Category: Music
Everything I’ve written, released, and made, all in one place.
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Two Songs That Grew Too Big for the Party
Not every song I wrote for this album ended up on it, and I want to tell you about two of them, because they are coming your way in their own time, and the reason they got pulled says something about how much I care where a song lives. The first is Bone Man. It…
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Why I Called It Midnight Masquerade
An album title has to do a lot of work in just a couple of words. It has to tell you the feeling, set the scene, and be the thing people remember. Here is how this one found its name, because it is a story about trusting the process and the songs. For a long…
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From Lyric to Full Production
People sometimes ask me how a lyric on a page turns into a finished song with a full orchestra or a horn section, so today I want to talk a little about the sound of this album, because the range of it is a huge part of what makes it feel new. Every song on…
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A Halloween Album for the Whole Family
One of the things I set out to do with Midnight Masquerade was make a Halloween record a whole family could put on together, without anybody being left out or bored. That is harder than it sounds, and it is the main reason I built a full album instead of a single. If you have…
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The Guest List: Every Creature at the Party
If Midnight Masquerade is a masquerade where every creature is invited, then let me hand you the guest list. Here is who shows up over the course of the night, and it is a wilder mix than any single Halloween song could ever hold. You have got your skeletons, of course, four of them. A…
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The Skeleton Crew
There are four skeletons on this album, and I did not fully plan that, but I love it. Once I noticed, I started treating the bones like a running character across the whole record, which is exactly the kind of thread you can build in an album and never in a one-off single. Skeleton Twist…
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Behind the Scenes: The Fun We Had Writing This Album
Now that you have met all nineteen songs, let me pull back the curtain on how they came together. We had a genuinely great time making this record, and that joy, along with a whole lot of hard work, is a big part of why it sounds fresh This album has been a true journey…
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Halloween T-Shirt Dad
Here is how the whole album ends, and I could not love it more. Halloween T-Shirt Dad is a warm, funny country-rock closer, and it is not about a monster at all. It is about a dad who refuses to wear a costume and instead pulls out the same shirt every single year, the one…
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It’s Our Halloween Party
After the choir and the ritual, the album needs to come back down to earth, and it does it by throwing the best party on the block. It’s Our Halloween Party is frantic, horn-driven new wave, the supernatural peak giving way to something wonderfully human. The creatures are gone. Now it is just the neighbors,…
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