To Begin Again
I made Tumbleweed in a time where I had so much to do. Between raising two boys and being a high profile role in the legalize cannabis world, I made it. And then the Presidential election happened.The lyrics (to ‘Begin Again’) just poured out… That was the inspiration I needed to let the flood gates open, to sit down and write all day and all night until the muses stopped speaking to me. A deep sense of agitation started the process, and it didn’t stop until the record was recorded, mixed and mastered – all within a few months.
“Begin Again,” works a terse guitar, a murky musicality and dry bewitched vocal fora tension that evokes Katnis Everdean’s survival and emergence stronger and brighter; it’s a mirror of my own life as your heart desires ethos. “Tumbleweed,”with its Crazy Horse guitars and a powdery vocal, offer a refuge in the chaos. I told my mother recently I was overcome with nostalgia, these ghosts from the distant past were popping up out of nowhere. I was confused, because I’ve never been one to look back. She said, ‘You’ve not been old enough until now to look back.”
I hadn’t written a new song for years before this happened so violently and quickly– and out of nowhere. So the urgency was I didn’t want to lose any momentum once I started. I wanted to let out whatever was new and held up inside of me. I am emotionally toying with an unfamiliar new emotion: was life better then? Why would anyone ever want to go back? Because for the first time in my existence, I am afraid about what lay ahead for myself, my country and my world.
I sing for myself now. It’s best for me not to overthink things, these were all so new, I wanted to get them out the way I heard them in my head. Each
song has a character, a particular narrator’s point of view, so my vocals sound different from song-to- song, but it’s unconscious.
A friend just listened, and said, ‘It sounds like a cross between Aimee Mann and Lucinda Williams,’ and I said ‘Thanks! If you say so…’
What I’ve learned with all this is saying you’re ‘done with this shit’ is stupid, Tumbleweed has reinvigorated me into believing I will always want to write and record music. I didn’t want to fix or autotone anything. I’m finally a confident enough singer to let it all hang out as raw as possible. Music may be one of the rawest ways to change people and spur them to action.Some of my fighter/activist side has oozed onto this record. Music changes the molecules in a room. People connect on a metaphysical level to – and through –music. It soothes and eases pain, serves as a companion, gives release and yes,sometimes motivates people to get out of their own heads and join a higher cause,something greater than themselves. GG
