We'll believe a dream can turn a life around. We'll believe a prayer gets heard. Somewhere along the way we quit believing it about a song, even though we used to know better, and some part of us still does.
The Sound of Something More is about that quitting, and about coming back around. It uses music to get at a bigger question: how you stay yourself while the machines get faster and better at everything except the things that count. It goes digging, the old field recordings, a prison farm, the ballad about the man who out-hammered a steam drill and died doing it, and it keeps landing back home, in a Tennessee living room, where somebody's dad is plugging in a guitar.
The shape of itIt starts close to home and widens out, and you never feel the seam. The personal stuff is evidence, not the point. Mostly it's me asking a question out loud and following it wherever it goes. Same voice you'll find in the letter.
You've felt it. That's the whole argument.Where it stands
The manuscript's most of the way there, two years in, written under the eye of New York Times bestselling author Kathryn Aalto. No cover to show you yet, no date to hold me to. When there is, you'll hear it in the letter first.
Follow along in The Storm Door
The Sound of Something More is a work in progress. Pages and excerpts will appear here as they're ready to be read.