Breaking News

The story for this record begins back in late October 2019. I had just released my record, ‘Decisions’, and performed a concert to promote that record. ‘Decisions’ was received very well and our concert felt like a great success, so I put a lot of pressure on myself to make a record that could live up to ‘Decisions’. I found myself starting a new job, and one of my three daughters was out of high school and on to adult life. A lot of changes were occurring and many more were on the horizon. I struggled to write anything new for ten months feeling that everything I was coming up with just didn’t live up to the quality of the last record. I was also not adjusting well to the job change and other curve balls life was throwing at me and my family. After a rough summer in 2020, I sat down at the piano and the title song ‘Breaking News’ was born. I felt I finally had a song that could be on a project as a worthy follow-up to the previous. It set the tone for the rest of the record.

The overall musical tone of this album reflects things that were going on in my life over the last three years. I found myself for the first time not giving solutions in every song, but telling stories from characters perspectives. I was going through a tough time. Sometimes in life, it feels hard to find solutions and nothing falls into place (at least the way we expect), and then things seem to pile up. I always write music before words, but I was naming the songs based on the vibe they gave me. I think only one song title was changed from the original titles I picked. Musically these songs really set a vibe for me on what they should be about.

On October 6, 2020, Edward Van Halen passed away. He was my favorite guitar player of all time and his passing brought out a lot of strange emotions. My sister and I have many memories of listening to Eddie and Al, and our relationship grew by sharing the joy of the music that Eddie and Al created and released to the world. I reflected on all of the things Eddie taught me through listening and playing his music. It was a raw time. E.V.H. is a tribute song I made to honor Eddie and Alex Van Halen.

Many of the themes that you will hear on this record are: lack of commitment, selfish love, being wholly committed to my wife, falling into dark places of life by choices we make, wishing to take pain away from someone hurting, triumph through Christ, and being manipulated by the media.

The title track takes a spin on the term Breaking News and applies it to living in shame, sin, a double life, and encourages all to realize they are not alone. Almost everyone has been in a situation where they believe the lie that no one will understand what I’m doing or going through. They think, “I could never Break the News of this to anyone, so I’ll continue to isolate and live in darkness.” The hope in Breaking News is that you are not alone in your struggles. Find someone you can trust to talk to and break the downward spiral that you are in. It’s hard. I’ve been there, but it is possible. The Gospel of Jesus has the power to restore us through the sacrifice Christ made on our behalf. The last song, Better Days was written as a coda to give you hope at the end of this journey. It still has a haunting vibe to it because when days are dark, we may need to give ourselves a pep talk and say “we’re gonna see some better days” 50 times, and this is true if you do as the last song says, “trust in Christ, He’s our hope”.