the order (in which things are broken)

Words like rescue and tenderness and forever and don't go. The things I experienced, written on my cells as memories and patterns, a record. All of them broken, all of them saved, in one- to two-minute narratives packed tightly into small spaces. It begs the question: Why did I save this? What is the value …

alone

Being a songwriter was never my ambition. It was and remains my way of being alone. It's an essential place if you want to make some meaning. It's where masks come off, truth is unveiled and you encounter the unforeseen. I love how Nick Cave put it : Like Jesus praying alone in the garden, …

light in odd places

I don't know how to understand the experience of losing someone you love. That which remains rises in time from the dark, spilling light in odd places. Another Sunday always comes. This is Sunday, wounded, from courts:

rooms

All of my songs are little rooms. One- to two-minute spaces made of memory and life. My job as a songwriter is to build them nice enough the spirit of music will come and live in them. The new record of demos and first-takes is called courts. This is rooms:  

house guests

My rooms are filled with instruments. Dreadnoughts. Concert guitars. My beloved '67 Harmony Bobkat. But no one owns a guitar, a piano, a mandolin. The drum. They're just house guests. Guests who will survive us and pass to other hands, the way they passed to mine. You can hear some of them way over here. …

why don’t you

Where did her letters go, notes from far-away places written with care about her work and little everyday things. How light the paper was on which this all was drawn. How eager I was to know what might be, and what might have been, and what is, and it was all beautiful to read. And …

i release you

I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear. I release you. You were my beloved and hate twin, but now, I don't know you as myself. ― Joy Harjo    

gold dust

Everybody in the crowd last night was beautiful and young and covered with a kind of gold dust. My guitar was a bit out of tune, but I’m glad that wasn’t fixed. A twist of the knob and, you know, the dissonance would have gone away. But I left it alone. I left things on …

kindness

Last night they wanted me to sing the way someone in love would, how someone wanting love would, how someone feeling alone might. They wanted to hear me tell about hope after hurt, forgiveness, healing after disaster, summery longing, and life after betrayal and breakup (which sadly, I know a lot about). Singing for people has …

words + music

People always ask, “What comes first, the lyrics or the melody?” Hoboy. What a tangle at the bend in the river. I don’t know why they’re so fascinated with the answer to this question. There is no definitive answer. Songwriters write in different ways. Some write a full lyric first, and then put it to music. Others write a …