THE HALFLIGHT PODCAST - EPISODE 07

I had always imagined the guest for Don’t Let The Fear Capture Your Heart should be the songwriter Sandra McCracken because she strikes me as someone who lives in hope. Not the sanitized, rote cliché, influencer wearing a HOPE T-shirt on an Instagram reel hope. The kind of hope born in the trenches of real life where shit gets messy and hard. Failure. Unmet expectations. Cancer. Divorce. A hope that can find light in those places.

Don’t Let The Fear is a song about looking for hope when it can’t easily be found. I wrote it with my kids in mind, hoping that maybe the words Hold onto the light, it ain’t here yet, but the morning is nigh might find them in some future moment of need. But anytime you write a song for someone else, you also write it for yourself. Turns out, I needed this song as much as they did. I kinda thought Sandra would get that. I was so stoked when she agreed to have this conversation.

The day came, the call started, the video turned on, and there was Sandra McCracken in a HOPE t-shirt. What followed was not influencer wearing a HOPE t-shirt on an Instagram reel conversation, but ended up being one of the most memorable conversations I had with anyone in 2022. I’ll just say this: listen to the episode. Sandra’s the real deal.

Check out her podcast Steadfast, and her latest album Light in the Canyon.

Next week

I’ll be talking with one of my favorite northwest songwriters about the song A Better Love. Can you guess who that is? (Hint: check the vinyl liner notes).

Talk soon…