Release: Consequences Of My Honesty

I had “consequences of my honesty” sitting in my notes app for about three or four months before it ever got written. Any time that I felt anything that I thought pertained to the topic I would drop it into the note & close it out until the next time I felt inspired by it. It wasn’t until Evan & I went to a write with Chase Coy that the song ended up flowing out & boy, did it flow out.

We had tried a few separate ideas with Chase but I think that none of us were really feeling & we actually got to the point where we were preparing to pack it up & call it for the day having not really written anything. I remember Evan had gone to the bathroom & Chase pulling up a random track that he’d been working on & something just clicked. I literally had packed up my bag & just happened to scroll by the idea for “consequences” & we were off to the races.

Majority of the first verse was just spewed from what I had written in my notes & I actually think it was almost written in its entirety by the time Evan returned to the room. We talked as we went along about how the idea had come to be & about how I felt around the content we were putting to page. The answer of “swept under the rug” came up which is where we ended up with our lovely chorus. Verse two was a bit of a talk through as we pieced together association. Aside from there being consequences for my honesty, what else did it feel like there had been consequences for? Which is where we landed on clarity. From there the song really built itself; the refrain sat in naturally & within 30 minutes to an hour we had finished the entirety of the song…which I then proceeded to sit on for almost five years.

I remember saying in a TikTok that I made a week or two ago that I felt like COMH (Consequences Of My Honesty) was a bit of a party trick that I would pull out from time to time. That it was this song that I had deep flowing emotions around, that was an ultimate expression of how I felt at the time, that I could never put out. I would bring it out when people were asking me to show them songs I’d written & I did so often so that I could get people to take me seriously as a writer & an artist. Not just one more CIS/Hetero White Guy who had nothing new to say in the country music space. I also felt like putting the song out would be a betrayal to my family, even though, in truth they were who had made me feel the way I did at the time that the song was written.

Now, I’m not here to throw anyone under the bus. I am not here to shame anyone or make myself seem holier than thou in anyway. I want to preface this before we go forward & talk about the story behind the song & its meaning & be completely transparent, open, & honest. I want to acknowledge the struggle, as there was one for a long while, but I also want to acknowledge the growth, because I am immensely grateful for the growth & effort that my parents put in to changing from where we were in June of 2019 to now. I applaud them for their willingness to listen & to have a myriad of hard conversations over the many years that led us here.

In March of 2019 I came out to my parents. I left them each handwritten notes explaining my (bi)sexuality, my taken relationship status to someone of the same gender, & how it was something that has been a part of me all of my life. I was visiting them in Kansas, passing through on my way back to Nashville with my former manager who I was helping move cross country from LA. Having grown up with ADHD & the cognitive processing that goes with that, I knew my parents would be reactionary. I also knew anything I said would fall on deaf ears at a certain point. I also knew myself & knew if I didn’t write down what I wanted to say that I would mess it up, become reactionary, become emotional, & breakdown. So I left them the notes in the morning on their pillows & made our way back to Nashville.

It was a painstakingly anxiety filled day, waiting for their response which I didn’t end up getting until probably 8 or 9 o’clock that evening in the form of a text. My father called me a coward for not telling them in person, even though I knew the fallout & told me my mother had been throwing up ever since reading the note. Additionally they sent an email to my former manager & chastised her for the “mishandling of my brand.” After that I didn’t hear from them for two to three weeks.

I lay all of this out because I think it has deep relevance to the song itself. I again, am not here to judge or punish anyone publicly for their actions or beliefs, as at the end of the day we are all humans who have deep ingrained belief systems that really don’t like it when someone chucks a rock at their hornets nest.

When I finally heard from them it was like nothing had happened. Like everything I’d said, the weeks I’d gone through in silence & in pain, amounted to nothing. It was all just swept under the rug. In psychology we call this “dishonest harmony” & it is something that affects older generations at an alarming rate. It is the notion that it is better to have harmony at any cost, even if it is entirely fabricated or glosses over a conflict. This song was written in that time period where I felt the weight of the dishonest harmony as well as was receiving the consequences of my honesty & clarity.

Again, many hard conversations & years later & we are all at a place that is lightyears beyond any improvement that I could have predicted.

In Feb/March of this year I started working on new music. Initially it was with my typical producer, Joshua Gleave. We were working on a song called “Woebegone.” Josh, who is on the road with Sam Hunt, found himself greatly disillusioned with producing & quit all together sending me a long list of recs whom I listened through & seriously contemplated. It was then that I remembered an old band mate of mine, Jess Grommet, had reached out asking me if I needed any demos done as he was now full time in the production space. I reached out not for a demo, but to see if he was full on producing as I knew he & I had similar taste in music. He sent me over a sample of some of the artists that he’d done projects for & I was blown away!

Jess & I met one rainy afternoon at Frothy Monkey in The Nations. We sat & conversed for almost two hours, catching up on life, music, etc etc. At the point where music was brought up I pitched him a few ideas that I felt I’d be cool working on. He knowingly asked if there was anything that I had written that I felt strongly about & COMH was brought up. I explained the song & the premise & told him frankly that I was nervous to cut the song as I knew it would require yet another hard conversation with my parents, but we agreed that it would be the song we would do & set a date to meet up again at his studio.

I kid you not when I tell you I waited until the night before our session to have that conversation with my parents. When I did, I told them exactly what the song pertained to, when it was written, why it was written, & why I felt it was important to put out, even if I knew that it would make them uncomfortable or that they simply would not like what I had to say. They were surprisingly cool with it.

Jess & I started tracking & over the span of 3-4 sessions had the song entirely pieced together, also adding in drums from Alec Parrish. We pulled inspiration from everywhere: The 1975, Taylor Swift, Brothers Osborne, Usher, & even Avatar: The Last Airbender. In addition to all of my precious releases! After we had it to a place that felt good we did two in person mix sessions & sent it off to Sterling Sound to be mastered by Adam Grover. The song was distributed by TooLost with PR by Trend PR & photo assets by Evan, & I am beyond proud of it!

Even leading up to the two or so days after the song came out I was anxious about its release. It was an incredibly vulnerable part of me that I had just shoved out into the world for feedback on. Additionally, my parents hadn’t heard the song, at their request, until after it had come out to the public. They apparently really like it. If I’m being honest, I’m over the moon with how COMH turned out. I think it has turned over a new leaf for me & allowed the walls that surrounded my creativity to come cascading down. For so long I was so afraid to say the wrong thing, to hurt someone close to me even though it was how I felt, & putting this out into the world has given me the permission to be authentic & open 100% in my music & writing. Even if the song is a “flop” I am beyond grateful for all that it has shown me & the freedom it has given me! I’m naturally also grateful to all of you out there who are streaming it & sharing it! It means the world!

Consequences Of My Honesty is available anywhere you listen to music! The acoustic version, that I self produced, will be out in just two weeks & you can pre-save it below! If you’re reading this after the 19th of July 2024 it’s already out & you can just stream it too!!!!

I am so beyond grateful for your continued support & for the love you’ve shown me & this song!!!

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Insomniac, Revisited

I don’t know if I’ve ever publicly stated this, much less done so in a full on blog format, but the release of my song “Insomniac” was a traumatic one for me. If you were around at the time & a follower of mine then you would possibly remember that the song, upon its original release, had to be pulled, remastered, & redistributed. All of this was to do with background drama & poor choices that were made against my better judgment & with promises that the decisions being made would pan out & be for the best. Once again, my intuition was right on that, but that’s not what I’m here to write about today.

Last night, while working on something for my socials, I stumbled upon the series of videos that Evan & I created to promote the release of “Insomniac.” These videos stemmed from an idea that I had which I referred to as “things you do when you can’t sleep.” They featured a single shot of someone one would do when they can’t sleep & then about halfway through the 10-20 second video, the intro to the song would cut in, it would pull up a title card & give the date of release as well as a call to pre-save. I remember that we started with a much larger list of activities but ended up cutting it down to nine for the promotion; exercise, watching TV, taking a bath, playing video games, eating, texting, taking a shower, drinking, & surfing the internet. We shot these little blurb videos over the course of several evenings & filled them to the brim with little easter eggs as well, mostly as call backs or little features of the things that I enjoy. For example, the one where I was surfing the web features me going to my website, this website. It also has a “Country Music Allies” pin in the bottom right of the frame, a group that I partnered with for the release of the song. Additionally, I’m snacking on “Smart Sweets” a brand I was all over at the time & there’s an Assassin’s Creed lanyard dangling by the computer, a gaming franchise I enjoy. We put so much thought & curation into these little promotional videos that I don’t feel like people even gave that much of a passing glance to.

