Release: Missed Calls

The Song

Missed Calls started out life as a conversation between my dear friend, Frye, & me. She & I were in her Burbank apartment studio one autumnal afternoon & were discussing seasonal depression. We each passed anecdotes & experiences back & forth discussing everything from the physical/mental sensations, the way it feels both externally & internally, & the shape & form our respective depressive episodes take. She had this idea written down called “Missed Calls” that centered around the themes that we were discussing as well as the idea of being stuck in a depressive state & finding yourself unable to even go so far as to answer your phone, especially when you know a lot of the calls would be people trying to be you “savior.” Naturally it felt like the obvious choice for a write seeing how we both had experience in the field. I remember her & I discussed at length this feeling of wanting to disappear. I often refer to it as the desire to become nothing, to just sink into a hole in the ground dissipate into the aether. It’s not a desire for an ending, simply the desire to not exist for a while, then reenter life at a later time. Often these episodes take the form of crawling into bed & staring at the wall for a long while, which is exactly where we started the song.

We left the session with only a pre-chorus & a chorus if I remember correctly. We had the following written:

“The whispers in my head, pulling at my threads tell me that I’ll make it. The whispers in my head say I’ll end up dead if I don’t face it but I’ve got missed calls, I’m staring at the wall, crawling deeper cuz I’d rather not exist at all. It’s a free fall down the rabbit hole, spiraling giving into the siren’s call. I promise that I’ll tell you when it’s over, I promise that I’ll stay sober, you don’t need to try & save my life. Got missed calls, staring at the wall, going deeper, yeah, I’d rather not exist at all.”

& a lot of that ended up, as is, being the pre & the chorus. Naturally, over the years (yes, years) it ended up being massaged & falling into place a little better, but for the most part, there it was. And so it stayed for what I think was two or so years. It wasn’t until Jess & I had wrapped Consequences Of My Honesty & were looking for the follow-up single that Missed Calls popped back up & demanded to be heard.

We had spent the afternoon session in Jess’s home studio going through options for the next single but nothing that I played felt right. We even tried to come up with a song ourselves but again, it all felt a bit passive. It wasn’t until the demo of Missed Calls tugged on my brain & said “hey, remember me?!” that we found our follow-up!

At this point Missed Calls was still only a pre-chorus & a chorus so, not wanting to waste the session, we set about flushing out production ideas & figuring out what we thought a depressive episode would sound like. With space for verses inserted I took the track back to Frye via Zoom & we set up a session to finish it out.

For our verses we really wanted to get back into channeling that feeling of sliding into debilitating depression. Verse one was easy because we basically just took the inception of the feeling & injected that into the lyrics. I had this idea that it was somewhat similar to the experience of giving into any vice or altered state experience where you can feel the waves of effect happening but your body & your psyche do their best to fight it off until you ultimately succumb. Hence the opener of “turn on, breathe in, freak out” which is a reference to the saying “turn on, tune in, drop out” about LSD. The lyrics from there continued along that theme going for a “take your medicine” type feel where you don’t want to but you feel its inevitability & it’s more comfortable to give into it than it is to fight it, especially since it’s often fruitless to do so, at least in our case. I had this imagery in my mind of the acceptance of drowning. The weirdly macabre serenity that is often portrayed in movies when someone accepts that they have been met with their fate & they surrender to it. Verse two was a little different, it was a bit more of an uphill battle as most songwriters will tell you second verses often are.

I’m a very analytical songwriter. I view songs like a story & often come up with an outline of where I think the story should go & the beats that I think it needs to hit along the way. Frye & I both struggled to find the beats of the second verse because we felt that it was hard to expand upon the feeling of ‘nothing’ once you’re in it. After all, nobody wants to listen to a story that is all more of the same across the board. So we didn’t try to. Instead we opted to take in the direction of expansion. We expounded upon what was already there, doing our best to demonstrate that sunken place. To us, the middle of a depressive episode feels like drifting. It feels like you’re in an emotional void, not really existing but also not being entirely detached from your physical being; a ‘void of all consuming nothing.’ Like you’re a cosmonaut sheltered in your vessel made of blankets, drifting through the vacuum of space. We also didn’t want to have the entirety of our song be consumed by doom & gloom, so we injected little pockets of hope throughout, like the knowing that the state is temporary & eventually you will ‘resurface.’

