I'm back. It feels like forever since I've released new music, and it kind of has been. Seven years ago I graduated college with an album in the works, half of it was part of my senior year project as an audio major. The other half was done while I was living in Chicago. Succeeding at nothing else while I was living there, I managed to completely finish the remaining songs and get Summer Rain out in the world in the summer, feeling extremely proud and accomplished, and ready to keep going with the next batch of songs. In December, I remade an old Christmas song I wrote in high school and release that, but after that, I really struggled to find motivation and inspiration to write. It was actually very frustrating, when I vividly remember in high school I would sometimes write a song or two almost every week, it seemed like. I used to think it was just a natural gift I had, being able to construct the bones of a song at a whim. I thought I may have just lost my songwriting abilities, as silly as it sounds, but truly.
Throughout the last 7 years, I'd have little bursts of time where I'd have an idea for a song, get it written down or recorded so I wouldn't forget. Nothing really came out of that, at least nothing that I was proud enough of. The thing with getting older as a creator is you also get very particular about your content, striving for the best that it can be and not settling if it can be helped. That's where I ended up, nothing was good enough to keep going with. Except for this song.
I wrote the lyrics to Haunted in 2019. Take a look at the lyrics and you'll guess the kind of life event I was dealing with at the time. I only really had lyrics, not much of a tune or structure planned. I initially envisioned it to be a very slow and chill vibe with piano and haunting reverb. Then I got a new guitar.
In 2022, I got a new guitar. A Taylor electric SBX. I was obsessed. I couldn't even afford it, but had to have it. I began playing around with all sorts of ideas for a whole week, and the opening riff of Haunted is what drove me to construct this thing and keep going. The song was coming along so well that I originally thought it would be done and released by the end of 2022 at the latest, but during that year a new project took over my free time, our podcast Among the Noise. Lots of time and effort was put into launching that and learning as we go, and I just couldn't give my attention to the song for awhile.
Then in 2023 I finally came back to it, got it all recorded in about a week, and spend another 2 weeks editing, mixing, and mastering it myself. It took little while to dust off the skills and knowledge of doing all that, because it had been so long doing it in that context. I had only been keeping those skills sharp in a live setting at churches since graduating, which is similar but also very different than studio audio.
I spent a lot of time working on album artwork as well, which isn't even what I ended up going with for the song. The artwork for the song took me about an hour to do. The stuff I spent the most time on I'm going to be saving for something else. Foreshadowing. Hopefully.
Now the song is out, and I am relieved, happy, proud, and excited for the next thing. The words in this song may seem dark, sad, and lonely, and they are. I wrote it in a very dark place and honestly, they are still relevant most days 4+ years later.
This song is about the struggle of loss. Moving on is hard, and eventually it gets to be less of an endless river you struggle to keep your head above water from, and more of a quiet haunting in the back of your mind. It never quite leaves you, no matter the amount of time.
I can't promise that any other songs are coming any time soon, because I'll end up taking another 7 years with my track record, but I can say that I am working on more songs and really hope to get another full album that includes this song. We'll see what happens.
In the meantime, it would mean the world to me if you gave Haunted a listen and shared with people you think would dig it. It's not everyone's musical taste, but if you know someone that is super into early 2000's emo alternative rock, they might love it.
Listen to Haunted on all platforms