What strikes me as odd about “Insomniac” is that for a lot of you it still remains one of your Top 3 songs of mine, despite the fact that it is one of my lowest streaming. Background meddling & a botched release have a lot to do with that. It’s frequently one of the songs I get asked to play in the live setting most often but for the longest time it was the song that I wanted the least to do with, simply because of how grueling a process it was to get it out & how it essentially became dead in the water upon release. Nothing went right with its launch, all the way down to the album artwork file being corrupted upon hours of completion & immediately requiring a do over. I guess that was foreshadowing.

But the more time passes, the more the content from the “Insomniac” era resurfaces, the more it saddens me all over again that this song that Jared Scott, Evan, & I had so much writing, & Joshua Gleave & I had so much producing, ended up as essentially a lost cause simply because of incompetence by those who I was prodded into trusting for its release. Even when we went back in & tried to salvage the song & re-release it, everything got lumped back together & was immediately null & void again. Unfortunately, I think that this was one of the last releases that I went “all out” on with the promotion & the efforts behind it because the project that I worked so hard on & had so much fair in essentially ended up amounting to nothing. I may as well have just cold dropped the song. I guess that comes with the territory of trying to be an artist though.

There are still embers of hope somewhere inside of me that “Insomniac” will have its day. I’m not sure if or when that will be, but I still hold on to its vindication somewhere in my heart.

I understand that art is meant to be, simply, without expectation, but it’s really hard to watch the things you spent countless hours getting off the ground immediately crash & burn with no immediate chance of redemption or salvation. Countless hours, countless dollars, essentially amounting to nothing, it cuts deep.

For those of you out there who tried tirelessly to salvage this song for me upon its release, I am beyond grateful. For those of you who still stream it, who still have love for this song, I hope to be one of you some day soon, it’s just still a very tender spot of my musical catalog for me.

I will continue to revisit this song which I have exiled from my psyche, in the hopes that someday I rediscover my love for it & I hope to someday be at a place where I feel comfortable & convinced to share the full story around the goings on of it all, but until then, I leave it to you all to give the love that it so desperately deserves.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Trying To Bridge The Disconnect

Lately my career, specifically where music is related, has taken a turn that I don’t think I expected. For those new here who read that first sentence & said to yourselves “wait, you do music?!” welcome to CharlieRogersMUSIC.com, nice to have you. The turn I seem to have made lives in the writing world, & no, not this writing world, the songwriting one.

I’ve been writing songs since I was sixteen, so almost half of my life at this point. I started in my bedroom writing about my life as a high schooler & while a lot of those first songs were definitely not the greatest, I am still proud that I took the step to start somewhere. From there I went to college where more often than not, I was writing for myself still. It wasn’t until around the time that I graduated from Belmont that I really started to write for other people. I had a hard time with that at first, removing myself from the art, from the narrative, but I soon found that that is where the empathy of the artist really comes in handy. Even though I may not have a specific lived experience, I can still, to some degree, project my own life experience into the writing & inject my own personality & life into crafting a song that is entirely to do with someone else’s point of view & story. Even though I had shifted away from being entirely self centered in my narrative, I was still writing a lot for &/or about myself, though the shift allowed me to create songs that were still about me but were filtered through the lens of an alternative character. See Jericho. This continued for a very long time until I kind of lost my way.

I would say around 2020 it became incredibly difficult for me to write. Probably in part due to the pandemic as well as a lot of personal change that I went through, my creative mind seemed to have departed my being almost entirely & when at long last it finally came back, it seemed to have left my introspection behind, wherever it had gone. However, what seems to have come back with my creativity was this new found ability to draw entirely personal stories & details out of those I find myself writing for & inject that into their songs.

I found myself entering rooms & leaving with songs that, to me, felt disingenuous. I knew a lot of my cowriters & their backgrounds & a lot of what they were projecting into the writing space was very counter to who they are as people or what their lived experience is. That’s not to say that we can't play characters as writers, but I feel like when writing for oneself, there needs to be a level of authenticity in the project or the audience sniffs it out near instantaneously. I started to get fed up with vague generalities & instead found myself craving the deep intimate details of each song being written. I wanted to know the story behind the prompt, how it made the writer or artist feel, what in their mind the specific imagery surrounding the song consisted of, any specific memories it brought up. It was no longer enough for me to play into an interesting rhyme or idea just for the hell of it, I wanted the music I was a part of creating to bear signatures of the soul of those who worked on it.

I’ve gotten very good at this practice, in fact, it’s one of the main reasons I get drawn into sessions these days, because I don’t settle for the generic in terms of the song’s personality signature. I am, however, finding myself incapable of extending this practice into my own writing for myself. I find myself utterly blank when I ask the same questions about a song & its premise that I drill my fellow writers & artists about during a write, I can’t seem to refocus the lens on myself & make something deeply personal. Maybe it stems from years of projecting an idea of who or what artist I wanted to be. Maybe it stems from years of censoring myself because I know if I said certain things in songs that it would offend or upset people close to me. Whatever it is, I can’t, at the moment, seem to shake loose of it.

So here in lies my struggle, the bridging of this disconnect that I have had the last couple of years. Having the ability to be almost overly analytical & receptive to the lives & ideas of those I collaborate with but lacking, almost entirely, the ability to be introspective & open with myself & the things that I want & need to say as a writer & artist.

Maybe there are conversations that need to be had that will allow me to feel like I can express my feelings, my history, my emotions openly in song without fear of retribution or backlash, maybe there’s inner work that needs to be done. Whatever the answer it, it has become abundantly clear to me that I am, at my current state, far more comfortable with being open & honest through the lens of other people than I am through my own works. Which as someone who strives to be an open & authentic artist, is incredibly discouraging for me. I think I’m writing some of the best works I’ve ever written, & am more proud of what I leave writing rooms with then I ever was before, but I would certainly like for the elevation to extend to myself & what it is that I want to work on.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: For The Love Of God, Pre-Save Your "Friend's" Songs!!!

Hi, it's me again. I know some of you may be looking at this somewhat passive aggressive title & be thinking “well, that’s not very comforting” & to that all I have to say is that neither is looking at your list of people who have pre-saved your single, as an artist, & not finding your friends among them. I know, in the past, that I have written a similar blog to this but I feel the point I am trying to make is worth restating because I don’t entirely think that most people realize the simple impact that pre-saving a song can have for an independent artist such as myself.

Pre-saving essentially is just pre-adding a song to your Spotify library. Even if you never plan on listening to the song, a pre-save tells Spotify that there is demand for the song & that they should be pushing it on their end. In doing so it boosts the likelihood that the song could actually get in front of an actual Spotify curator & not just sorted with the rest of the millions of submissions that they receive from the millions of other struggling artists trying to get heard. Tech companies only have so much bandwidth & so many employees, so showing them that something should be a priority to them will actually get it listened to. If they boost it in turn it gets said content boosted, just like any other content based platform. These technical reasons aside its also just a good practice to pre-save the material that the people that you call your friends are putting out.

I have so many people in my life who call themselves fans of mine & my work but who seem to be MIA when it comes to the pre-release of the work. Sure they’ll share the song when it comes out which is fantastic & we love to see it, but they are sorely neglecting the support that is desperately needed on the front end. It is almost more important for you as a supporter of the artists in your life for you to pre-save the song than it is for you to share it or stream it once it is released because it gives it the potential of being heard by a much larger audience than just said artist’s social circles.

Here’s the kicker of it all. You never have to listen to the song that you’ve pre-saved if you don’t want to. Ever! And guess what else? It still counts! Meaning that you can have no love for your friend’s music, whatsoever, & still support them with this simple act that takes literally five seconds to do. Is all of my friend’s music my cup of tea? No. Do I still pre-save as much as I can? Yes, of course, because I know how impactful that can be on boosting their aspirations in even the smallest of ways!

Going off of the blog that I wrote last week about supporting the hard work that the creators in your life put out; Copious Content Creation, this is hard, time consuming work that we are literally giving away for free to you all. It takes a lot of time & effort to make a song & have it at a level that is worthy of being streamed. Is it really that difficult to make three or four clicks to support that?