Finally, for the pre-choruses we decided that the punch of the line regarding ‘death’ needed saving til the last, so we rewrote the previous two with the intention of that inner dialogue getting louder & louder throughout. So we go from whispers, to voices, to screams. Apparently not everyone has an inner dialogue, so for those of you out there without who have no idea what I’m talking about, my apologies. However, we both found that ours tends to be almost ‘guardian angelic’ in its tone during these moments. It’s reassurance & understand but on the flip side you have the undercurrents of self deprecation. The “I understand, take your time” is weighed against the “you’re worthless & lazy” & depending on the state you’re in, often the scales tip one way or another. We opted for the helpful angle I think, again wanted to inject those glimmers of hope & show that the voices pulling you along, tethering you to reality, often also shine the spotlight towards the surface & give you a helpful nudge that says “whenever you’re ready, there’s the exit.”

I want to get ahead of the line about death that reads “the screaming in my head says I’ll end up dead if I don’t face it” & explain away any insinuation of suicidal ideology or tendency. The line isn’t meant to alarm in the way that I think some people who have heard it think it does. Isn’t that always in the question when dealing with topics of mental health? Of course. Have majority of us faced the depths of our respective ends & turned away towards the light & chosen that? Mostly, yes. But I think that what we are referring to here is that delicate balance. When it comes to diving there are two alternating forces at work. You have what is called ‘surface suck’ where you get pulled to the surface because of the expansion of gases (air in the lungs, sinuses, etc.) in the body with the loss of pressure, then you have the opposite where the depth & the pressure over come you & you sink deeper & deeper because the air has been constricted & compressed to nothing under the weight of all of the water above you. A depressive episode often sits in the space of perfect buoyancy, tugging you one way or another. When I say “you’ll end up dead” it’s not overstepping to say mean that you’ll end up leaning clinical, but I mean more you’ll end up sinking into the depths with little to no way of finding the light without help. You will end up worse off if you don’t keep your eye on the exit & rising back up out of the episode.

The last thing that I want to touch on before we move into production was an idea that came from the lovely, Leena Regan. I went to her when I couldn’t seem to figure out where to end the song & she suggested flipping the final chorus, doing a drop out of the ‘missed calls’ refrain, putting that at the top of the chorus & simply ending on a cliff hanger with “I’d rather not exist at all.” Which is where we went & I think it totally has simply the dopest effect!

The Production

With production you often have target songs or specific sounds or effects that you like & use as reference. Even if you aren’t blatantly pulling up a song & saying “that guitar sound,” “that drum feel,” etc., it often finds its way in through “what about a such & such feel with so & so style production.” For us those sounds came from multiple locations.

I had been listening to Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poet’s Department, so naturally that made its way in to a degree. I really liked the sparse yet moving production on “I Look In People’s Windows,” the way it used plucky acoustic guitar, strings, & heavy rhythm which in a lot of ways was also similar to “Satellite” by Harry Styles.

I had decided pretty early on that I didn’t need Missed Calls to be ‘strictly country’ or even lean that direction. I was fine weaving in & out of genres to suit the song & the style that it asked for. I am a genre alchemizing singer-songwriter after all. A few years ago Lizzo says “genres are dead” & I took that to heart & it seems so did a lot of other artists, especially female artists like Taylor Acorn, Beyoncé, Kacey Musgraves, or Taylor Swift. I’m fine releasing a country song one month, then a pop the next, or a rock song after that. It doesn’t bother me one bit because the through line is still me, even if the instrumentation is constantly shifting around that.

Additional references were “Issues” by Julia Michaels, “A House In Nebraska” by Ethel Cain, especially for the piano, & naturally some of The 1975 with “If I Believe You,” specifically for the choral lines.

