I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about the Texas trip in a way that doesn’t sound like a travel blog, because I am not a travel blogger. I’m a songwriter. And the reason this trip matters is because of what it did to the music in my head.
Texas is BIG. I know everyone says that, but you genuinely do not understand the bigness until you are standing in the middle of it. The sky goes on forever. The roads go on forever. The sunsets — oh my goodness, the sunsets — they look like someone turned up the saturation slider on real life.
And I kept thinking: there are songs in this.
Not necessarily songs about Texas. More like… songs that could only have been born in that much quiet, that much space, that much stillness. When you’re in regular life — school pickups, grocery runs, emails, to-do lists — your brain is so full that new ideas can’t find room to come in. The road trip emptied me out a little. And nature abhors a vacuum, so guess what filled back in?
Songs.
I have a whole notepad full. Ideas I’m still working through. Some of them will fit albums I already have in development. Some of them might become something completely new. What I know is that I will be processing this trip through music for months, and you’ll hear it eventually even if you can’t see it yet.
That’s the thing about being a songwriter. Nothing is ever wasted. Every experience, every conversation overheard at a truck stop, every landscape that takes your breath away — it all goes into the bank, and eventually it comes out as a song.
What in your life has surprised you by becoming creative inspiration? I love hearing these stories. Drop them in the comments.
Happy June 11, friends. Let me tell you about a goal I set at the start of 2026 that sounded a little crazy at the time: write a blog post every single day of the year.
Yep. Every day. 365 posts.
We are now almost halfway through the year, and I have not missed a day. Not one. Even on the Texas road trip. Even on the days when my brain felt like it was full of static and I had nothing interesting to say. I showed up and I wrote something.
Why does this matter? Because discipline is the secret ingredient that nobody talks about when they talk about being a creative. Everyone glamorizes inspiration — the lightning bolt moment, the song that writes itself, the melody that appears in a dream. And yes, those moments are real and they are magical. But they don’t pay the bills. They don’t build an audience. They don’t create a body of work.
Showing up every day does that.
I’ve been writing songs for years, but 2026 is the year I decided to treat my whole creative life with that same commitment. I set a goal to release an album every month this year — and so far, I’m on track. January through June, check, check, check. (Through It All is one I’m especially proud of — if you haven’t listened, please go do that right now. I’ll wait.)
The daily blog has been this quiet, steady practice that feeds everything else. It clears my head. It keeps me honest. And it connects me to YOU, which is honestly the whole point.
So here’s my challenge if you’re feeling stuck creatively: just start writing. Doesn’t have to be a blog. Doesn’t have to be a song. Doesn’t have to be good. Just write something every day for two weeks and see what happens.
What I know is this — somewhere between Day 1 and Day 14, something unlocks. I promise.
Drop me a comment and tell me about your own creative goals this year. I love rooting for people.
Follow me on your streaming platform so you never miss new music, and get on my email list for behind-the-scenes updates straight to your inbox. 🎵
Well, I’m back. Bags unpacked, laundry going, real life fully resuming. But I have to be honest with you — part of me is still somewhere in Texas.
We just got back from the most incredible family road trip, and I don’t use the word incredible lightly. I’m a Southern California girl through and through, but something about hitting the open road and watching the landscape change around you does something to your soul. Long stretches of highway, weird roadside stops, gas station snacks that you’d never eat at home — it’s honestly one of my favorite versions of life.
Here’s the thing about being a songwriter that I’ve learned over the years: inspiration doesn’t always come when you’re sitting at your desk with a notebook open and the right playlist going. Sometimes it sneaks up on you at 70 miles per hour with the windows down and your family half-asleep in the back seat. That happened to me more times than I can count on this trip. Ideas, melodies, full lyric lines — just appearing out of nowhere while I was staring at a stretch of Texas sky.
I’m not ready to spill all the details yet (stay tuned, seriously, because what’s coming is going to surprise you), but I will say this: this trip gave me something I didn’t even know I needed. Rest. Real, honest-to-goodness rest. No deadlines screaming at me. No to-do lists. Just road and family and food and music in my head.
And music was DEFINITELY in my head. The whole time.
I’ve got big things coming for the rest of 2026 and I cannot wait to share them with you. But right now, today, I’m just grateful for the road, for my people, and for the fact that creativity doesn’t take a vacation even when I do.
Have you ever had a trip that just completely refilled you? Tell me about it in the comments — I love knowing I’m not the only one who comes back from vacation with a full notebook and zero groceries in the fridge.
