Category: Music

Suno AI: My Production Partner and Why I’m Open About It

I talk about Suno AI in these blogs fairly often, but I want to dedicate a full post to it because it deserves a real explanation, not just a passing mention.

Suno is a music production platform that takes a text prompt describing musical style, vocal delivery, instrumentation, and mood, and generates a produced song from it. Combined with my own lyrics, it means I can go from a finished lyric to a produced, listenable track in a fraction of the time traditional production would take. For an independent artist without a label budget, this is genuinely transformative.

What I want to be completely clear about is this: Suno does not write my songs.

The emotional heart, the specific imagery, and the turns of phrase that make a song feel like me all come directly from my own writing process, often developed in collaboration with Claude. Suno simply gives that content a musical home. It takes the lyrics and the production prompt I craft, creating the sonic world around them.

The prompts matter enormously. Specificity is everything in this process. You have to describe the exact instruments, the tempo, the vocal style, the energy, and the decade influences. Get it right, and the result is something I am genuinely proud to share with the world. Get it wrong, and you iterate. There is always iteration.

This technology has been pivotal in helping me keep my 2026 creative promises. At the beginning of this year, I set two massive goals for myself: publish a daily blog post and release at least one new piece of music every single month.

Maintaining a daily writing schedule while consistently outputting full musical tracks would be nearly impossible under traditional production constraints. Working with Suno as a production partner allows me to stay true to both of these commitments without sacrificing quality or creative vision. It bridges the gap between my ideas and a finished track, giving me the momentum to keep showing up every single day.

Twelve songs on Mixtape Mindset were created through this exact partnership. Every single one was produced this way, shaped with care and intention.

Go listen and tell me if it sounds like it was made with love, because it truly was.

Stream on Spotify and Apple Music!

August 23, 2026
Add My Songs to Your Playlists: Here’s How and Why
Today I want to talk about one specific, practical way you can support an independent artist you love: add their songs to your personal music playlists.

When you add a song to your playlist and that playlist gets listened to or shared, those tracks reach brand-new ears naturally. It is word-of-mouth promotion powered by the platform algorithms, and it costs you nothing but thirty seconds of your time.

Every single stream truly matters. Each listen, save, and playlist add directly helps fund the next recording session, the next artwork design, and the next release. In a very real way, every stream helps my creative dreams come true.

That support is especially vital this year. In 2026, I committed to a massive creative challenge: publishing a daily blog post and releasing at least one brand-new piece of music every single month. Keeping up with that pace takes tremendous dedication, but seeing my music wind up on your personal playlists keeps my creative fire burning every day.

If you are not sure how to create a playlist, here is a simple step-by-step guide for the two biggest streaming platforms:

How to Create a Playlist on Spotify
1. Open the Spotify app on your phone or desktop.
2. Tap or click Your Library at the bottom or side of the screen.
3. Tap the + (plus) icon at the top right and select Playlist.
4. Give your playlist a name (like “Fall Vibes” or “Daily Focus”) and tap Create.
5. Search for any song from my catalog, tap the three dots (…) next to the song title, and select Add to playlist.
How to Create a Playlist on Apple Music / iTunes
1. Open the Apple Music or iTunes app.
2. Go to Library, tap Playlists, and select New Playlist.
3. Name your playlist and tap Add Music.
4. Search for my songs, tap the + (plus) icon or the three dots (…) next to any track, and choose Add to a Playlist.
To make it super easy to get started, here are a few Mixtape Mindset songs matched to common playlist moods:
- Summer to Fall Transitions: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
- Funny Mom Moments: Cart Full of Crayons, Too Much Togetherness
- 90s Nostalgia: Lisa Frank Folders, Be Kind Rewind, Make Me a Mixtape, Saturday Morning Cartoons, Commercial Breaks, Sunday Comics
- Songs That Make You Feel Things: I Can’t Believe I Missed This, Seven Digits, Where Have All the Payphones Gone
Find your playlist, add a song, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Every play moves this journey forward.

And follow me on Spotify so you always have my full catalog at your fingertips!
August 22, 2026
On Making Music With My Son: A Note on Legacy

Let’s face it – almost all Halloween music is OLD and OVER PLAYED! I decided to change this!

The Halloween album is coming in October, and I keep coming back to one thing about it: what it means to make music with your child.

My son has been part of my creative world his whole life. He grew up watching me write, hearing music constantly, and seeing that creativity was something you could actually do, not just something that happened to other people. Now he is doing it himself. He brought me songs for the Halloween album and they were good. They were genuinely and legitimately good, and the experience of sitting with him as a fellow songwriter rather than just as his mom was something I was not fully prepared for.