Jess & I also decided pretty early on that we wanted to “Hey Ya” or “1975” the song where in you take a song with pretty deep, serious subject matter & make it more palatable for your audience through the use of ‘fun’ instrumentation & production, opting for a more upbeat feel instead of sliding into the dirge-y ballad feel that the song feels that it should be on paper.

I’m also someone who really likes throwing real world sounds into songs, not just in the form of acoustic instruments, but also using sampling or interpolation. With the theme of calls & phones throughout we used that to our advantage. At certain points we inserted our own versions of iconic iPhone sounds (sorry Android users, we weren’t deeply familiar with your sounds like we are with the Apple library). We didn’t want to run into copyright issues so we opted for recreating the sounds using slightly modified melodies, tracing the ‘themes’ of certain sounds, or flat out having me mimic them in a microphone. There’s one such instance at the end of verse two in which I make the ‘email send’ sound & another in a pre where I ‘pop’ like the key tones used during texting. Additionally, in the second verse, during the section that talks about giving into the void we immolated the sound of a black hole like the one NASA released a few years back.

Being a vocal major, I also often get to annoy Jess with my insistent vocal stacks, this song was no different. With Consequences we opted for more of a “Avatar: The Last Airbender Closing Credits” feel for the bridge, here we went with “Grassland Chants” from The Lion King in addition to the multitude of choral stacks used throughout the verses & the chorus refrains.

With most of the song finished we both felt like there was something major missing from the production. I decided to bring in my cello & try a few things out on it to see if they filled in the gaps & I honestly think it made the song. We almost treated it like a vocal (cello is the closest instrument to the human voice) & layered & stacked it as well, alternating between plucked notes & sweeping bowed bass lines.

We ran into a unique issue when we felt we’d wrapped principle production. It was unique because neither Jess or I could hear it, but those under the age of 28 all seemed to hear it almost instantly with laser precision. There was a frequency in one of my vocal lines that only Evan & a few others could hear, all of whom are under 28 years old. We actually had to bring Evan into the studio to pin point where & what the sound was, because no matter how we tried, we couldn’t hear it at all. It seems we found it & took care of it though…hopefully.

Another thing that I’m sure drives Jess up a wall is that I am a meticulous mixer. I know how I want the song to sound in my head & I am obsessive until it gets there. The annoying part of modern mixing is that it has to sound good across a multitude of speakers. It has to sound good in proper speakers, in car speakers, in headphones, in earbuds, in phone speakers, so finding that balance can often be a pain in the ass. You’ll think you have it entirely figured out then you go listen to the song from a different platform & it suddenly sounds like garbage. We struggled for a minute to get it right but I’m so glad we took the time to & I’m grateful for the patience it took from others to get there. Additionally, a special thanks to Max Hurrell & Joshua Gleave for their help on it!

Finally the song went off to Adam Grover for master where it was boosted, leveled out, & returned as a completed bop!

I feel it may be helpful to help people who don’t know understand the difference between a mix & a master. A mix is individual tracks; track volumes, track equalization (turning up & down bass/mids/treble & everything in-between), panning (left & right stereo placement), automation (volume fades, pans, etc.), & any effects applied there within. Mastering then takes that overall mix & polishes it. It makes it consistent volume wise with other songs on the market & also adjusts levels & equalization of the song as a whole. It’s the top coat of the song. Don’t skimp on either.

The Visuals

I had this idea, unfortunately, a little too late of shooting the artwork & other digital assets in a pool. In my mind I was fully clothed with flowing clothing on & there would be a light from above shining down into the water. Additionally I had the thought to bring in a blanket with me to wrap up in. My initial idea was very much in line with “The Fall of Icarus,” having the blanket & the clothing being like the wings that had burnt by flying to close to the sun.

My initial idea came to me while Evan & I were in Kansas which would have made the perfect photo location as I could have asked for access to the fourteen foot deep pool at Midwest Aquatics. I wouldn’t put Evan in dive gear & used an underwater rig to shoot. As I stated, unfortunately I thought of it while we were in Kansas, on the second to last day of our trip there. All of the clothing I had in mind was back home, as was our lighting rig, & dive gear. So unfortunately, it didn’t get shot where I’d planned.

