I always enjoy getting to do these blogs anytime a release of mine comes out. It allows me the space to sit down & write out the backstory of the thing I’ve just put out into the world so that you all have a bit more insight into not only the process, but the thoughts & ideas that were circulating around the same time as this piece of music was being stitched together. I’ll talk a bit about the song itself; the writing process & all that jazz, then will go into the production & the release! Shall we get crackin’?
The Song
The idea for some days was something that lived in my notes app for a very long time. I remember having the idea back in the winter of 2021/2022, randomly enough at a gas station. I remember that I was going through a pretty bad bout of seasonal depression & I had this glimmer of hope come shining through & I just remembered thinking to myself that I just needed to hold on a bit longer, because spring was just around the corner. It was this idea that, yes, when dealing with depression or any rough patch in life, things are going to be hard & they’re going to look bleak for a while, but you have to hold out hope for those brighter days when the sun & the warmth break through the cold & dark & revitalize your soul. That idea then lived in my phone for two years, until one day I got a text from my college friend Chuck Callahan asking if he could pull me into a write he had the following day.
It was a morning in late June of 2024 when I rocked up to Reid Zingale’s house. Chuck had gathered himself, as well as Mandi Mapes to write on an upcoming project for Reid. Introductions were made & we made our way into Reid’s home, to his studio to get to work. I remember Chuck saying that one of the reasons that he’d called me to join the session was because my ideas tend to be a little heavier & more serious than most & Reid had been looking for a few more songs that dealt with other topics outside of those he’d already written & decided upon for his album. I began digging through my notes app, pitching a number of ideas that I felt leaned into that ‘serious & other’ category & ended up pitching some days. Everyone in the group immediately latched onto the idea & we were off to the races in a flash.
The song was a pretty quick write if I remember correctly. Reid did this thing that I love as a writer & someone with ADHD where he starting singing a melody with nonsense words. The reason that I love this is because my brain immediately tries to fill in the blanks & that’s how many of the lines for the song ended up being birthed. He would sing melody with nonsense words, then I’d throw out what I thought I’d heard & we’d piece together the ideas & the lyrical flow as a group from there.
At some point Mandi started in on a counter melody & a slowed refrain. The cool part was that it sat perfectly under the chorus & didn’t get in the way of its melody or rhythm. This then became the bridge &, what we call, a super chorus. A super chorus is where two melodies overlap & build into this cacophonous sound & feeling. Mandi loved the idea of personifying light in ways that felt opposite to its normal accompanying adjectives or verbiage. Things like “cuts” or “creeps,” actions typically associated with more aggressive, malicious things.
The last thing that I remember from the session was coming back from the bathroom following an ‘e-pee-phany’ & basically laying out a lot of what would be the second verse to the group. Reid, to his credit, flagged that what I’d come back with was far too prose heavy for his writing style & style as an artist, so we cut it from the official lyrics & I set it aside & saved it for a rainy day.
I’m not sure any of the writers in the room know the following part of this story & I want to be very, very clear that it is not a reflection on any of the people involved. It is more a bearing of my own soul & feelings & probably a bit of my own FOMO &/or envy. But I left the write feeling incredibly saddened to the point where it sent me into a bit of a panic. I had been brought into this room as a writer for someone else’s project, something I do all the time, & had ended up ‘giving out’ a part of something I’d held onto so dearly that felt like such an important part of who I am as an artist & a writer. I was so distraught over this, in fact, that I ended up calling some of my friends who are singer-songwriters that I knew had cuts with other artists with songs that were deeply personal to them as well. I first called my buddy J who had just had an incredibly personal song of his get picked up by a huge artist & then I called my friend Leena who I spoke with for a long while.
Her advice for me was two-fold. First she told me to reach out to Reid & just be honest. Which I did. He reiterated how much the song meant to him as well & how excited he was about it. He next bit of advice was to wait a while, give the release some distance, & release my own version. Singer-songwriters do it all the time, why not me as well. I think here I specifically think of Tim McGraw cutting “Humble & Kind” & then Laurie McKenna putting it on her album a year or so later. So I went with option two.
Reid’s version of “Some Days” came out on Sept 27th, 2024 as track three of his album “The Good, The Challenge, The Change.” I am still honored to this day that he included the song & gave it its own life on his project with his own production style & arrangements. You can still find it out anywhere you stream music to this day!
