I see music as a doorway to other worlds, similar to a novel you get lost in. And each track is a timestamp; a creative imprint of where and how it was made.

When I create, I can always tell I’m onto something good if the music feels like it didn’t come from me at all, like someone else wrote it. It’s as if it already existed somewhere in the universe but just needed to be discovered.

My song lyrics are poetry. I think it diminishes the listener experience if I explain the meaning behind lyrics. While realism informs clearly and directly, my poetic lyrics invite interpretation, emphasizing the expressiveness of language; the way words sound and the emotions they evoke.

After all, “music begins where language ends.” Words are a possibility in music, not a necessity. Meaning often lives in the spaces between words.

A Tennessee boy at heart, I currently live in a sleepy village on the outskirts of Bratislava, Slovakia. When I’m not looking for my coffee, traveling, reading about Neo-Grotesque typography or puppetry in Victorian England, I’m usually disturbing the neighbors with cello and guitar improvisations or tinkering with microphones.

And… I’ve been tirelessly working on a new album.

Things We Thought to Think is an album about those complex thoughts that roll around in our imaginations. Like an unfinished diary with pages half-written, it’s a collection of unsorted emotions. I’m leaving some of the rough edges in the music because I like honest, raw, imperfect.

During its creation, I’ve experienced a major life change, moving back to Europe from America, and felt the emotional highs and lows that came with it. 

That life change and my ongoing travels form the album’s backdrop.

I slept under the stars in Wadi Rum, Jordan, climbed the ice of the Nigardsbreen glacier arm in Norway, and danced through the streets of Gdańsk, Poland. Each experience gave me more “paint hues” to work with as I created the album. In fact, the album wouldn’t have been possible without the travel experiences that inspired it. The mobility of my current lifestyle shaped the sounds.

Gdańsk in particular is the city that inspired the album art — the decorative facades with their curling, floral railings and elevated terraces. Stone sculptures seemed to watch the street below as I tramped around.

I followed a red fox in the hills overlooking the city — its image now part of the album’s visual story.

There’s a line on the album: “I’m stuck in between the now and then.” That’s what this album feels like to me. A space in time that is significant, but not the end.