I then spent then next couple of weeks searching high in low in Nashville to find a deep pool that we could shoot in. I asked friends who I thought may have access to pools, looked into renting one for an hour or two, but all roads came up dry…Eventually Evan decided to reach out to our HOA & see if they would allow us to use our neighborhood pool after hours. Which they agreed to!

We shot the album artwork for Missed Calls on a bit of a time constraint. The day we had planned to shoot, there ended up being a thunderstorm, & the day after we ended up shooting we were headed out of town for a week & still needed to wrap up things at home. We also basically had an hour window to get in & get out before a rain storm rolled in. The artwork was shot in five feet of water with Evan using my iPhone 15 Pro Max inside of my Oceanic Dive Housing, in the midst of a rainstorm all while I had an active ear infection & my phone kept overheating. I held my breath as long as I could, as did Evan, & I used dive weights hidden in the pockets of my pants to hold me down under the water.

The rough images we got from the pool session & the finish product are two wildly different things. I have Evan to thank for that. He took these often very plain looking pictures & made them extraordinary. We Bob Rossed & “embraced the happy little accidents” & those ended up being some of our favorite pieces from the shoot.

The image for album art itself was an instant love of mine. Evan expanded on a very cropped image, a shoulder to shoulder frame with only a little space above my head & down to around my upper shins, & made it a marvel. I sent him a picture of a field of coral that looked similar to the way the blanket was wrapping & he nailed the execution of the addition.

We actually bickered back & forth about the artwork itself. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted from it in mind & so did I. In the end we took the best of each version & combined in into what it is! Which is something that I know both he & I are very proud of.

All in all, the photo assets came from a tight squeeze, a long shot, & a shoot that Evan was very nervous to do & ended up with some honestly incredible art on his part.

The canvas & the promo video also was a bit of a collaboration. I took a video that I had taken while diving in The Philippines that we both loved & that we felt encapsulated the feeling of the song. I had my camera set at the wave line & was allowing them to wash over the lens all while it rained. If you look closely at it you’ll actually see a massive bug fly into frame for a total of two shots. Evan then color graded it to match the artwork & I went in & learned how to do a mask dodge in Final Cut Pro to make the title & the information for the single wash in & out with the waves. It took me far too long but I’m so happy with the results!

Final Thoughts

If you are reading this, if you have made it this far, then Missed Calls is out. It’s available to you! You can go listen to it, share it, express your feelings about it, & make it your own! I am incredibly proud of this song & am beyond grateful for all who helped bring it to life. They say it takes an army & this song surely did. Missed Calls is a piece of me, it’s a very honest expression of my life & reflects the feeling & the experience that I know a lot of people out there share. I hope that this song finds a place in your life, even if it’s just from an empathetic level, or even just because you find the production fun. I don’t know how far this song will go, but that doesn’t matter. I have put it out into the world & if even one person connects with it, then I have done my job.

You can find links to Missed Calls below the credits, there will be an embedded link that should then link you to the streaming platform of your choosing & allow you to access the song!

Thank you all so much for reading this, for pre-saving the song if you did, & for listening to it! Creating music is one of my great joys & I’m so fortunate to get to share that with you all!

Credits:

Written By:

Charlie Rogers & Frye

Produced, Engineered, & Mixed By:

Jess Grommet

Performed By:

Charlie Rogers

Keys, Guitars, Rhythm, Synth, & Programing By:

Jess Grommet

Cello & Additional Voices By:

Charlie Rogers

Mastered By:

Adam Grover

Photography, Graphic Design, & Digital Assets By:

Evan Michael

Distributed By:

TooLost

Publicity By:

Trend PR

Special Thanks To:

Joshua Gleave, Savannah Hitchcliffe, Max Hurrell, Leena Regan, Ethel Smallmon Ford, & Jenna Vitolo

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Blog: *Insert Title Here

To be honest, I’m here staring at my screen, watching the place indicator blink on what was a previously blank page with the word “blog:” typed in the title slot above. It’s been that way for about an hour now & while I don’t know if anything will come of it, I figured it was better for me to just start typing & figure the rest out along the way. I don’t know what this will be, if it will be anything at all. I can’t promise you that it will be worth your time to read or that it will change your mind about some goings on in the world at the moment, I’m just a guy sat at his computer, desperately trying to squeeze some creative juice onto a virtual page. At the end of the day is that enough? Is my lack of prophetic insight this week enough to classify it as content, is it enough to keep those who read this virtual collection of thoughts & experiences satiated for another week? I don’t know, but here I am, still typing away.

