In May of this year I recorded some new songs at a Studio in Lockhart, TX with a new friend @gooddanny. It was a wonderfully focused and creative experience. I left those sessions feeling invigorated and in love with what we did together. When I first listened back to the finished songs I was struck by how much presence they had, like the presence of a person in the room. The sound has it’s own personality, it’s own entity, it’s own weight that pushes on my skin when I hear it.
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Then I got stuck, as I often do after creating something that I think is good. I didn’t know what to name the record, or what the album art should be. I’ve been working toward those two things for the last 5 months. Expectations were disappointed, ideas came and went, I drew, I painted, I pondered, I did 2 photoshoots. Nothing was right. Everything was good, but night exactly right, and I became more and more fixated on the idea these songs needed to be named and stamped in a way that lived up to their personality.
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Last week the answer finally came after my parents went to a family reunion and came home with a picture. A picture of my Great Great Grandfather leading horses and wagon across the Cimarron river.
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These songs are about moving forward into an unknown future, out of a turbulent past. They question concepts of home, and love, and longevity. They are adventurous, and longing, dangerous, and hopeful. This image was the “exactly right” I had been looking for.
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The year is 1902. The man in the river is Zedekiah True Seal. I carry his DNA. These songs are now called “Cimarron”
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Next month they will finally be set free into the world, to live their own life, released from my fixations, and second guesses, and procrastination. And that makes me very glad.