The Production
I spoke a bit in past blogs about my journey & absence over the last two years musically & the things that bogged me down & led to where I am today. When I went to Jess Grommet to work on some new music, he & I sat down & went through a few song options to decide what we wanted to work on next. In pitching “Some Days” to him as a possible project I included the idea that I really wanted to have a female feature on the track. I remembered vividly Mandi singing the bridge parts on the work tape we’d done & the softness & relief a female voice provided on this song about hard times & sunken states felt like literal sunlight breaking through the darkness to me. Jess & his wife Carli have a band called Pacific Midwest & there’s a delicate rawness & vulnerability about Carli’s voice that I adore. I asked if they’d feature on it, he cleared it with her, & we got to work on the song.
I grew up in the CCM (contemporary Christian music) world. My parents were clearly concerned about me as I was often shown to a Christian bookstore to find bands to listen to that they approved of or sent off to Christian rock camps (shoutout Camp Electric, I guess). In those experiences I began to see the through lines of CCM that bring up emotions to the listeners. Easily approachable melodies that repeat often, swelling instrumentals & motifs, raw, emotional vocals, & I decided I wanted to approach “Some Days” that way. I wanted it to feel like secular CCM.
With my version of the song we brought back in the full second verse, we brought in the bridge as a feature for Pacific Midwest & allowed it to evolve into a super chorus. We even had a choral breakdown & rebuild. I knew that even if the song ended up being around five minutes, I wanted to have all of these elements present because, to me, they felt like the point of the song. This song that talks about the struggles of dealing with whatever ails you needed to have that moment of light & unfiltered hope come crashing in & reframe the entirety of the song going forward. I’m so blessed that Jess & Carli took an immediate liking to the idea of the song & graced us with what ended up being one of my absolute favorite parts of the song.
The cello felt like a no-brainer to me. I played the cello all through my adolescence & have used it on many songs over the years. It also typically finds its way into my production because I tend to use it in the place of bass guitar when I am making demos of my songs. We ended up finding Chelsea McGough online & she knocked the parts out of the park on the first go! We literally had no notes for her. She really rounded out the whole endeavor & her mastery of the movement of the piece created a flow that I think we would have been hopeless without.
There are a few bits in the production of this song I want to point out just from a selfish desire to have them get a bit more recognition. They mostly act as easter eggs, foreshadowing, or callbacks, but I love their presence in the song & I want to shine a bit of light on them here. First we have the first time that Carli & Jess sing on the song, & no, it’s not the bridge.
In the second half of verse two we have their official entry point. Under the lyrics “just like the snow, what’s frozen must thaw in the spring, awaken the earth & the green. Cycles renew & they grow” we have the two of them humming. If you listen closely you’ll catch it, but what they are humming is the melody of the bridge acting as the first little trickles of hope in the song.
The next moment I want to highlight is another one that features Pacific Midwest. At the end of the bridge there is a ‘vamp.’ it is the same vamp that leads into the second half of the bridge, but here it ends it. In addition to the vamp ending the bridge & transitioning into the last chorus section, it also features the three of us reaffirming the message of the bridge in the same rhythmic pattern as the vamp. Listen close & you’ll hear the “it’s gonna be alright, you know it’s gonna be alright, alright, alright.”
Just a few instances that I thought were fun & wanted to draw your attention to!!!
Release & Credits
Some Days (featuring Pacific Midwest) it out now, anywhere you stream or purchase music! I am so excited to share my version of this song with you all & hope that it finds a place in all of your lives & helps to remind you that even in the darkest of times to hold on hope for your ‘some days’ whatever they may look like! I’ll post a link below where you can hop to whichever service you use to get your music from & I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the song!
Some Days was written by Me (Charlie Rogers), Chuck Callahan, Mandi Mapes, & Reid Zingale. It was produced & mixed by Jess Grommet who also played Keys, Guitar, Bass, Drums, & did the programming for the song, in addition to lending his lovely voice to it. The song features cello performed & arranged by Chelsea McGough & it was mastered by Adam Grover. PR for Some Days is being done by Amanda Blide at Trend PR & all visual assets, including the album cover & promotional materials, were done by Evan Michael. Special thanks to Leena Regan, Max Hurrell, & Jenna Vitolo.