Maybe this will end up being more of a brain dump, at least that’s the direction it seems to be going following that previous paragraph. What meta commentary I have for you all this week. But I don’t outwardly know what I have that is exciting for me to talk about with you all, & maybe that’s okay too.

A part of me is sitting here saying “just delete the whole thing & go do something else, no one is going to want to read this nonsense, just call off the blog for this week until you have something interesting to say.” Then there’s another side of me telling me that that is a cop out. That I need to power through & put data to page simply for the act of doing so & to hell with the idea that having it be accepted by anyone as a genuine ‘blog entry.’ I can’t dictate how you feel about it any more than it seems I can come up for an idea for this week’s entry. But to some extent, isn’t this an idea?

Isn’t my rambling, my word vomit, some form of an idea? Because if I’m being frank, I want you to relate to me. Selfishly I want you to read this & understand & empathize with what it is to stare your weekly commitments in the face & come up dry with anything that you deem is of value. Which, let’s face it, we all can relate to.

If you’ve made it this far & haven’t snuck out on me, I applaud you & I guess I also thank you for your time & whatever persistence is driving you through this borderline nihilistic hogwash I am putting us all through. I can’t make promises that next week’s blog will be better or more interesting or that I’ll have a better grasp on a concept to present you all with because I don’t know those things & typically when I sit down to write with no knowing of where the blog will take my I eventually come up with something, but my inspiration is fleeting today it seems. Sorry for the run on sentence.

I don’t know if I can pull some profound meaning out of all of this for us to tie up in a neat little bow, nor am I sure that I want to, because in a lot of ways that would feel inauthentic & I fear would present me as a pontificating try hard. I truly don’t know where or when to wrap this or even why I continue typing as I am, but it is what it is I suppose.

I could, in theory, relate this all back to what it is to be a creative, to be expected to ‘turn on’ my creativity like a light switch, but that feels like playing the martyr, when in reality I’m so blessed to be able to do this. I’m blessed to have readers who return to this place like Nic Kidman in an AMC ad (at least that’s how I imagine it), I’m blessed to have the ability to afford a laptop, internet, a squarespace subscription, a domain, that allows me to have this public voice. I’m blessed to have a creative mind that I get to squeeze from time to time & I’m blessed with the aspects of myself that have drawn you all in to reading this, to listening to my songs, to liking my photos, etc. Again, no idea where I’m going with all of this.

I’m curious though. As I think this will be one of the last paragraphs of this open journey entry what this blog has left you with. What has it made you feel? What emotions has it brought up? Do you feel that I wasted your time or did you find some form of solace & comradery in my musings? Please let me know, if anything this blog has piqued my curiosity in the inner workings of you all & how you depart these brief sessions we share together each week.

As always,

Much love to you all,

…sorry I didn’t have something more interesting to say,

-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: Has The Tree Begun To Fall?

Last Friday now former country star, Maren Morris, announced her departure from country music at large. Along side Morris’s announcement she released a two song EP called “The Bridge” effectively acting as her literal musical bridge from the country world to where ever she decides to stake her claim genre wise going forward. One of the songs on the album, The Tree, is all about Morris’s fight for social justice & equality & finding it a losing battle year after year after year making the claim that she is “done filling a cup with a whole in the bottom,” & for me this all spells the beginning of what I fear will be a mass exodus from country music by artists who are tired of fighting for a better tomorrow within the genre & receiving nothing but the vitriol from its fans.