All of this also acts as a bit of a round about way of trying to get you to pre-save MY single that comes out in just two week’s time, When He Was Me. You can find the pre-save link in the massive button below & I would appreciate, more than anything, if you would go in & give it a pre-save, even if you have no intention of ever listening to the song!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Stumbling Through Life

This past week when I arrived back home from Arizona I received an email from a site called Feedspot. In the email they congratulated me on being placed as one of their 70 Best Nashville Music Blogs & Websites in 2023 to which they assigned me the 35th place. Now, I never applied for this site, nor had I honestly heard of it until I received the email, additionally I know absolutely zilch about the site or company itself but at the end of the day I’m honored that I was even considered to be on the list at all. After all, this blog is often just a journal of my ramblings & misadventures, a collection of my thoughts & feelings. The crazy thing is that, for whatever reason, it connects with people & that is what I am most grateful for.

So be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing each Friday or Saturday when I post a new entry in this crazy chronicle. What started out as a way to share my travel expertise & taste has shifted into a bit of an enigma that I’m still not entirely sure I have a grasp on. I’ve mentioned it before in previous blogs just how random & unexpected this is at times but in all honesty it often feels like I’m just stumbling through life, randomly landing on the occasional accomplishment.

I think this is true of most things I do; I put out music & it often sticks in the most random of places but seldom the ones that I intend. Same goes for this space. The blogs I write out of pain, frustration, or exhaustion are often the ones that are still read to this day. So too are the ones that I write from random spur of the moment travels, not the ones I spend weeks crafting trying to give my best possible recommendations for the many places in the world that I have frequented. To say I feel a tad unmoored or aimless in my day to day would be an understatement.

Maybe that’s all a part of the human experience, maybe I’m preaching to the choir here, but it feels like most days I wake up with a big, fat question mark floating above my head. I spend most of my mornings trying desperately to figure out the course of my day. Do I still have lists of tasks & work that I do each day? Of course, but it feels a little like I’m going through the motions a bit with no real end in sight. I don’t mean to say I’m depressed, quite the opposite, of the most part I find myself content, which is something that I believe we should all strive for, but I wish I had a better sense of direction or overt purpose than what I feel on my average day.

Again, maybe I’m preaching to the choir here, or maybe this is entirely taboo to you as a reader but there are so many days that I wish someone would just grab me by the shoulders, look me dead in the eyes, & say ‘this is what you’re meant to be doing & this is how you get there.’ I wish there was an overt light or guide holding my hand through the blackness & pulling me towards my destination instead of feeling like a mast-less ship adrift in the middle of the Pacific surviving of a steady supply of rainwater, fresh fish, & a library of assorted books, musical instruments, & games. Did that analogy land or did it sink?…I’ll leave.

At the end of the day I am grateful. I am grateful that I get to spend my life creating in different fashions. I am grateful that I get to see & experience the world & all of the incredible beauties it holds. I am grateful that I have the space & lack of pressure to do something that is soul sucking & I am grateful to each of you out there who read or listen to the inner machinations of my mind & find them interesting enough to keep coming back. I am just longing for clear direction as so many of us do but in the mean time I intend to stay in my contentment & learn as I try to grow towards whatever end awaits me.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Rediscovering The Joy In Your Passions

This past week I had the utter privilege of spending some time with a few fellow artists & friends in Arizona at a songwriter’s retreat put on by the Songbird Society out of Adelaide, Australia. This camp was centered entirely around two concepts; tension & release.

The first point of interest, tension, was meant to help us as songwriters find the points of tension within our creativity that keep us from creating to our fullest. We each were given a series of prompts at the beginning of the day, after a morning yoga session, & asked to think about them throughout the day & bring them with us into the sessions we were given. The rules were simple regarding the songs themselves. Whoever’s idea the song started as had right of first use. The sessions were also meant to be open, honest, & vulnerable & established a safe space for expression & transparency. The songs that each of the two groups of writers produced were organic & an amazingly natural flowing process of creation. When snags were reached, they were easily talked & worked through without allowing the session to get bogged down & turned into a grueling task. The art that was created in these sessions was free, personal, & inspiring.

Following our sessions on the first day we sat down to engage in symposium. Each of us took turns discussing the areas of our lives that we felt carried tension, be it personal or creative. From there we were prompted to see ways forward through our lives & creative process that would allow the alleviation of said points of tension.

The second day focused on release. We started the day with a five AM double black diamond hike up the side of a mountain & then spent the remainder of the morning in ease while contemplating the prompts we were given post hike regarding the release of our points of tension. Sessions took place in the early afternoon after we’d regained our energy & footing & were once again an inspiring free fall into the depths of what it is to be a songwriter & to create amazing, personal yet still widely appealing, art. Both sets of sessions ran into often outright painful points of tension for the focal songwriter but both groups worked through them in a loving & understanding manner. The evening concluded with us showcasing our songs & once again engaging in symposium.

On the third day we shifted course a little. We ended up setting two rooms in which the producers/engineers on the track were given a prompt that would put them out of their comfort zone, allowing them to experiment through trial & error in an affirming & encouraging space. The writers for each of these rooms were not set but instead kind of ended up happening by happenstance & once more, beautiful, innovative art was created!

My point in bringing up my week & telling the base story around it is not to showcase or showoff how great & amazing a creative experience I was privy to, but instead to encourage. You see we all left this week (there were more days that just the three where we did other engaging & creative pursuits) with a new found sense of purpose, with a newly established spark of creativity. Songbird took a group of individuals, a lot of whom knew each other very well, & fostered an experience that expanded & fine tuned not only our interpersonal relationships but also our creative spirits. We all left the camp with hope & optimism & a joy for the art of songwriting that I personally had lost.

We’re all led to do the things we do out of passion. We’ve all heard the saying “do what you love & you’ll never work a day” but so many of us end up resenting the thing we started doing out of love & enjoyment because it becomes work & loses all sense of fun. I know I can speak to this personally by saying that a lot of the writing rooms I’ve left in the past few years have left me almost with an icky feeling stirring around my gut, because that love of what was being done & what was being created was absent. Now, that’s not to say all writes were like this but there was truly something different about the writing that was being done & the spirit in which it was being created that made me feel reborn.

So often we go into our work with the purest intentions & somewhere along the way lose sight of the reason behind why we started it in the first place. I mean, to be honest, I was really starting to question whether or not this was something I even wanted anymore because of how grueling it had become. I knew, deep inside that the answers was ‘of course’ but I could for the life of me find that ember that was still holding on to the hope of what I love doing.

How does this apply to you? Well I ask you, when was the last time you felt inspired & in love with the work that you do? When did you lose that & why? These are not things that are irreversible, you got into the rut somehow & there’s always a way out whether that lies in the past or in moving forward towards the future. In all honesty, I spoke to my father about the week & he said something rather jarring to me. I said that for once writing doesn’t feel like work, it feels free & creative & fun. To which he replied that work should feel like work, that’s what it is. Which then led me to this blog because I know so many people who are miserable doing the things they set out to do with the purest intention because they’ve lost the spark that brought them to where they are now.

Your work shouldn’t be draining, especially if it’s something you love doing. It should be life giving & inspiring & if you find that isn’t the case I would challenge you to take the time to figure out why. To find your points of tension & release them so that you can spend the time living in a place that brings you happiness & satisfaction, not just potential profit & gain.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Writing The Hit

I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve walked into a session & had another artist or a writer say “are we going to write a hit today?” to which the proper response is always “of course” or “I sure hope so,” because let’s face it, nobody wants the negative energy of a “statistically, probably not.” Lately I’ve been convening with a lot of different writers, most of the time over drinks or a meal, & this topic of “I just need to write a hit” has come up time & time again. If you’re someone reading this who isn’t in the music world, I don’t want you to tune out, because in actuality, the broadness of the topic at hand may surprise you!

When the notion of ‘writing the hit’ is presented to me it automatically stirs up feelings of commercialism, of pandering, of conformity, & that’s not to say that there aren’t things you should strive for in your art or expression, to an extent. I think that if any of these feelings detract from your art or minimize your personal experience they are a hindrance, not a leg up, & should be avoided at all costs. If, on the other hand, these sentiments match who you are & what you bring to the table, fire away, the goal here should be, after all, authenticity.