And if you haven’t already — follow me on •SPOTIFY • APPLE MUSIC • AMAZON MUSIC • DEEZER • PANDORA •YOUTUBE, and wherever you stream so you’ll be the first to know when new music drops. Big things are on the way. 🎶
Follow me on Instagram and Facebook @TheMelanieGrace and sign up for my email list so you never miss an update!
And a girl born in captivity, who has never seen her homeland, is about to break your heart.
Okay. I need to tell you about the thing I’ve been quietly losing my mind over.
You know that feeling when an idea grabs you by the collar and won’t let go until you write it down? That’s been my whole month. It started with a simple question I asked myself one afternoon: what would it take to write a song as devastating as “Deliver Us” from The Prince of Egypt? You know the one. The opening number. The mothers, the river, the baby, the cry of an entire enslaved people set to music so big it rearranges your ribcage.
I didn’t expect that one question to turn into a full original biblical musical. But here we are. Twelve songs. A complete two-act book. A cast of characters I now love like family. And honestly? I think it might be the most important thing I’ve ever made.
So pour yourself some coffee. This is a long one. I want to tell you the whole story.
The story nobody has dared to tell
Here’s what got me. We have Prince of Egypt for Moses. We have Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And right now, as I write this, a crowd-funded animated musical called David has shattered box-office records and just landed on Netflix — proof that the world is starving for these stories told with real heart and real music. People showed up in droves. Families. Skeptics. Everybody.
But there’s one massive biblical epic that nobody has touched. One of the most pivotal events in the entire Old Testament, and somehow no one has set it to music for the screen or the stage.
The Babylonian Exile.
The fall of Jerusalem. The long march into captivity. Seventy years of a people trying to remember who they are while living inside the most dazzling, seductive empire on earth. And it’s practically begging to be a musical, because the source material literally hands you the premise. Psalm 137 — “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept” — is a song about whether you can even sing anymore when everything you love has been taken. The captors demand a song of Zion. The exiles hang their harps in the willow trees and refuse. The whole thing is about music as survival.
I read that and thought: how has no one done this? So I did it. It’s called Bring Us Home, and I cannot wait for you to hear it.
Meet Aviva (you’re going to fall in love with her)
Every epic needs a heart, and mine is a girl named Aviva.
Here’s the thing that wrecked me when I figured out her character: the exile lasted seventy years. That’s long enough that a whole generation was born in Babylon. So my heroine has never seen Jerusalem. Not once. Everything she knows about her homeland comes from one place — her mother’s lullabies. A golden city she’s only ever met inside a song.
And that gave me the question that the entire musical hangs on, the one I genuinely can’t stop thinking about:
How do you ache for a home you’ve never seen?
Because isn’t that all of us? Haven’t you ever felt homesick for somewhere you’ve never been? That ache for a place you can’t quite name? That’s what I wanted to put into these songs. That’s the feeling I chase every single time I sit down to write — I want to make you feel something real, something you didn’t have words for until the melody handed them to you. Aviva is how I did it this time.
The prophecies that give me chills
I’m a stickler for getting the Bible right, so I dug deep — and the prophecies woven through this period are unbelievable. This is the stuff that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
There’s the writing on the wall — the actual origin of that phrase we still use today. King Belshazzar throws a drunken feast, drinks from the sacred cups looted from the temple, and a disembodied hand writes four words of doom on the palace wall: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. Numbered. Weighed. Divided. That very night, the empire falls. I put those real ancient words into the song as whispers under the chorus, and chills — every time.
There’s Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones — a vision of a dead, scattered nation breathing again — which becomes the moment my whole show turns from grief to hope.
And here’s my favorite: the prophet Isaiah named Cyrus, the king who would set the exiles free, by name — generations before he was born. And when Cyrus finally issued his decree to let them go home? Here’s the part most people don’t know: most of them chose to stay. Seventy years of comfort had made Babylon feel like home. The real enemy was never cruelty. It was comfort. (That tension became one of my favorite songs — a debate between the ones who stay and the ones who go.)
I’m telling you, you cannot make this stuff up. History wrote a better screenplay than any of us could.
Yes, I used AI — and I’m proud of it
You know me. I’m always honest about my process. I built this using AI as my creative partner — for brainstorming, for workshopping lyrics, for shaping the story, for crafting the production prompts that bring these songs to life. I’m a songwriter and a lyricist, and AI is the collaborator that lets one independent artist build something that used to take a whole studio and a fat Hollywood budget.
I genuinely believe this is the future for indie creators like me — and I’d rather be transparent and excited about it than pretend. The heart is mine. The faith is mine. The voice is mine. The tools just help me get it out of my head and into your ears faster.