There’s a term that makes me want to gouge my ears out at the mere stupidity of it; go woke & go broke, because for starters, it’s simply not true. Many people or brands that “go woke” have done so either out of something they’ve always aligned with & feel passionate enough to speak up about or out of a highly calculated marketing plan that typically ends up working in their favor. Many people have claimed Morris & artists like her, who stand up against the disparaged treatment between the sexes in the country world, side with minorities or those being targeted in the public eye, or voice their political beliefs & morality, will end up “going broke” as a result of their “wokeness;” a term that seems to boil down into actually giving a shit about the struggles of your fellow humans & trying to make room for them to live comfortable, fulfilling lives in society. But in reality, outside of the comments section on Facebook or Twitter, have seen little to no depreciation in sales. In reality, the opposite tends to happen. People show that they care & hear the voices crying out for change or assistance & they tend to be made an ally out of it, bolstering the numbers in their fan base. Morris & the country artists that state their claim & fight for better conditions within the industry are baring their soul, not just in their statements, but also in the openness & honesty of the music they put out & I for one can understand growing tired of the hate & what appears to be a losing battle.

As I stated in the introduction to this blog, I think this is a trend that will continue, especially among the left leaning artists in the country world. Country fans have shown again & again that they’re fine making excuses for hate, racism, & bigotry in the name of often mediocre music. They’re emboldened by an artist being called out for their hateful or outdated rhetoric & end up shooting their songs to the top of the charts not out of genuine love for the songs but out of spite which then screams loudly to these mostly CIS white men, that their actions are not only perfectly fine, but are in the eyes of their fans, favorable. It’s no surprise to me then that when faced with these disheartening, unsurmountable odds that artists like Morris are dipping out of the country scene in favor of a more loving, open minded audience. I’m just amazed that it took this long.

I’ve had a note written in the “Song Ideas” section of my phone that simply reads “I’m finding it harder & harder to be a country artist & a fan.” That’s from 2020 & that sentiment seems to grow more & more as the years go on. It’s hard to stick it out & believe in an industry that frequently praises & promotes the worse in us instead of embracing those who are genuinely trying to push the envelope & make country music better for everyone. Not just the angry & the stagnant, but embracing genuine stories from genuine people. It seems the more people I talk about in this industry who are trying their damndest to cast something meaningful into the space, the more this sentiment is shared & the more disheartened we all seem to become from it. That is why I wonder if Maren is correct, if the tree that has rotted at its roots has already begun to topple under the weight of the regression that it props up.

It breaks my heart to see this, every time I see a pride playlist, or a black opry playlist, or anything remotely different pop up in the country music space it is instantly met by the worst kinds of ignorance & hatred, & when the opposite happens, when some other white dude does something problematic, it pains me to see their music fly to the top of the charts simply to “stick it” to those who called the problems to attention. I think Maren is the start. I think country will lose a lot of its current trailblazers & those who have a heart to give to this & I think it’s going to happen more & more frequently. Mark my words on that. Sometimes there’s only so much fighting you can do before you have to find your own peace, especially when the enemy is constantly advancing farther & farther into your lines. I stand with Maren & her decision, as it’s one I fight with daily, but I also understand the other side of the coin, & I don’t think I’m ready to give up my fight just yet.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Requested Blog: The Music Man & The Sea

Today we have ourselves another blog request. It’s funny, for a long time I put out feelers on weeks where I was feeling a bit like the well of my creativity is running a bit dry & most of the time those have come back with zilch. Once I rephrased the blog type as basically being my own personal request line, the requests came flooding in. I got a ton of suggestions this week but this one, which retapped the well & that felt the most intriguing to me to explore. This week’s prompt comes from my line time friend, the ever brilliant Dr. Morgan Turner. Doc Turner proposed the question: how do the ocean & music relate in my world, or how do they not?

A truly intriguing question!

If you’re someone who knows me or follows me in any small capacity you may have taken notice to my undying & blistering love for the sea. Why I don’t live by one, ask Nashville. But you see, there lies the disconnect. I have these two great loves; music & the ocean & yet the nature of the music I do & the place I inhabit keep these two worlds apart for me. Could I move to Los Angeles & be by the ocean, yes but I also have the conundrum of not wanting to inhabit a shoebox for the price of what I have here in Nashville. Really what it boils down to is that I’m unable to have my cake & eat it too, at least in the capacity that I want to be able to. So I guess that’s how they’re dissonant on a logistical & physical level, going deeper than that requires a bit more thought though.