He has natural storytelling instincts and a distinct creative signature. Right now, that means an absolute obsession with skeletons, so you can definitely expect a lot of songs centered around funny, spooky, skeletal antics on this record. He commits to a weird idea without second-guessing it, writing with the boldness of someone who does not yet know he is supposed to have doubts.

Balancing a major collaborative project like this alongside my 2026 creative promises has been such a rewarding challenge. At the start of this year, I committed to two daily and monthly anchors: writing a daily blog post and releasing at least one new piece of music every single month.

Showing up every single day to write and release music consistently has completely transformed how I work. It keeps the creative channels open and eliminates the fear of the blank page. More importantly, it sets a direct example for my son about what real creative discipline looks like in practice.

Creative legacy is not just the music you make. It is the permission you give the people around you. Every time I write a song or post a daily update, I am saying to my son: this is possible, your ideas have value, and the weird idea is always worth following. He believed that. Now he writes Halloween songs about skeletons that are creepy, funny, and completely his own.

October is going to be something truly special.

Follow me on Instagram for Halloween season content! Stream Mixtape Mindset on Spotify!

August 21, 2026
Crisp Fall Air Preview: “When It Gets Crisp”

September is 12 days away. Time to start properly introducing Crisp Fall Air.

The opening track is called “When It Gets Crisp,” and it serves as the thesis statement for the whole album. If you want to understand what the next thirteen songs feel like, this opener tells you in the first thirty seconds.

It is built around the F. Scott Fitzgerald idea that “life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” I fell in love with that quote the moment I found it because it captures something I have felt my whole life but never quite had the words for. Fall is not an ending. Fall is a beginning dressed in gold.

“When It Gets Crisp” arrives like that first morning. Clear, clean, full of possibility. The production is a warm acoustic arrangement with a sense of space and air in the mix that feels like an open window. My voice sits close and present, leading you straight into the season.

Underneath the seasonal imagery, the love thread starts immediately. Fall is always better when there is someone to notice it with you. That thread runs all the way through all fourteen songs on the record.

Bringing an entire fourteen-track album together while keeping up with my 2026 creative promises has been a defining test of discipline. At the start of this year, I committed to two major practices: writing a daily blog post and releasing at least one new piece of music every single month.

At first, balancing constant music production with a daily writing habit felt like a massive mountain to climb. But staying true to these commitments has completely transformed my workflow. Showing up every day builds a steady creative momentum. It keeps the ideas moving fluidly from initial inspiration to finished mix without getting tangled up in perfectionism.

“When It Gets Crisp” is proof of what that steady rhythm can produce. The daily writing keeps my storytelling instincts sharp, while the monthly music commitment forces me to trust my ear and finish what I start.

Follow me on Spotify now. September is almost here. 🍂

August 20, 2026
The Christmas Folklore Album: I’m Already Working on It

November feels far away. It is not far away.

I am already deep in the early development stages of the Christmas Folklore Album, and I want to start talking about it because it deserves its own build-up.

This is the project I have been most quietly excited about all year. It is different from anything else in my catalog. It is not the warm traditional Christmas of My Kind of Christmas, nor is it the celebratory community of Christmas with the Saints. This one goes somewhere older.

It digs into winter folklore, the stories that predate modern Christmas, and the traditions that survived because they were woven so deeply into the season that the season could not exist without them. The Irish and Celtic midwinter threads are a key part of my own heritage and have always called to me when December approaches.

I want to write and produce music that sounds like it could have been written a hundred years ago. Music that carries the cold and firelight quality of a winter without central heating, where gathering together was literal warmth and the songs you sang were the warmth you made.

That is probably the most ambitious sonic goal I have ever set for myself. But showing up for my 2026 creative commitments has completely rewritten what I know I am capable of handling.

At the start of this year, I made a strict promise to myself: write a daily blog post and release at least one piece of music every single month. Balancing a daily writing habit with consistent music production seemed daunting at first. Yet, staying true to these daily and monthly rhythms has kept my creative channels wide open. The discipline of sitting down every single day builds a unique kind of creative stamina. It keeps ideas moving smoothly from initial thought to finished track without getting stuck in perfectionism.

This Christmas Folklore Album is the direct beneficiary of that daily commitment. Because I am constantly creating, I am entering this project with sharper instincts, clearer focus, and the confidence to take bigger sonic risks.

Writing music that feels ancient and cozy is a massive undertaking, but I believe it is possible. More than that, I believe it is going to be unlike anything else you hear this holiday season.

November is coming faster than you think. Sign up for my email list to be first to know details, behind-the-scenes progress, and release dates. Follow me everywhere to stay in the loop!

The Kindle book is out now! Paperback and Hardcover releasing on October 1st.

August 19, 2026