A couple of nights ago I was lying on the floor of Ezra’s room, singing my songs. We were both sicker than dogs. I had the flu. He had something that involved throwing up generously into my hands. And for some reason, he would only sleep if I was singing. You might say it was narcissistic for me to have been singing my own songs, but I’d argue that if you’ve ever heard me sing you know it’s disrespectful for me to sing anybody else’s.

January in Nashville is more a matter of deep, abiding depression than bitter cold. A dreary gray curtain descends after Christmas and wraps the poor sun up like a fly in a spider’s web, giving us nothing like a snowfall in return. Then of course all these viruses come uninvited to stay at your house. They don’t eat your food, but neither do you for a while. In fact, you often do sort of the opposite.

Which brings me back to my songs. There I was, lying on the floor, feverish, somehow singing without actually being able to breathe. It was sort of a miracle in that sense, I guess. Lying on the floor on the dark night of the body and soul, I sang:

Do you remember
When the morning fills the sky
How all our darkest dreams surrender
To the coming of the light

And when I brush aside this curtain
Find you shining like the dawn
Beyond the ending of the world
We will go on and on and on

Oh, on and on and on

None of you have ever heard that song, and if you had heard me singing it then, you you would not have thought much of it because not one word was intelligible through my sobs. Don't get me wrong. I'm not much of a crier. It’s only that the promise of all-things-made-new was such a sweet hope to me there in the dark.

The next morning the sun was shining and we all went outside to play in the cool, breezy morning beneath a violent blue sky hung with white clouds like ships sailing to war. Or sailing home. We stood in the driveway like men walking out of jail, back in our old jeans and t-shirts again.

At the time of my last post I was in Sweden. I believe that was spring of last year. When I got back to Nashville, a mess of good work was waiting to ambush me. I spent the summer and fall in a tangle of more work than one man can do. I learned how to stay up until 3 AM working working on record number 2, then wake up at seven to be a dad for a while (if a whiny one), go to work at 10, work on record number 1 until dinner, come home and be a dad again, watch some Gilmore Girls with the wife just to feel human, start working on record number 2 again around 9 or 10 PM, etc. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s not good for the soul, but sometimes it’s just the facts ma’am.

Irony of ironies; though this blog went the way of the pogo ball for a while, I actually accomplished more on my record (the much-interrupted the Ill-Tempered Klavier) during this time than I had in over a year, owing to a not-interesting-enough-to-blog-about turn of events. Over the course of two recording sessions, I was able to record all the strings for the album with the illustrious David Davidson and the Love Sponge Strings (see the Captains Courageous blog at blogspot). And this for almost nothing! But then the spell was broken, the old Klavier was put back on das Regal, and I was back working nights. And days.

Fall came and went. Then of course it was time for good old AP’s yearly Behold The Lamb Of God Tour, which is always a bit of a sabbath for me, if not for my dear wife. But she got her sabbath eventually, first in the form of Christmas with our families and then in the form of a trip to Orlando, where we were treated ridiculously well by the good people of Young Life, whose all-staff conference I was playing piano at.

Upon returning to Nashville, I started work on three records: one for a girl named Melanie Penn, a New Yorker whose voice and writing are marvelous; another for Allen Levi, beloved bard of Young Life fame and a true southern gentleman; and my own. Cason and I are working for the next two weeks together hoping to finish the record in that time. I have to tell you that I love it. It makes me smile to be working on it again and I can’t wait to share it with you. After all this time, to be reunited with these songs feels as if the stage hands have raised the dull gray curtain at last and sent the sun spinning once again across the old familiar sky.