How does the ocean relate to my music, or how does it not? To be quite frank & curt in my response, I’m not sure they do & maybe that’s a problem. Maybe a part of the reason why I feel so disjointed, disconnect, & lost most of the time is because I have forced my two great loves to be separate entities that I have to portion myself out for both spiritually & physically & maybe I need to find a way to marry the two. Maybe I need to spend a little time in & by the ocean sampling the sounds, the subtle nuances, & figuring out in what ways they inspire me to create. In all honesty, I’ve never tried to join the two & maybe that’s part of the problem.

Maybe I’m looking at my life the wrong way. Maybe instead of seeing myself as this person looking down a million different paths trying desperately to choose the right one, hoping I do, maybe I need to look at my life with the path starting in a different location.

On another note I think the ocean has always been an escape for me. It’s the place that I go to be at peace, to disconnect, to be in wonder & marvel at the world. I don’t know if it’s a place that I feel inspires me in the musical sense. Music occupies less of a therapeutic lens for me & more of a lens of enjoyment & fun. I make music because performing is what makes me feel alive. I make music because my narcissism loves a stage & a crowd & if I’m being honest, being the center of attention, something that I feel like I loathe in my day to day life. The stage is where I go to feel like I matter to society at large, the ocean is where I go to heal & dissolve away into nothing. So I guess in a lot of ways they sit at opposite ends of the spectrum.

This got a lot more introspective & revelationary (I know it’s not a word, but it should be) than I thought it would! Maybe I do need to attempt to bridge the gaps in my life a little better. Maybe I should look into finding a place that allows me to have all of my loves in one place while still keeping me out of life in what is basically a dormitory. Maybe I should be more open to that idea & the idea of relocation if I feel it’s something that will serve me & mine.

Keep these recs coming, they’re fun! If you have a blog suggestion please don’t hesitate to reach out, I’m definitely going to start a list & keep track of the ones I feel drawn to even if another occupies the weekly space!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Fine, I'll Do It Myself...

When I started recording “When He Was Me” I knew instinctively that I also wanted to put out an acoustic/stripped version of the song along side its more produced counterpart. Initially I had what we are now calling the “acoustic version” for its own full release, but after talking it out with PR & some other friends in the industry it was decided that we would treat the secondary release as supplemental. At the time of this decision the only version of “When He Was Me” that was completed was that of the original version, or what I’m calling the OG version & the timeline for the acoustic work’s completion was very tight. I began my “hi, let’s do a song together” texts to the normal avenues & producers I know but quickly found them all occupied with their own ambitious & excitingly full schedules so I found myself a bit at a loss of what to do. That’s when it hit me, what if I just…did it myself?…

Call it divine intervention, fortuitous winds, whatever, but the stars really aligned on this one. At the beginning of this process of doing something I had never done before, release something I produced/engineered/recorded/played entirely in the spare room upstairs, all I had was my MacBook with Logic Pro (recording software for those not familiar), my Lauten LA 320 microphone that I’d been using for voice over & demo work, & my Apollo Twin interface (how you connect your microphone/instruments to your computer). I was in desperate need of some studio monitors, a better workspace set up, & some plug-ins (effects added into Logic to make tracks sound or behave in a certain way), but I guess fortune favors the bold.

First came the desk. I was writing with the abundantly talented Frye in LA a few times ago when I was there & commented about how much I love her simple but hella effective studio set up. She sent me an entire gear list, including the studio desk she was using which sat around $300 on Amazon. I’d saved it to my wish list & never really thought much of it, that was until I started this project at which time I got a ping from Amazon telling me that the desk was on sale for a third of its normal price, $100. So here I sit, laptop propped up on my bright yellow studio desk!

