some pure, unadulterated place in my heart that I didn’t know existed.

That’s reason number one. That specific moment could never be properly explained or recreated any way else. Those are the songs where I cry after I write them. Not because they’re great songs but because they mean the most to me.

Then there’s the “other” moment. The other reason.

I released my debut EP “River Meets the Ocean” on April 19^th, 2018. To celebrate, I booked a venue in Dallas to throw a release party show and I invited all my friends and lots of their friends. The venue is a smaller-sized coffee shop so I wanted to do stripped down arrangements of all the songs on the EP. I rehearsed several times with my drummer and good friend Troy Pruett and we came up with a pretty great flow for just an acoustic, half-kit, and pads. I felt really good about it.

The week of the event I got slammed by an allergy attack (I haven’t had allergies since I was a kid) and so I had to go into emergency recovery mode in preparation for the show. Every singer knows what I’m talking about. You’ll try just about anything to force your vocal cords to cooperate. By show day I was feeling well enough to sing but definitely not at my best. Several people independently all told me the same thing: “don’t forget to have fun!” I really only wanted to give my best-ever, most electrifying, knock-your-socks-clean-off performance, but I focused on keeping their advice in mind.

Let me say, releasing an album, planning a release show, and all the stuff that goes with those two things is a ton of work. It’s a lot of pressure. I’m forever glad that those people told me to have fun.

The other moment happened a few songs into my set. There have been several of these moments, but this one was different.

The first couple of songs had gone pretty well. I was a little froggy but my voice was hanging in there, getting stronger actually, and I was starting to believe it was going to last through the set. I tapped my phone to move to the next backing pad track, introduced the song, set my capo and starting playing. I immediately realized the pad was in the wrong key and hastily stopped to change it. In my flustered-ness (not a real word) I then started the song in the wrong time signature. Instead of stopping again (flustered-ness) I compounded the issue by plowing ahead in the wrong lane, determined to make it work. Troy gave up after the first verse and let me do my thing. I did my best to save it and focus on the premise of the song, but in my mind it was a total disaster. I was literally counting the seconds until I could end that nuclear-grade mess and just start the next song.

After the show a girl came up to me and started telling me this story. She said she came into that coffee shop every night around 8:30 to get a Topo Chico and sometimes a coffee before going up to her art studio to paint. She’d been dealing with some pretty severe depression and sometimes she’d just sit there in her studio unable to really move or even think. She heard me setting up for my set and decided to sit down. My sound intrigued her so she stayed. When I got to the introduction to the disaster song, whatever I said basically exactly mirrored the things and thoughts she’d been dealing with in her life. She then proceeded to explain how much that song had ministered to her and changed her entire perspective.

I was stunned.

In my mind, that was one of the worst song performances I’d ever done, at my release show no less, and had immediately categorized it as a complete debacle. In what could only be attributed to God’s sense of humor, my weakest offering ended up being the perfect antidote to a random stranger’s nightmare.

I’ve always said, but perhaps never fully understood until that moment, that if just one of my songs touched one heart, whatever I was doing would be a success. Every penny spent on recording an album and getting it out there was worth that one moment.

So that’s why I write. For me, because the purity of a song unearthed from an undiscovered well in my heart is indescribable. For the one, because knowing that a song that was birthed from my own struggles, failures, and triumphs has touched the heart of someone else is an incredible honor.

I don’t know what the future holds. I do know that I will always write. Because I have to. And if I get to share them with others, that’s even better.

Why do you write? Or if you’re not writing, why not? Comment below.

I don’t remember exactly when it happened. Somewhere along this journey that is both life and the process of songwriting, I adopted a writing mantra. Find your vulnerability. I’ve championed it to myself and any who would listen. I stubbornly maintain it to be good advice. Mostly because it works.

It’s a slight modification to the advice I received back in high school when I tried my hand at writing a sports article. “Have a take,” the anonymous internet user said, “and don’t suck.” He liked the article though and I never forgot it. Essentially it meant be yourself and do it right. It was kind of a revelation for a super-creative but super-competitive high school kid who wasn’t sure of himself but had to put on airs that he was.

But I wasn’t.

I started writing songs around 9 years old. On a $10 truck stop guitar, I learned how to play and songwriting was a natural progression from it. I still remember the first real song I ever wrote. It was called “Two Ways to Go” and our family still references it. I couldn’t sing worth a darn and only knew 4-1/2 chords but I kept at it. Somewhere along the journey I found songwriting to be the outlet that I needed to express myself. I still wasn’t sure of myself but I was just stubborn enough to keep going.

Somewhere in that awkward time of being a squeaky-voiced teenager wallowing in the throes of puberty, I was still writing but singing was a problem. So I submitted my lyrics to an online critique group in an effort to get better. Something deep within me knew this whole songwriting thing was where I was most “me” and I needed to get better at it.

They ripped me to shreds.

It was a little shocking but I decided right away I was going to take any and all advice they gave me about a song with a grain of salt and immediately apply it to the next song. I was still a kid. I was learning.

High school was a weird time. I was always kind of the independent first-born child who paid his own bills but was deathly afraid of making big mistakes. Aside from trying to figure out the whole being an adult thing, jobs, navigating newfound interest in girls and relationships, starting a punk band with your buddies (true story), there was also that whole idea of adopting theology and life principles for yourself.

It didn’t go well. I kept those airs going pretty well but inside I was spiraling. Like when the tub water is just low enough where it starts draining faster and creates a little hurricane effect down there by the metal ring that’s supposed to be silver. The sickening sound of that last bit of sludge being pulled into the dark abyss of a tub drain was where I found myself at the ripe old age of 16.

If you’ve heard my testimony, it was a song that pried me out of that quicksand. “Redeemed” was the title and I grabbed hold of that like nothing ever before. The follow up to that whole nightmare was a time of healing and restoration in a little room above a garage that I turned into my first little home studio. I spent a lot of time up there. I wrote a lot of songs. I had them all critiqued. I learned about the tenets of songwriting. And then somewhere along the way, somebody told me I’d have to at some point, just like in real life, throw it all out and adopt those tenets for myself. If you want to be real and honest you can’t follow some formula, there’s no “recipe” for success. The only way to be true in songwriting is to emote with no barriers of preconceived ideas in the way. You gotta let go. Let it fly.

I nodded yes but I didn’t fully understand. It wasn’t long after that when I started uploading recordings of myself to other songwriting groups. There was a couple of a good ones in there but the overall response was mild. I think they all saw what I hadn’t discovered yet. Just a kid who doesn’t know who he is yet. It was a little frustrating. I just wanted to be taken seriously. That’s what I needed, right?

No.

What I understand now is it doesn’t matter if I’m taken seriously. It doesn’t matter if the whole world knows my name. Am I honest? Am I true? That’s what really matters. Anything else, anything less is ultimately inconsequential. I guess that can be a difficult pill to digest. At least for a stubborn son-of-gun like me, who is still battling those airs that like to stand in the way of finding himself.

But there was some turbulent tub waters still in the way. Somewhere along the way I was discovering that I needed to be myself, but learning how to do it right was becoming more and more challenging.

What do you do when all that supposed confidence is smashed to smithereens and all that’s left is some fragment of your identity that you don’t even recognize?

OK, this whole finding your vulnerability thing might be harder than I thought.

(to be continued)