Inside Glow Like Stars in the Midnight Sky

Good Monday morning, everybody!

In this blog I wanted to share a few stories behind the songs on my latest EP “Glow Like Stars In The Midnight Sky“.  This record is very special to me, and I’m thrilled that so many of you have written to let me know you’re enjoying the music!  Below is a little behind-the-scenes post:

This Will Be Our Reply to Violence: This song was being written at the time of the Sandy Hook school shooting.  Such a tragic and despicable act that caused such loss and heartache and sorrow.  I believe that aspect comes across in the song, especially in the opening guitar lines.  There’s a Leonard Bernstein quote that inspired the track’s title:

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

I love this quote, because oftentimes when a tragedy occurs I feel paralyzed and helpless.  There’s so much I WANT to do for those affected, and usually there’s very little that I can ACTUALLY do.  But Bernstein gives us all power in these circumstances.  Whether you’re a creative person or not, what the world needs in those moments is a little more beauty, and we can all contribute to that.

Our Broken Pieces Will Fit Together Again: This is also a very special song to me.  As you can tell from the title, it’s written with a longing for myself and the world to be whole.  I realize that sounds a little “fluffy”, but I love the image of all of us carrying around these pieces to a jigsaw puzzle and it all slowly starts getting put back together.  I also love this one because of some of the sounds.  The pads/textures you hear in the beginning and throughout were recorded using the Gwinnett Church keyboard rig that I helped put together.  The piano that comes in at 1:35 is really washed out with reverb and it reminds me of some of the piano work in Hammock‘s music (a couple of my heroes!).  And, of course, in the big section at 3:43 and again at the end is a trombone quartet that I wrote for the song.  Basically, it was a lot of fun recording this one!

Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid: Most of the songs on this record have some sort of connection with something bad or wrong happening, and a desire for those things to be corrected.  For this song, I just wanted it to be over-the-top hopeful.  I loved the song from the very beginning (which doesn’t always happen), but when Matt Adkins tracked guitar for it he took it to a whole new level.  It wouldn’t be the same without his amazing guitar work!  Along the same lines, Ryan Harvey wrote those amazing drum parts.  He tracked drums and then Jacob Arnold tracked and added some pretty ridiculous fills, etc.  I’m real happy about all of those things!

Two Hearts Becoming One (for Mary): This song speaks for itself, really.  It’s a love song I wrote to my amazing and beautiful wife!  We’ve all heard the idea of two people becoming one when they get married (and it’s so true!), and I wanted to try to get that concept down musically.  So you’ll notice throughout the whole piece the piano melody alternates between notes (a low one and a high one), dancing around each other.  That’s Mary and me!  At 1:55 they start speeding up and then you hear them come together at 2:08.  The two-note motif continues through the “big” section, and you can hear the real high floaty stuff come back in at 2:41!

So, there’s just a little extra explanation of a few of the songs on the new EP.  I hope you’ve been enjoying it!  A HUGE THANK YOU to all who made this record possible:

Ryan Harvey:  drums

Jacob Arnold:  drums

Matt Adkins:  guitars

Tim Gibson:  bass

Josef Mirakovits:  additional engineering

Stephen Bailey:  mixing and mastering and magical musical genius

Mary Harwell: album artwork and design

Hope y’all have a wonderful week!