There naturally has to be some for of commercial viability for something to be successful, but I often think that the idea of what is successful based on what has been successful pigeon holes us into a narrowed scope of thinking. Instead of allowing the imagination & the self expression to run wild, we end up worrying more about whether or not what we’ve created or plan to create will fit into the already etched out niche of what has been successful in the past. I would argue that playing into the hand of the road well trodden may lead to limited success but it also stumbles readily into the realm of the forgotten.

People who are trail blazers, in any industry, are seldom, if ever, those who followed the status quo. They are those who followed their gut & pushed the boundaries of what was deemed commercially viable. Let’s use an example from a few years ago. When Billie Eilish exploded onto the scene & immediately became popular, every label & their mother scrambled to find the next her, instead of continuing the search for something just as unique. They all sought to capitalize on that which was already raking in the capital. This happens not only in the music industry but in literally every other industry I can think of where something is successful & everyone else hops on board to try to ride the wave that sensation has created.

A lot of those who I was talking about this concept of ‘writing the hit’ with this week are also artists & are looking for that one song that will break them, something I’ve heard for years & years & years in this industry but I find in doing so, in chasing the monetary or status based success, we diminish what makes us unique & interesting as artists & individuals in favor of a brief minute on the well worn path instead of carving our own niche & finding those out there in the world who relate to us as we are, not how we think they should.

People are pretty good at sniffing out a phony, call it the uncanny valley of expression, & their ride in the limelight is often short lived because usually the person who blazed the trail they dipped into is already making the trek better than anyone else could. Why? Because it’s authentically who they are. If you are an artist, an inventor, a painter, a poet, a writer, a speaker, a ceo, a whatever, you have a unique outlook on the world & life that literally no one else shares because no one else looks through your eyes & has the lived experience that you do. No one else has the same genetic make up, the same voice (literal & figurative), the same neurological mapping, the same beats of their heart, the same chemical values, the same stacks of cells that you do, so stop trying to fit into the mold of someone who will never be you & someone you will never be. It’s a lot more interesting to create something novel & authentic than it is to be just another wanna be copy cat.

I hope you all have a great week or weekend whenever this blog happens to find you!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Censoring Myself As An Artist

I think I’ve reached a point as a songwriter where I’m actively censoring myself. It’s not something I intended to do or wanted to happen but alas, that is where I find myself. I don’t think that I was always this way nor do I think a lot of the songs of my past are vague on the details of my personal life but I’ve had events happen in my life where people I’m close to have hurt me deeply & I find myself incapable of putting pen to paper or note to track out of a fear of hurting their feelings.

This is a problem I developed a couple of years ago that I am waking up to. You see, there are times where those in your life who support & cheer you on do the most undeniable damage they can to you & all you feel like you can do is march on & hope that time heals the wound & it doesn’t happen again. A lot of times these people don’t even know that the'y’ve caused you pain or that the things they’ve said or left unsaid made it to your eyes or ears & dug a sharp gash in your heart. I had one of these & while I wrote several songs around the events in question I began to self limit because I felt they were songs I could never share or release because they would upset the people they are about. Here in lies the paradox for me.

The thing that sucks is that I know these are songs that need to see the light of day because the struggles that I went through are not unique to my person & in releasing them to a broader audience they stand a chance of helping someone else out there who is struggling. I also understand that I am doing myself a disservice by locking these songs behind the screen of my iPhone or the hard drive of my computer & that the greatest art often comes from the greatest pain. In all honesty I’m looking at myself going “wtf am I doing,” as I write all of this into a blog even though I’m not specifying anything.

But here’s the problem. Art is expression. It’s meant to evoke an emotion from the listener, viewer, taster, etc. & by cutting myself off from the art that hurts, the art within me that is real, I am censoring myself as an artist & producing blunted content that helps no one & limits my growth both as a human being & as an artist. In shying away into what is safe like a chastised dog I have placed a wall between myself & the true art that lies in wait within me & I’m not sure I know how to tear it down.

The easy answer to that, naturally, is share & release the songs, but they are songs that require difficult conversations & may cause further damage to a wound that has found some form of healing, even if It’s not how I would like. But what must be done to the bone that has been set improperly & healed crooked? It must be unmade to heal properly. It is a redemption that my heart yearns for but that I fear is nothing more than a fantasy, so I sit stuck in indecision & with a great filter hindering my art.

This is true for those of you reading this who may not be artists as well. I think that we often times allow our ache to be swept under the rug so that we can continue to have certain relationships where we feel the connection outweighs our suffering. It’s a hard road to tread & a hard decision to make, especially if the wound is old. But I feel that we limit ourselves entirely by doing so, not just in the artistic sense but in our development as human beings. It’s often said that you can tell when someone experienced unresolved trauma because they often stagnate in their personal growth. People harmed at 25 remain the same mentally emotionally as they move into their 30s because they would rather cover the wound than face it.

I know I am not alone in this &, if this resonates with you, I hope you know that you are not alone. Your reservations are just as valid as your pain but can you imagine just how joyous it will feel the day that pain is set free, the day the conflict that has been eating you up inside is resolved? Maybe it is worth it, maybe it’s not, but in the end, that’s up to you to decide, just as it is for me. I want so badly to lean into the freedom but I’d be lying if I said fear wasn’t holding me back. As my friend Stephen Lovegrove says, “the path that scares you the most is usually the correct one.” Maybe it’s time to take the scary path & step out of the pain that has become comfortable. Maybe it’s time to step on a few toes.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Story: Let's Go Back, Back To The Beginning

Earlier this week I grabbed coffee, or rather tea because I’m trying to cut my caffeine intake, with a new friend. At one point in the conversation he brought up my blogs. You know, this thing you’re currently feasting your eyes upon. The first thing he asked me was “how & why did you get started doing blogs” & it occurs to me now that I’ve never formally had that conversation with you all who return week after week, drift in & out, or have randomly stumbled upon this here post. It was an interesting thing to talk about & kind of piece together along the way as I told him the story but the idea of recounting it here hadn’t occurred to me until today when I sat down to write, at which time I was met with a random passing “how did you get started, how far have you come?” question while pilfering through the internet.

My blog page started as a recommendation blog. I had a former manager who commented on the fact that I always have food & drink recommendations for people when they go anywhere & that I should compile a list so that people can access that information at any time without having to text or DM me. The first one, naturally, was Nashville. I compiled a list of restaurants on one blog post & bars on another & published it to actually fairly moderate success. In fact the blog still remains actively edited to this day when I remember to make edits & feel like adding in new restaurants/bars or when some of the ones on the list have closed. From there my recommendation blogs continued. I did an LA food one next, followed by LA drink, then came Kansas City, which I’m pretty sure is a combination blog, & Portland, which I know for a fact is.

Now around this time the mailing list craze was really kicking off & I went to a seminar about marketing for artists such as myself. Someone on one of the panels brought up that one artist they knew did a weekly blog where she detailed & documented her week & then sent it out as a newsletter before the weekend. This sparked the idea of these now weekly blogs.

I knew I didn’t think my day to day life was interesting or varied enough to entice readers to come back week after week so instead I opted for a different approach. My blogs would be varied. Sometimes they would be recommendation blogs, sometimes recipes since I cook quite often, sometimes they would actually be about an event I experienced if I found that event to be interesting enough for a retelling.

Around the time I started to write blogs happened to coincide with the events & civil rights travesties of the Trump Administration. As someone who found himself incredibly politically literate & in possession of a platform, I started writing blogs highlighting the damage that was being done to The USA at large. Additionally, within that same vein, I started to write think pieces directed towards those reading who I knew might fall on the conservative spectrum about more liberal policies & why they are beneficial. I tried to frame them from the perspective of someone who would be against them to mixed success. I continued on this track, using my blog to post my opinions as well as resources when natural or political disasters struck. It wasn’t until May of 2021 that I started doing travel blogs.

Evan & I ended up in Maui right around the time that the tourism industry reopened in Hawaii. I had gone to finish the open water side of my dive certification & had just invested in a GoPro to grab footage of our time there. I did it partially for content & also so the people I knew that cared to know about my adventures had a place to turn to & get the inside scoop of all the goings on of my travels. Additionally it allowed me to combine a lot of the elements of what I was doing; storytelling, recommendations, etc., into one single post in one single place. The thing I ended up underestimating was the time in which each of these travel blogs take.

So the travel blogs ate up a lot of time, most of them ended up being around a two to three week series that took me around the totality of the week to complete for each. I had to write the stories, link the places, go through edit & add the photos, place the photos aesthetically, etc. etc. etc. but I quickly found that these were my most popular submissions. That’s until I wrote a blog called “No Hate Like Christian Love.”

