To an extent, this album is about fear. To a much greater extent, it is about managing fear. It’s a common trope in folklore and fantasy literature that naming a thing gives you power over it. That’s a huge part of what this is about.

I am very afraid to write this. But I am also afraid to put my music out there, even as modest as it is, without context. That’s something that Dr. Dave Greennagel always taught us in the Music Education program At VCU: context is everything…

Sometimes, musicians adopt the attitude that it is better to make no music than to make “bad” music. Many have written about how bad music has polluted the world’s ear, corrupted their sensibilities, and ruined the careers of many geniuses because the public is incapable of appreciating their work. I might be making “bad” music.

Why would I do that? I am very limited, by my intellect, by my musical skills, by the amount of time I am willing and able to invest in music. There are so many brilliant artists in the world, so many brilliant artists in just this small city, why would I dare try to create something of my own? Is it disrespectful to other musicians to put out music that you know has so many flaws? Does it dilute the quality of the Richmond music scene? Is it egotistical to want to make something of your own? Would it be better to keep my ideas to myself and just play other people’s music, the music that is already “good”? It almost seems as if there are more reasons not to create music than to create it.

But should we never speak because we might stutter?

Since I was 13, I ate, slept, and breathed music. I was 15 when I knew there was no career path but music for me. There never was a plan B. I never thought too hard about what a career in music looked like; all that mattered was to play as good as I could, to make new things, and to express feelings that I’ve always felt a burning desire to express even as I try so hard at times to hide them. I practiced for hours each day simply because it was fun. I spent hours making up riffs, recording ideas to cassette tape, and programming drums because I loved to create things.

But somewhere along the way, something changed. It’s hard to say when, but at some point my focus shifted from an emphasis on creating for joy and expression to an emphasis on meeting the industry standards. It became about being a professional musician, a “good” musician, about making “good” music. It became about being able to do what everyone else could do, about collecting all the skills that other people had, about playing the best solos, learning the “correct” tunes, listening to the “correct” music, about getting enough gigs and the right kind of gigs. It became about proving myself instead of just being myself. Practicing 3 hours a day was no longer simply out of joy, but because according to our syllabus “a successful jazz guitar major practices a minimum of 3 hours a day”. And I accepted that, and for a huge chunk of my life, I constantly chastised myself for not doing more and hated myself whenever I fell short.

Hate is a strong word. Hate is exactly what I meant.

I perpetually felt behind my peers, felt as if I couldn’t play well enough, didn’t have the musicianship skills, didn’t have the background, and lacked the social skills to move forward. I became increasingly fearful that others would see me as a fraud, a delusional pretender, as someone lazy and unworthy to be called a professional musician.

I felt especially unworthy to be creative. In his book Elementary Training for Musicians, a required text for VCU music majors, composer and Yale professor Paul Hindemith spoke with great disdain of any composer who could not do the exercises in his book: “All too often we see it happen that a fellow musician who is not good enough…still finds a comfortable and uncontested place in the field of composition…in a higher sense ought to be regarded as unfit for any professional musical activity-which process of reckless weeding out could only be advantageous to our entire musical culture”. I spent years working through that book, long after finishing music school, and hardly made it through the first few chapters. And I worked furiously, desperately (but not necessarily efficiently or intelligently), to catch up before I was weeded out.

This is not to say music and practicing became completely joyless. Not by a long shot-there is a long list of experiences I am very proud of, and I still had so much fun along the way. But far too many practices and gigs were spent in anger and self-loathing. Too many times I spent my hours away from the instrument, time with friends and family, worried about my practice or obsessing about dropping the form at the last gig. I was often not present, I was still in the practice room or still at the gig. I avoided spending time or talking with people because it might have disrupted my practice schedule. Too much of my music career has felt like frantically treading water as I waited to finally be a “good enough” musician. But you can only tread water so long before you start to drown…

For a long time, I thought that music was making me feel this way. I thought that I felt this way because I wasn’t good enough, or didn’t love it enough, or wasn’t smart enough. Now, so many years later, I finally understand that it wasn’t music at all that made me feel this way. I cannot explain how immense a relief it is to realize that one of the things you love the most isn’t what’s destroying you. It wasn’t music that made me feel so hopeless and anxious and defeated-it was me. That’s what this is about.

In the end, I failed to be the type of musician I thought I was supposed to be. I worked so hard, so consistently, but I was really just a mediocre musician. So for a person who has eaten, slept, and breathed music their whole life, what then? You’ve taken out crippling loans to pay for music school, your family made sacrifices of all kinds, other parts of your life have been put on hold to be a musician and you still feel you have failed? What do you do then? There are a lot of bad answers to that question, but there is only one proper one: you grow.

Failure is where growth begins, not where it ends.

I have struggled with believing it at times, wondering if I was just telling myself what I wanted to hear, giving myself an excuse for not being better. But it’s objectively and indisputably true. You can’t solve a problem if there is no problem. You can’t learn anything if you already know everything. You can’t improve if you don’t first do something poorly.

Failure is where growth begins. It shouldn’t be feared or avoided at all costs.

This album is my growth. To me, it represents a return to what made me love music in the first place: a deep desire to create and experiment and express. To play, in the truest sense of the word. It means forgetting the musician I was supposed to be and being the musician I want to be. It’s not about being “good enough”. I won’t ever play anything as sophisticated and subtle as some of my peers, but for the first time in over a decade, I do not give a single fuck. This is about creating and expressing something as best as I can. It’s about loving the process, it’s about loving music. It’s about loving yourself. This is something that is truly mine, truly personal, and speaks to the intensity of my feelings. I love and hate and care and worry and fear and think and imagine and work and play with great intensity. That’s what this is about.