A quick note: I'm working on making this newsletter more legible and easier to read. You might notice things look a little different this week. Hopefully better?

Just three things?

No, but I want to keep it short. There were many things that inspired me in 2025 like Romance by Fontaines D.C.; the writing of Sara Billups, Danielle McClune, and Marissa Burt; my friendship with my band the Coyotes and artists like John Van Deusen. The many books I read. But, here are three things that had a lasting impact on me that I want to tell you about.

Heartbreaker by Mike Campbell

My dad sent me Mike Campbell’s book Heartbreaker and I devoured it. Mike Campbell was the guitarist in the Heartbreakers, as in Tom Petty and the. Their story was anything but instant success. In fact it was years of false starts, bad luck, resistance, and opportunities simply petering out. If anything, Mike's is a story of persistence through impossible odds hanging on by a thread to the belief that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were more than their circumstances. A delicate thread. Had a few things not happened in exactly the way they did, we would not be talking about them right now. Incredibly inspiring story. Timely for me. I've had my share of false starts, bad luck, resistance, and opportunities petering out. I'm holding on by a thread. Mike's telling of the story fortified my vision and belief that the process matters more than the result. It gave me vocabulary to persist. It told me I wasn’t alone. It also introduced me to JJ Cale, who became the most listened artist for me in 2025. Highly recommend this book!

Björk's Songwriting Process

If you listen to her albums Homogenic or Vespertine, what you don’t hear is the result of a creative process that begins with the strumming of a guitar. That realization struck me so hard because I realized I had no idea how she was writing those songs. What was the kernel of the idea? Was it the melody? If so, how did she arrive at such intricate and complex orchestration? I had a hunch it began with a beat, and it turns out I was onto something. There's a blurb on the Wikipedia page for Vespertine that gets into how she wrote the song Undo. Sure enough it started with her singing to a beat. The orchestration came later. I realized the brilliance of this - if you have a beat and a vocal performance, you can orient everything else around it so that the vocals shine. You become keenly aware when you’ve added too much because you are intimately aware of the nuance and texture of the vocal performance since you’ve heard it unadorned from the start. I shared this realization with Dan and the band, and it has informed everything we’ve done on Wilderness since. We start with drums, bass, and vocals and build from there. I’ve never worked this way and have really grown to love it. I think the album will be stronger because of it.

Anxiety

Anxiety sucks. I haven’t struggled with anxiety at this intensity in a decade. It laced simple things I love. Writing the story of Grace. Watching the Mariners & Seahawks in the playoffs. Small things close friends said. How we’ll figure out the next part in the song we’re recording. Watching America descend into authoritarianism. AI taking over everything. There has been no shortage of things triggering the anxiety. But, it lead me back to the desert fathers via two great books The Way of the Heart by Henri Nouwen & The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton.

I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear the stories of the early desert monks. It took me up and out of my circumstances and, again, gave me a vocabulary to navigate the anxiety. It animated my imagination. I began to pray Kyrie Eleison a latin prayer that was central to the life of the desert fathers and mothers. It translates to "Lord have mercy on me, a sinner". It taught me that this orientation is perhaps the main point of prayer. And Christ has answered in numerous small ways. The blessing of the desert fathers and mothers echoing down to my tired, exhausted soul. I gave The Wisdom of the Desert to the Coyotes for Christmas. Highly recommend!

Bonus: Jeremiah Webster

Jeremiah Webster is a kindred spirt. We’re two artists watching the world systematically being torn apart, feeling it, grieving it, writing about it, and sharing what we write with each other. He's usually the first person to hear a song after I've written it when I text him the voice memo. Conversely I'm privileged to be on the receiving end of his poems as they take shape. We're like The Inklings of text messaging (there's your new band name, btw). Haha! Can you imagine C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien text messaging each other!? Hilarious. No, it's better that they had The Eagle and Child. Now that I think of it, Jeremiah & I need a place like that. There's nothing like moving air with kindred spirits imagining ways to participate in the healing the world. 2026 goal. May it be so.

Till next time...