NHLCL was really a think piece for me, a plea for the evangelicals of the world to look at how they were asked to behave in the book they claim to cling to & compare that to the way they are actually perceived by the world & also understand why “the church” is dying. It remains my most popular blog to this day, out performing each of my weekly submissions during the week they’re posted. NHLCL still garners easily around one hundred individual views a week just from people either searching for something of the like or having stumbled upon it some other way. It has, aside from each of my travel blogs, been the biggest source of outreach & foot traffic to this, my website.

So where are we today? Well, this piece, I suppose, could be filed under “story.” The shape that my blog has taken over the years is very reflective of who I am as an individual, all encompassing. I think, if I were to choose a direction for it to go, it would mostly remain in the story telling world, specifically as a recounting of my travels & the highs & lows of my life. I like to think that my blog has a positive influence on the world, as small or large as that is, but I suppose that’s for you all to decide, not me. The hard part about getting travel content for you all is getting to travel, having the funds & time to scour the globe for my next adventure to bring back & share with you all. If that weren’t as much of an issue, I think this blog would definitely take that shape more often than not. I’m always down for feedback though! I’d love to know what you’ve liked & disliked about my blog over the years. I’d love to know what you’d like to see more of or less of. I’m always intrigued to know who is reading my posts, why, & what they got out of it.

As always,

Much love to you all & thank you for supporting this crazy weekly thing that I do!

-C

Blog: Charlie Rogers, Renaissance Man.

I don’t remember in which grade we discussed the renaissance in history class. I’m not even entirely sure whether or not I was in middle or high school. While I’m pretty sure it was the latter, I remember immediately becoming obsessed with the idea of being “a renaissance man.”

This is a term that I heard pop up recently, though I can’t for the life of me recall where. I remember someone saying they always strove towards being a renaissance man themselves & it immediately struck a chord of commonality in me. So what exactly is a renaissance man?

According to the Oxford dictionary a renaissance man is:

“a person of many talents or areas of knowledge.”

— Oxford Dictionary, Renaissance Man

Some famous examples of which include the likes of Leonardo DiVinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, Galileo Galilei, & Nicolaus Copernicus, all who excelled in multiple fields of study. The moniker of “renaissance man” is not limited to men though, nor is it limited to the time of the renaissance, with there being quite a few “renaissance women” throughout history as well as “renaissance people,” if we are being all inclusive. Nor was the idea specific to the time, though I feel it is the most prominent within culture at large. Before the renaissance individual there was the Greek concept of a polymath, having learned many things. This list includes individuals throughout early history such as Archimedes, Hypatia, Ptolemy, Imhotep, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Zhang Heng, Al-Kindi, Shen Kuo, & Averroës. Farther into history we get Ben Franklin, Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, Issac Newton, etc. etc. etc. Catching on to the concept yet?

So why did this become a small obsession of mine? What was it about the renaissance polymaths that made me say “ooo, that!” Well, I’ve always wanted to be a jack-of-all trade, eliminating the “master of none” part of the saying. I never wanted to be someone who was exclusively known for one thing & that’s why finding a Capital C “Career” has been difficult for me. I never JUST wanted to be known as a singer or a songwriter, I wanted to be known as the multidimensional human that I am. That’s part of why I started writing these blogs, because I felt I had more to offer the world than just the songs I sang & the performances I gave. Can we chalk it up to ADHD & chasing the dopamine a little bit? Of course. But I highly doubt any of you out there ever lived your life wanting to be one note.

So where does that place me? Well, for starters it makes it very hard for me to play the long game in the Capital C Career world. All I’ve ever wanted is to have as many plates spinning in the air as possible & to make those plates as relatively self sufficient as possible so that I can return to them with my fancy. My brain stretches me in so many different directions that the clear path forward for any given career seems impossible to me. Let’s talk about just right now shall we? Where am I at right this minute.

Well, Charlie Rogers right now is a blogger, as I sit at this computer I am a blogger. Not just am I a blogger, I am a travel blogger, a food critic, an advice columnist, a humanitarian, a recipe creator, a motivational speaker, an encourager, & a pundit. That’s just within the digital walls of this section of my website. Swipe one page up & I am an artist, a musician, a songwriter. Click on my socials & I am an influencer, a bumbling comedian, an adventurer. Search me on YouTube & I am an actor, a singer. Meet me in person & I am a scholar, wildly spiritual, peacefully grounded, a zoologist, a marine biologist, a botanist, a foodie, a connoisseur, a collector, a chef, a mixologist, an explorer, a lover, a brother, a son, & a friend. Look inside my mind & you’ll find a stoic, a wanderer, an inventor, a well of ideas, a catalyst, an empath (even though I hate that word & it’s connotations), a free spirit. How do you sum all of that up at all times? How do you “market” all of that at once?

I think in a lot of ways we all fit the renaissance man mold, it’s just that some of us, like myself, wish to act upon it. I wish to be known for all of my aspects, not just the one or two that I can focus on at a time. I want to be the touring singer-songwriter, I want to be the inventor, I want to be the philanthropist, I want to be the actor, to be the influencer, to be the traveler, the humanitarian, to be the food critic, the revolutionary, & the jack-of-all trades, but I often find myself lost in the constant tug of war these concepts give biding for my time & my mental space.

For now I’ll just claim the moniker. Here I am, Charlie Rogers, Renaissance Man, what I shall be in the future has yet to be written, but I can’t wait to see where I end up!

Here’s wishing you all a fantastic week or weekend, whenever this blog has found you.

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Just Another Late Night

On a chilly November Wednesday evening, back in 2017, gathered around my kitchen table with Evan Michael & Kate Cosentino was where “Just Another Late Night” was originally conceptualized. The title had been a note in my phone for even longer & for whatever reason the timing was right for this midweek write. Back in 2017 Kate, Evan, Kimi Most, & I used to do weekly Wednesday night writes. This song came out of one of those sessions as well as Kimi’s “Happy Birthday To Me," a song called “Dumb Drunk Self” that I still desperately hope Kate cuts, & innumerable other songs that we each have sitting on the shelf waiting for the timing to be right on their potential tracking. Given that she is not credited on this song, Kimi was obviously not a part of this particular week’s write for whatever reason so it became a collaboration between the three of us.

I remember writing down the title in my notes as almost exactly how it ended up “I need someone that will love me right, not just another late night.” To me the song sparks a memory from the early 2010s but for whatever reason I still hadn't found that “someone who would love me right.” Naturally it had been a while since any of the events in the memory had taken place but I still felt deeply attached to the idea & the song kind of poured out of us in the session.

From there the song became a staple in my set, I’ve been playing it in live settings ever since that night in 2017. I played it so much & so often that people who came to a lot of my sets began to know the words & I would get asked over & over when I planned to release it but for whatever reason it just kept getting pushed down the “to record” list. Cue 2020/2021.

I had just put out the acoustic mix of “Obliterated” & had gone in to record another song that is as of yet, still to be released. We wrapped the song & I felt I needed to put out something with a little more movement, enter “Just Another Late Night.” Going back in studio with Josh Gleave, we set out to finally bringing “Just Another Late Night” to life.

I wanted “Just Another Late Night” to feel almost like two separate songs because in the song, much like in life, we have moments of waining clarity. The verses act as the “quiet before the storm” that is each encounter the chorus brings. The verses are much more reserved allowing more space for the clock & hours to tick by in reflection. The chorus is cacophonous, it’s rambunctious & wild. It’s unhinged & without hesitation. Then we come to the bridge. The bridge to me is the “eye of the hurricane” it’s nothing but vocal & percussion that features a begging ultimatum from the narrator of the story. I wanted the song to reflect life, to have those moments of clarity that we all reflect on after & before the fact before we ultimately buy into the thing that’s destroying us one more time.

We’re now a week int the release of this song that we poured so much love & life into & I’m floored by the response I’ve had for it! Many blogs, playlists, websites, have all reached out asking to feature it. So many people have shared & as of this second we are sitting around 25,000 streams on Spotify!

I’d like to thank any & all of you who were a part of this song:

Evan Michael & Kate Cosentino for helping to write it!

Joshua Gleave for producing & dealing with my crazy artist ideas in addition to bass, keys, synth, & program instruments!

Lester Estelle Jr. for lending his mad drum skills!

Cole Phillips for crushing the guitar!