This is the dream
I’ll be real with you: I want this to be big. I’m not embarrassed to say it. I want Bring Us Home on a stage. I want it in your earbuds. I want a kid somewhere to belt these songs in their bedroom the way I belted “Deliver Us.” I want this to be the new Prince of Egypt — the untold epic that finally gets told.
Big dreams for an independent artist working out of Southern California, I know. But every big thing started as somebody refusing to let go of an idea that grabbed them by the collar.
So here’s where you come in — and this part actually matters to me:
Hit follow on me on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music right now. When you follow (not just save a song — follow), the platforms tell you the second I release something new, so you’ll never miss a track from this album as it rolls out. That following number is also how independent artists like me get noticed, so it genuinely helps more than you know.
Drop me a comment and tell me: which Bible story do you think Hollywood has been ignoring? I read every single one, and you might just hand me my next project.
Follow me on Instagram and Facebook @TheMelanieGrace to watch this whole thing come together behind the scenes.
And sign up for my email list so you’re first in line when Bring Us Home drops. No spam, just music, heart, and the occasional happy ramble like this one.
We hung our harps in the willow trees for a long time. But the day is finally here to take them down.
Let’s go home. 🎵
Bring Us Homethemelaniegrace
Why Must I Weepthemelaniegrace
We Are Homethemelaniegrace
Two Riversthemelaniegrace
The Writing on the Wallthemelaniegrace
The Shaking Throne
The Gold of Babylon
The Brick and the River
Hush Now (The River Lullaby)themelaniegrace
Hush Now (Reprise — Miryam's Farewell)
Can These Dry Bones Live?
By The Willows
WHY isn’t this about Daniel:
The Book of Daniel is a massive, incredible part of the exile history. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s lives in the Babylonian court are legendary, and the historical details in that book are fascinating.
The reason Daniel isn’t the main character of this specific story isn’t because I think he’s unimportant—it’s because Bring Us Home is focused on a very specific, beautiful verse in Psalm 137: ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down… We hanged our harps upon the willows.’ > Daniel’s story is about a statesman, a prophet, and a government official navigating the highest halls of imperial power. My story is about the everyday refugees and musicians down by the riverbanks—the people who didn’t live in the palace, but who had to figure out how to keep their faith and identity alive through worship and song while grieving for a home they lost.
To me, being biblically accurate means capturing the heart of the exile: the agonizing ache for Jerusalem, the temptation to completely assimilate into Babylonian culture (which is exactly what Aviva faces in the palace, just like the pressures Daniel faced), and the miracle of God keeping His promise to bring them back after seventy years.
By focusing on Miryam and Aviva, I can show the audience the generational handoff of faith. Miryam represents the generation that remembered the Temple; Aviva represents the generation born in captivity who had to learn to love a homeland they’d never seen. That is a deeply biblical, historical reality for thousands of families who lived through those seventy years.
Think of it like the movie The Prince of Egypt. It focuses heavily on Moses and Rameses to tell a powerful, cinematic story about the Exodus, but it leaves out a lot of the structural details, genealogies, and smaller events found in the text of Exodus. It doesn’t mean the filmmakers didn’t care about the Bible; it means they were using the art of theater to make the audience feel the massive emotional weight of slavery and deliverance.
That’s exactly what I’m doing with Bring Us Home. I want people who watch this to leave with a profound, tearful appreciation for how resilient the faith of the Jewish people was, and how God brought them back. I am honoring the scripture by making people feel it, not just read it.
Seven years ago, I set a table in May and decided to call it Thanksgiving.
Today, I get to tell you that it is a book.
The Maysgiving Table is officially available, and I am still a little overwhelmed by what it means to say that. This tradition has lived in my kitchen, around my table, in my family’s memory for seven years. And now it gets to live in your hands.
The book is part cookbook and part memoir. It holds the recipes that have anchored Maysgiving from the beginning alongside the stories that made them mean something. It is for the home cook who wants something beautiful to gather around. It is for anyone who has ever wanted to build a tradition but did not know where to start. It is for the person who believes that gratitude is worth a whole meal and not just a quick thought before dinner.
The Maysgiving Table is available in three formats:
Hardcover for the kitchen shelf, for the person who loves a beautiful book in their hands.
Paperback for the practical cook who wants something that can be opened flat next to the stove.
Kindle for the reader who wants to take it everywhere or search a recipe in the middle of cooking.
If you have been following along for this whole series, thank you. You already know what Maysgiving means to me. You know the cranberry sauce story and the stuffing and the Gratitude Pie and all of it. Now you can bring it to your own table.
And if this is your first time here: welcome. There is always room at the Maysgiving table. The book is a great place to pull up a chair.
Here is to May. Here is to the table. Here is to deciding that today is worth celebrating.
