Can you tell us about the inspiration behind your latest album, and what themes or stories you aimed to convey through your music?

My album “Between You & Me,” was written over the span of a couple of years, from about 2020-2021. It started off with the penning of the title track along with the most popular track on it “Nursery Lie” which solidified it in the indie-folk genre. The whole idea of this record was to admit the things that I was afraid to say out loud. I found myself in two somewhat isolated seasons. The first was family relationship strain at the same time as moving 15 hours away from home, getting married, joining my wife’s family and community, and starting a whole new life pretty much. I felt uncomfortable, homesick, confused and defensive walking into that season and it was a long hard road to start getting to a place of opening up and trusting people. When I started to and started feeling some relief from all my pain and fear, my wife and I ended up choosing to move to a new state for me to work at a church where I ended up feeling isolated once again, but this time due to an act I felt pressured to keep up working with a church I didn’t align with philosophically. Both of these seasons saw me stuffing a lot of emotions down and being afraid to breathe the truth out. This record is meant to combat that, to speak the truth and admit all the things that need saying after the surrendered phrase “between you and me,”.

Music often has the power to transport people to different places and times. Can you describe a moment in your life when a particular song or album had a profound impact on you?

Many songs from the Switchfoot record “The Beautiful Letdown” do that for me. “This is Your Life”, “Dare You to Move”, “Redemption” and “Twenty-four” all transport me back to being a middle school kid when I finally had an mp3 player and could listen to these songs over and over again on the bus or in my backyard, feeling passion and relief to have someone sing hope and the feeling of freedom/release over me. That record will always hold a special place in my heart since it also roots back to when my older brother and I were kids growing up and falling in love with Christian Rock music.

Many artists have rituals or routines they follow before performing or recording. Do you have any unique or quirky pre-show or pre-recording rituals that you find help you get in the zone?

I wish I had a flashier one to share haha. But like a lot of artists, I’m sure, there’s the nervous bathroom break, getting psyched out, being afraid you’re going to screw up, thinking about transitions or if this is the time you’re going to blank on what to say at this point in the set or that, or worse.. If the battery is going to run out in the guitar or if you’re going to break a string. Haha that’s my ritual right now: get really anxious and then feel better by the end of the first song/crowd banter time once I feel like I’m in my groove!

Your lyrics often tell a story or convey a message. Can you share the story behind one of your songs and the inspiration that led to its creation?

I’ll share one I haven’t talked about as much. On my record “Between You & Me,” there’s a song called Austin, TX. I wrote it while working at the church that I didn’t feel at home with. I was feeling really distant from God and so I started singing with my guitar in the sanctuary, “I don’t know where You have gone, waiting right here now for a song, or for a sign to move along.” I was so insecure to leave that church. Afterall I was “in ministry”, doing “a godly thing”. But I still hungered for doing my own music, I felt like that’s where my heart really was and I struggled with the performative culture I was expected to uphold in my role that I fundamentally didn’t agree with. I had this deep lack of hope that God would ever approve of me doing music in this way over being a worship leader because I had worshiped a music career so often in my life. It was a broken part of my heart and I couldn’t seem to believe God would support it, especially pitted against “real ministry”. I stayed in that tension for almost my whole time there and that’s where this song came from. The third verse and chorus goes on to show how much I wanted validation from the Lord in pursuing music “Austin, Texas might call my name, but it won’t do nothing for my pain. Not without a song, where I know You sing along, not without a song where I know You sing along. So would You sing along? Would You sing along? Would You sing along?”. The bridge was something I started writing while singing in the shower one day as I was mulling over the song and it says “When every part of me is wondering “What went wrong?”. Shut the mouths of all the lions and the strong. When every part of me is wondering “What went wrong in me?” Would You shut the mouths of the liars and the wrong?”. This was a year or more before my exit from that church. I didn’t have the peace or courage to leave yet, the lyrics came to me and my wife said they reminded her of the psalms when David asks for deliverance from danger/injustice. Later the next year, we’d leave under bad terms, with both sides feeling betrayed by the other. I came back to this song and all of the sudden the bridge was the perfect fit for what me and my wife were feeling with our exit from that church.

If you could curate a music festival with a lineup of your dream artists, who would be the headliners, and what would the theme of the festival be?

The theme would be Love & Honesty. I would want those who come to know that they’re not alone in their bad habits, their evil thoughts and desires that come from all of us being imperfect and sinful, that God loves them and made a way for them to be forgiven through Jesus’ death on the cross to pay for their sin if they would believe and trust Him. What I’ve just said is the Gospel, and it sets us free to be honest with God, ourselves, and others, in wisdom, about even our most shameful decisions and desires. That kind of honesty is true freedom. The lineup would be Switchfoot, NEEDTOBREATHE, Allen Stone, John Mayer, Colony House, Ben Rector, Matt Kearney and pretty much all my other favorite artists who give me comfort, joy, happiness and hope!

Music can be a powerful tool for advocacy and change. Are there any social or political causes that you’re passionate about, and how does your music play a role in promoting these issues?

What I mentioned above is probably my biggest desire for culture in general, for us to be both truthful and full of grace at the same time. To not deny that some things are wrong or evil, but to also have a heart so clearly full of compassion that those of us in the wrong drop our fists in relief. I want people to be able to be honest, even if they’re wrong, because we need to get it out. Even if we’re wrong, we need to get the wrong out so we can be helped, corrected, comforted and healed. I’ve spent a lot of my life dealing with the complicated consequences of sexual abuse, one of them being intrusive thoughts. I get wrapped up in my own head at times and scared of myself and forget who I am. I want others to feel safe and comforted in their affliction, because it’s one of my deepest desires too. I think my music does this with songs like “Awhile”, “Rest” and “Between You & Me,”.

The music industry has evolved significantly with technology. How do you see artificial intelligence and emerging technologies impacting the creation and distribution of music in the future?

I hope that AI music is able to be recognized and banned from being uploaded to streaming platforms. It’s a cool thing that you can make music so easily, but I don’t like the idea of someone filling out a couple of questions, getting dozens of songs downloaded and then releasing a song per day on spotify and hacking the algorithm to make an income when they didn’t put in the work that composers/writers do. Maybe if there’s a streaming platform especially for, or exclusively for AI music it would be alright, but there’s enough competition for emerging artists as it is. I don’t want to compete with hundreds of thousands more just because someone spent fifteen minutes on a website.

There will likely always be the desire for a human touch with things like mixes versus AI mixing if that’s a thing/becomes a thing and working musicians could just have an honor code to use real engineers for a bulk of their work rather than an AI and then up and comers could use AI to help with production costs. I feel like overall, it’s going to take honor/desire for the old ways in the industry in order to make sure we don’t eliminate categories of work for people in the industry.

Many recording artists evolve over time. How do you see your musical journey changing and growing in the next decade?

That’s a great question! I feel like I’m starting to crack the code with dependable, reliable growth in multiple areas right now so my hope would be that I would see steady yet aggressive, in the onset, growth each year. I see my music career growing like a small business, since that’s the approach I’m taking with it. I’m not as interested anymore in signing a deal. I want to get better as a writer, arranger, singer, player and performer each year and continue to make more income each year, invest back into my brand, continue to market bigger and better and make this thing grow year over year. I think I could be doing this full time and on a good growth path in the next year or two but we’ll see!