Jonathan Roye for mixing it so perfectly!

Mike Monseur for mastering!

&

OneRPM for distribution!

If you haven’t streamed or purchased “Just Another Late Night” I’ll drop the link to it here:

As always, thank you for reading! Thank you for allowing me to do the art that I love & be the artist I am!

I’d also love to know your thoughts on the song & how it relates to you personally, so feel free to leave a comment below!

Much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Why You Should Be Pre-Saving Releases From Independent Artists

Hiya!

I’m sure if many of you are like myself you often find yourself faced with an artist friend or an artist you follow prompting you to pre-save their upcoming release. And if you’re also like myself the first thing to usually go through your mind is “why would I do that? I don’t even know if the song is good or not yet.” Well, I’m here to tell you today, that doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, I’m also going to tell you why!

Back in the day, when people were still buying tracks/eps/albums/etc, (which if you’re still doing that, you’re a saint in the eyes of artists & writers) you could often preorder said piece of musical art & that made sense, because it’s like preordering a book or a game or whatever else you may be excited for! It gave the artist distributed the piece a leg up, especially where charts & sales are concerned.

How does this translate to our modern era of streaming?

Well, much like preorders, pre-saves give us as independent artists a leg up in an industry where the charts & playlists often favor the labels & the signed artists. It gives us a behinds the scenes way of saying “this is how many people are already interested in this song on day one, imagine how many more will be when you add it to your super exclusive editorial playlist!” And that counts EVEN IF YOU NEVER LISTEN TO THE SONG!!!

That’s right, you don’t even have to stream the song, the pre-save is enough!

I mean, by all means listen to the song because that’s somebody’s hard work they poured time, love, money, & effort into! It deserves to be heard! You never know, it may end up being your cup of tea too!

I have been hearing more & more independent artists vamping up massive pre-save campaigns just to get the attention of the editorial playlisters on the major music streaming platforms, & you know what, it’s working! Slowly but surely these artists are getting thrown onto major playlists in part because their songs deserve to be there, but a lot of the time because it got flagged as a song of interest simply from the number of pre-saves.

All of this is meant to say help independent artists out & pre-save their releases! It takes like 30 seconds to do & you could be a major boost to their career! In addition to, you know, being a good friend/supporter for those of us out here doing the thing all by our lonesome!

SPEAKING OF….

I have a new single that comes out on June 24th called “Just Another Late Night!” You’d be doing me a humongous favor by going in & pre-saving it to your streaming platform of choice or even all of them you’re a part of if you feel like going above & beyond! I’m going to post the pre-save link below, again, please take thirty seconds more out of the couple minutes you’ve set aside to give this a read & pre-save my next single! It’s a bop, I promise!

Blog: A 12 Week Accelerator & The Offer

Hello loves, how are we today?

Yesterday I finished a 12 week accelerator called the six figure artist. In this class, hosted by Lindsey Kirkendall, me & 10 other artists were put through a series of different tasks over the span of the 12 weeks where we were asked to reframe our thinking & belief systems about what it means to be an artist as a whole, how it’s possible to make money in the current independent artist economy, & what strengths we as artists/individuals bring to the table. In addition to that we were asked to put together an offer that we, as artists, could offer to the public that would add value to the world & help those who are walking the paths we have already trod. This accelerator is where the desire to share my object writing pieces came from, it’s also where past blogs such as Vulnerabilities & Rejection, Curiosity & Experience, Understanding Your Value, &, of course, Object Writing came from. This course also encouraged me to step out of my artistic & personal comfort zone; it got me to audition for a major musical, try on new live streaming platforms & ideas, & pushed me towards expression not hindered by the walls that I’ve built to hide being.

While many people in the course have gone through & are already out selling their respective offers mine is still a work in progress. You see in the group we narrowed down that the thing that makes me tick, the culmination, the shared thread amongst all of my many passions & hobbies, ADHD aside, is experience & curiosity. I am driven to try new things out of another of my defining words, consideration. I want to know how other people live, I want to experience their culture, their passions, I want to, as I’ve stated before, chisel away the marble encasing the man underneath. I think we as humans all do that to some extent, we use experience & curiosity to decide who we are because of the things that light us up, or as Lindsey puts it “flip our skirts up.” So I looked around at this idea of self discovery & wondered what I can do as a knowledge enthusiast to help others discover who they are.

My first offering came in the form of live performance. At the end of the day I am a lover of performing, it’s where I feel the most alive, on a stage. The idea modeled itself off of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” where in I would put on a concert & with the price of admission you would also get to experience some of my favorite things locally. From restaurants to distilleries/breweries/vineyard to shops that help fuel my many hobbies, the idea was a concert that was interactive & a little less formal. Think Sofar Sounds meets a craft fair/farmers market meets a restaurant pop-up shop meets a Q&A session. If this is an idea that “flips your skirt up” don’t worry, I’m in the process of planning one!

That exciting offering aside Lindsey & the group kept coming back to the feeling that I needed to be mentoring people, to offer my rather large knowledge & experience bank up to those who may feel a tad lost or disoriented. There in lies the second offer. The idea behind offer #2 is that I would spend five weeks with a group of individuals under my wing, prompting them to try new things, new ways of thinking, new paths, in the hope of helping them find which direction feels right for them in the next stage of their life. Originally the idea was to aim this at those who are switching from the high school world to that of the collegian. After a talk with my friend Miss Christine, whom I met through the group, they suggested that I bump my ideal participant up to those who are now exiting the college world. They stated that someone in their life had just graduated & was feeling entirely lost after spending the last 18 years of their life entirely entangled in the education system. I get it, I’ve been there, the other side of school is scary especially after we spend 82%-ish of our lives dedicated to it up til that point.

As I said above, the finalized version of this group offering is still a work in progress, but if you feel this is something you &/or someone you love could benefit from, I’d love to offer my assistance!

I truly wanted to just hop on here today & give a little insight into what I’ve been up to the last couple of months & why I’ve been posting the way that I have! Not sure what the next two weeks of posting will look like from me, as I’ll be in the UK, but you can bet there’ll be a travel blog or two to follow when it’s all said & done!

As always I hope you all have fantastic weekends! If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading, it means the world to me!

Much love to you all,

-C

Object Writing: Atlas

Deception, pain, punishment, these are all the things that brought me to where I am now; set between the crushing weight of atmosphere & the unrelenting density of earth sprawled out before me. I shift uncomfortable, the literal weight of the world on my shoulders, my knees bleed from the sharp mountain tops forced beneath them. My existence has become suffering, destined to stand tall & strong for an eternity watching life & time slip by. I am cursed, infinitely cursed all because of the need to support those who raised me, who cared for me, who gave me power & purpose in this world. I have been ripped from my lofty throne & thrust into the servitude of Gods that don’t serve me or mine. It is here that I am destined to spend my forever burdened with keeping two loving bodies from one another, doomed to be a passive member of creation, a watcher, a monument of strife, a beacon of warning. I heft the sky father farther away from my mother earth & bear his weight reluctantly all while life goes on without me, all around me, oblivious to the sacrifice I have been forced to make.

Blog: Vulnerabilities & Rejection

There will be times in your life where people will come to you in their most brazen & honest moments. They will intrust you with information about who they are, what they stand for, who they love, what they do, etc. It is your job as a friend, parent, sibling, lover, mentor, etc to remain as judgment free as humanly possible & make that person feel seen & heard & accepted in those moments.

I’m sure many of you have already had such encounters in your life. If not, there may be a reason why. There is a lesson I came across a few years ago that has stuck with me to this day. I can’t for the life of me recall where I heard it, if I could I’m sure it’d be linked below., but he point of this discussion was “testing the waters” specifically where the ‘parent/child’ relationship is concerned. In the discussion it was brought up that children will often, as the name would imply, test the waters with their parents. They try to gage little bits of information on how their parents may feel regarding certain topics or use hypotheticals to see what the outcome would be if they were blatant, honest, & authentic with their parental units. Often parents fail the test, they give their child an answer that builds a wall or creates a divide & all of the sudden, several months or years down the line, these parents feel like they don’t know who their kids are anymore. That’s because their child has decided it’s in their best interest to stay resigned because they no longer feel safe sharing information with their parents.

So too do we do this to the people we care about. Our friends gage our responses on how we feel about certain things or our willingness to be openminded before they confide in us. If we don’t pass the test, the relationship remains shallow. I pride myself on being able to be the keeper of the true lives & selves of many of those I hold dearest to myself. You see I’ve built up an err of compassion. My friends & loved ones know they can come to me with anything, as their true & authentic selves & know that I will be grateful for their vulnerabilities & embrace them as who they are, accepting the information they’ve told me as their truth, knowing it may have been a conversation, confession, or thought years in the making.

We never know how long these machinations stew in the minds of our peers. It may have taken them years to have the courage to voice exactly what they’re trying to say, it may have taken years for them to even come to the conclusion themselves & they felt safe making you privy to this new found part of self. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this person felt it pertinent enough to tell you, they saw you as a large enough part of their life or even someone they thought they could receive counsel from. You have been honored with vulnerability, the worst possible thing you could do is respond with judgment or rejection.

The more occasions that your loved ones come to you with their vulnerabilities, the more you meet them with love & understanding, the deeper your relationships & bonds will grow. As a friend we can easily let those who reject us go or cut them from our lives but when it’s a family member, it becomes much harder. When holidays & family gatherings are still a thing for the member who feels estranged or like they can’t be authentic in those spaces, the time spent wearing that mask of “the perfect family member” can be exhausting & disheartening.

We are social beings, creatures of community, & when our chosen community meets our authenticity with a cold shoulder it scars, deeply. Feeling the outcast in an environment meant to cultivate & embrace your humanity gets very lonely very quick.

My challenge for you this week is to be honest with yourself. To look at the times where maybe you fell short of being the perfect confidante, friend, lover, or mentor when someone chose to confide something deeply personal in you. I then want you to reach out to those people, to mend the gaps, & in turn, to share your own vulnerabilities. I also want you to find someone you deem “safe” & foster a space to be vulnerable with them. Fortify that relationship, for as the song goes, “we all need somebody to lean on.”

I hope you have a fantastic week going ahead!

Much love to you all & appreciate you taking the time to read my thoughts every week.

Thank you, truly,

-C

Blog: Curiosity & Experience

There’s a quote that recently surfaced from an interview that Jim Carrey did with TIFF about four years ago. The topic involved brought into light Carrey’s own struggles with mental health & finding identity, even at his current age of sixty years old. Jim talks about the characters he’s played over the years & states that this menagerie of characters also includes his best known one “Jim Carrey.” He then goes on to say something that really struck me. He asked the interviewer if they knew the different between sadness & depression. The interviewers shrugged. Carrey the said the following:

“People talk about depression all the time. The difference between depression & sadness is sadness is just from happenstance-whatever happened or didn’t happen for you, or grief, or whatever it is. Depression is your body saying “f*ck you, I don’t want to be this character anymore, I don’t want to hold up this avatar that you’ve created in the world. It’s too much for me.”

You should think of the word ‘depressed’ as ‘deep rest.’ Your body needs to be depressed. It needs deep rest from the character that you’ve been trying to play.”

— Jim Carrey on TIFF, Sept 22nd, 2017

I know that quote is a little blunt & I’m sure stirs up interesting thoughts or emotions for yourself. Whether you agree or disagree with Jim’s point of view is beside the point here. I’d like to invite you to follow me down the rabbit hole of my own thoughts regarding the quote at hand.

I remember the first time depression hit me, I think I was around seventeen at the time. I felt crazy, truly I felt like I was going mad, my mood would swing randomly, I would dive into emotional lulls fairly often, & could never seem to climb back out into the light. My parents, God bless them, didn’t know what to do with me so they sent me to their company therapist at the time. A wildly artistic woman, my first therapist introduced me to the works of Kahlil Gibran, an American-Lebanese artist, writer, poet, & philosopher, an author I love & frequent even to this day. She specifically wanted me to read the segment of Gibran’s book The Prophet called “On Children.” In the book a prophet arrives in a village & basically hosts a Q&A session for the town to come & grill him on his philosophies, this is what she had me read.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Her point in prescribing this passage was that I had not embraced my own thoughts, beliefs, & feelings. I was going off of my heritage, which we all do naturally. I wanted so badly to fit in as the ideal midwestern good ole boy that I’d completely neglected the actually person residing in my body. Furthermore, I hadn’t just ignored him, I’d straight up avoided him.

I’m a lover of media, as an art form, I feel it to be truly limitless. I love film, invigorating stories & novels, video games with compelling narratives, & music the makes me feel something in a profound manner. I still do to this day. I’m not saying these things are bad or that these things hindered my personal growth, I actually think I’m hinting at the opposite. You see media, in addition to my escapism into characters played on a stage or the role I assumed of the “country star,” allowed me to try on different hats. It allowed me to make connections with my true self in ways that it took me far too long to realize. Media was giving me the vicarious experiences I needed to chisel away the marble covering the man underneath.

Through these new & differing stories I began to embrace the thrill of curiosity. I wanted to know & feel more, I wanted to experience more & see the world through more eyes than had preciously been offered to me. I became obsessed with experiencing food first. Those that know me will tell you I proudly wear the obnoxious moniker of “foodie,” but I am. I’m always astounded by the ways in which culture shapes food, the way science shapes food, the way art shapes food, the way history shapes food. If you’ve ever been on a trip with me you can also attest to the fact that I tend to build my travel around food. There’s so much that a plate of food can say in just a single bite.

From food naturally followed drink, in addition to the aforementioned, travel. With each new experience I gained insight, with gained insight I gained empathy & compassion. The marble continued to get chiseled away.

I dove head first into my curiosity, it allowed me to find the facets of myself that I love & taught me how to manage & confront the parts I find less desirable. So too did curiosity & experience allow me to pilfer through the box of passions & pull the things that spoke to me, leaving the rest behind. That’s a journey that’s an ongoing process for sure!

You see in the past I’d become so ingrained in the miasma of what was in vogue that I abandoned some of the brightest parts of my being. I gave into what society wanted me to be, what my community wanted me to be, what my family wanted me to be, what the media wanted me to be that I became so convinced I couldn’t find success as an artist unless I forced myself into the preconceived boxes I’d been presented with. I’d looked at the world around me & found, white CIS male aspects aside, that my voice, my authentic voice, was one neither worth celebrating nor promoting. I thank God that I’ve since cast those feelings aside.

We are creatures of habit, us humans. We get so stuck in our ways that we forget just how massive the world is & how varied & diverse life can be when it’s allowed to flourish without the constraints of expectation. This is why I urge people to travel, this is why I urge people to make friends with people different than them, this is why I urge people to experience cuisine & media that may seem foreign or taboo to you because at the end of the day we’re all human & the veins of humanity run deep. Hell, you may even be surprised what you uncover about yourself along the way!

I hope you have an incredible week, I challenge you to go out & try something new this weekend; read a new type of book, watch a movie that follows someone whose life is drastically different from your own, be bold & unafraid to change your opinions or perspectives when presented with new information or lifestyles that aren’t reflective of your own experiences. After all, how boring a stagnant life would be?

Much love to you all,

-C

Object Writing: Easel

It stares tentatively at me every time I enter the spare room at the end of the upstairs hall, longing for the attention it had amorously received in its former life. What once belonged to my inspired grandmother now stands forgotten, collecting dust out of sight & out of mind. A half finished painting rests lazily against its frame, the acrylic paint of which still encrusts the shelf that hoists it aloft. It's been a while since this easel has been loved, properly loved that is. It was once the advocate for beautiful expressions of art; oil slicked splotches of plumage, delicately washed lofty cliffs overlooking the sea set under the watchful eye of a salt white lighthouse, true enchantment put to pigment. Now it yearns for such activity, its use long dismissed by the passing fancies of a neuro-divergent brain. Poor, lonely easel, you are so deserving of the flourish of life you once received in the past. I guess it may be time to once again crack out the paints & feel the tug of creativity.

Blog: Object Writing

I realized today that I never gave context to the “Object Writing” posts I’ve been making. I’m sure for a lot of you outside of the creative world & even for those within, their materialization has been bizarre. I’ve blindsided you with videos & blog posting that of course make no sense out of context, so please allow me to do some explaining!

This blog will once again contain a story about Leena Regan by the way!

Back in the summer with the soft launch of Leena & her husband Max’s Australian music school, The Songbird Society, Leena started doing artist & writer outreach. Part of that outreach included creating a group that would center around object writing. Object writing is a Berklee School of Music songwriting practice where you are given a random object & told to write a paragraph or so around it. This paragraph must include sensory details (sight, smell, taste, feel, sound) as well as somewhat of a short story it is all wrapped up in. This is a practice meant to be done daily to get the creative juices flowing. It forces you to give random objects context in your mind & create a narrative around them.

Fast forward six months to now. I’m a part of an artist accelerator at the moment that is forcing us to think of our brand & marketing efforts in new in interesting ways, this also translates, naturally, to content! I’d been sharing some of the object writing that I had been doing the last couple of months with Evan who suggested that some of them were good enough to share! I brought it up with my accelerator group & they loved the idea, especially since Instagram Reels & TikToks are such great discovery tools these days!

I thought & thought & thought about how I wanted to share these little snippets of writing I’d done; I thought about maybe just posting the script & reading over it, I thought about just making them blogs or even YouTube vids, but in the end I came back to a method one of my current favorite TikTok users utilizes!

The account in question, @ewistone, has a series of videos he calls “Beautiful Words that Describe Obscure Emotions.” In this series he posts a video that relates to the word in question, voice overs it, & has legible text scrolling along the way. I decided that was the format I wanted to take my inspiration from.

I picked the object writing prompt that I thought would be the easiest to film as my tester, Chapel, & set out to East Nashville to film my video. In hindsight I definitely should have done the voice over first so I knew how long to make the video, but I guess you live & learn.

It’s now been a month since I started the object writing videos & while they haven’t necessarily taken off in the manner I’d hoped they would, I’m still believing they’re going to be a vehicle for me to reach new fans & friends. I’ve now posted a total of four; Chapel, Biscuits, Track, & Teddy Bear. You can find them here, on this blog every Wednesday or on TikTok & Instagram Reels the same day!

As this is still a fairly fresh endeavor I’d love to know your thoughts! I’d love to know ways in which I can improve them, how you’d like them to show up, even any objects you want me to write about! I’d also love to know, honestly, how you feel about them! I apologize for the wonky friday blog schedule this past month as well, I’m still trying to figure out where the object writing fits into my weekly schedule & am still adapting!

Have the loveliest of weekends,

-C

Blog: Persevere

Hi lovelies, how has your day been?!

I hope you’re having yourself a wonderful August in spite of the garbage can fire that seems to be the world at the moment. There’s a lot of pain & heavy feelings going around & I know that so many of you are feeling them so deeply with every fiber of who you are. In all honesty I started this blog with a completely different intent in mind, I was going to write about something that has nothing to do with any of this but as I’m sat down to write, this is what has come to the surface.

I don’t want to get into the specifics of what is happening locally, nationally, globally, etc., not because I’m afraid to steer into the politics on it (you should know me better than that by now) but because I feel this blog needs more general appeal. It needs to be able to be stumbled upon years from now & spark something in the reader outside of the timeframe of its current intent. I’m not ascribing to this some grand purpose or importance because I know it won’t be that, this is just the thoughts of a late twenty-something with a heavy heart trying to inject the smallest amount of light back into the darkness in the hopes that it ignites something brighter in you that you can pass along.

The world is a dark place but there’s so much beauty to be had in it. I know at times that can be hard to see, we’re blinded by the headlines & the disasters we’re faced with, but I’ve found that humanity thrives best not in the moments of grand retribution & triumph but in the small moments that remind us what it is to be alive. It’s in the moments of soft realization where you are reminded of the things you love & why you love them. It’s in the daily mountains we climb, each looking far different from those of our peers but still often requiring immense effort to best. Humanity is found in the perseverance of life because how else do we define life if not the will to keep going even when everything is screaming at you to give up?

I know I don’t have all the answers, I don’t claim to & there is immeasurable beauty in that, in the mystery. We are amazing, luminous beings who often do such dark things to one another with little to no regard. We pick fights, we subjugate those we deem less than, we rage war, & rip apart our planet but I believe, in the end, the light will prevail. I know it’s hard. I know it is. I know there are days when it feels hopeless, where you feel lost in all the noise, or shoved aside, placed in the background. I know that feeling sucks. I’m not here to say the night is always darkest before the dawn, I’m here to urge you to look for those incredible moments of beauty. I’m also fully aware that this may come across as “fluff” or the drippings of my bleeding heart. I mean it, I do & I believe it myself.

I know things look bleak. I know that brighter tomorrow looks a million miles away & feels like it may never come at all, persevere. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither will the world or your world change over night, but brighter tomorrows are worth fighting for.

I’d be lying if I said that all of this had a clear end in mind. I just wrote what came up as it happened. These may end up just being the ramblings of the heavy hearted but I hope it ends up being more than that. I hope you get some substance out of it even if it’s the smallest of amounts. I don’t really know what to say to you other than I understand the pain that you feel, I understand the hopelessness, I understand the hurt & the abandonment you feel, I do but these are not the end all, be all. Keep pushing on & finding those moments of life that get peppered into the every day. Treat people with kindness & love unconditionally.

I love you immensely.

Happy Friday.

-C

Blog: The Rolodex of Resentment

I had this week’s blog idea come to me in a dream, no literally it came to me in a dream & much like the owner of the music industry herself, Ms. Taylor Swift, I wrote it down for all of you to read today! Congrats! In said dream I was presented with a rolodex style presentation of a lot of my memories since I had moved to Nashville except for they all had one thing in common; they were all memories that I had come to resent for one reason or another. All of these resurgences were very vivid & I got to witness each of them one by one, over & over again until I understood the message I was being given at which point I awoke.

In the still early light of the then 5 AM morning I was overcome with a great sadness. It wasn’t a “poor, poor me” type of sadness but more of a sadness from the realization that I’d been carrying all of these memories around aimlessly for the last ten years I’ve worked in this industry. I had held on to so much resentment for so many different people because I felt lied to by them, cheated by them, forgotten by them & it had grown to the point where it was beginning to affect my self esteem & creativity.

The music industry is a hard business, it truly is. It’s all about who you know & who knows you; it is truly a business built on relationships. That’s why I think a lot of these memories had dug their claws so deeply into my psyche & had such an influence on me over the years. I’d had people of influence promise to pass along projects or give things a listen just to be left in the dark. I’ve had friends go on to great success that then turn “too good for you” & leave you in the tracks before getting on a stage or getting a write up in a magazine all about how we have to “help the next person in line.” I’ve had people I looked up to, who I saw as mentors disappear out of the blue, or friends in industry positions more willing to help others than those they call their close friends & I’m certain I’ve done this unintentionally to people as well.

What’s my point in all of this? Why dedicate a whole blog to a dream & a realization? Because resentment & the emotions associated with it are heavy. Jealousy & envy are heavy, bitterness is heavy, grudges & ill will are heavy & I struggle with them. I struggle with leaving behind the weight of envy in the face of other people’s success, especially those I’m close to & if I’m being honest, I hate that. I want to be so openly & honestly proud of my friends, because they work so damn hard & are so talented & worthy of accolades & success in their own right but I always have the shadow of “why not me” lurking.

I’m trying to get over these things, I really am. I’m trying to let the past go. I’m trying to meet the success of my friends with genuine, unbothered happiness for them because they deserve that. I think this dream was alluding to all the work I thought I’d done & telling me “oh, no, no, you still have so far to go!”

I hadn’t realized I was carrying around all of this unpacked baggage, that I was letting the past or the perceived views of others no longer directly in my life have such an influence on my life, but it had. I’d gotten to the point where I started to believe crazy things about myself. I started to believe that I must not be a good artist if not even my friends are willing to help me, I began to believe that I was a bad songwriter or a bad singer & you know what, those things manifested themselves physically. I developed vocal chord dysfunction, I completely forgot how to write songs because I put way too much pressure on each thing I wrote being a masterpiece & I began to fall into the cracks of the music industry after I’d worked so hard & for so long to hoist myself up.

I know now these are lies that I told myself over the years. I am worthy of success, I am worthy of a thriving career in this business. I am talented both as a performer & as a writer. I am marketable as a brand, I am desirable as an artist. Dark, low vibration emotions & parasites do wonders on the body & mind, terrible wonders, but impressive none the less & I’m done letting them have an influence on me.

I want to leave this one final line for any friends of mine that may happen to read this. I am so, so incredibly proud of each of you & all of the things you’ve accomplished in your lives. I am overjoyed to see you soar & hope you know I will always be there to support you. If I have ever done any of the above listed things to you, please reach out to me & let me know.

Much love to you all,

-C