Second came the monitors (speakers). I happened into McKay’s here in Nashville one day in search of an iPod for my niece. McKay’s is a used book/video/tech/etc warehouse by the way. While I was perusing the tech section I noticed a pair of Rokit 8s up on the shelf for the price of $190 for the pair. Now Rokits are fairly solid studio monitors & 8s are worth about $300 a piece brand new. So it was a steal. I asked the attendant about them, he said they’d been brought in a few hours earlier & worked great, so on home with me they went. I’m actually sitting here in between them listening to focus music as I type!

Last came the plug-ins. I was running a version of Melodyne already, I’d purchased it at a dizzyingly low price during their Black Friday Sale but I needed to upgrade the software to have it be affective at editing not just vocals, but polyphonic instrumentation (multiple notes being played at once, think of a guitar, ukulele, banjo, mandolin, non-MIDI piano, etc.). Once again, in waltzed a deal, $99 bucks to upgrade, normally $250. Now the deck was stacked in my favor!

With all of the pieces of my studio Infinity Gauntlet now assembled, it was time to get to work!

The first thing I did was lay down a rough. Rough vocal over simple piano chords tracked on my Roland RD-700, the only technically non-acoustic instrument that I played on the track. Tracking live piano is next to impossible to make sound good in a setting outside of an actual studio. From there I added rhythm guitar, a simple chorded finger picked pattern on my Collings Triple O that was also supplemented by full swinging strums panned left & right in the latter choruses. That’s when I hit my first snag.

You see, I don’t own a bass. What I do own is a cello, the only problem was that the bow of my cello had popped meaning the fastening holding the hairs in place had broken on one end. Another problem was that my local music shop was currently out of bows & would have to order me one. However, in the interim, I decided that I was going to track cello like a bass, using it as a plucked instrument to fill out the lower range of the song. With the bones set it was now time to fill in the intricacies of the song.

I knew I wanted to pay homage to the slide & dobro in the original version but I lack both a pedal steel & a dobro so instead I opted for a simple bottle slide on my acoustic. Tracking it in two octaves I still felt it lacking so I waited for my new bow to come in & added in the cello part later.

Next came the vocal texturing. I feel like Josh & I always end up with a stack of “Ah’s” in most of the songs we do & the OG is no exception having them lay essentially the pad for the bridge. So the “Ah’s” got tracked. Then came the Gregorian section.

I always feel like Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody when I bring up the Gregorian section, to me it bears the same energy as him saying “now comes the operatic section” & while the Gregorian section was essentially just a pad in the OG version, I wanted to do it myself in the acoustic. This ended up being the lowest I’ve had to sing since the time I sang bass in Kansas State Choir for an old Russian Hymn. We’re talking Ab2’s low. (My music nerds will get that one.)

The last bit of vocal flavoring I added in were what I refer to as the “call & response” parts. These can be found in the second & third chorus & are essentially just repeating the chorus lyrics back after they’ve been sang. They mad the original recording so I felt the need to replicate them here as well.

With all of that in place I set about tuning, adjusting, equalizing, adding reverb, etc. etc. etc. which took me the span of several weeks. From there I got some feedback from friends who felt it needed a little more drive to it, so I added Cajon & Shaker into the mix. With all of these parts established it was finally time to go in & retrack the lead vocals.

I think I ended up doing around twenty-five different takes of the song mostly all of the way through. There were times where I’d listen back & feel I was still missing the line & would go in to add another five or six takes just to make sure I got it. Then came vocal compiling, cutting & reassembling the vocal lines into the one you hear today. After that I went in to make sure the timing on certain lines fit well & certain notes that were too quiet were turned up & those that were too loud, softened. This is an entirely baseless, stupid, & not meant to be a “brag” because I have no issue with the tech, but I actually barely tuned the vocals at all, I wanted that raw performance. From there I added chorus doubles & a single layer of background harmonies to keep things simple.

Finally it was time to send off to mix. Jonathan Roye was more than patient with my steep & fumbled learning curve & allowed me ample opportunity to go back & fix the numerous mistakes I made along the way, including at one point having to go back & entirely redo the Melodyne of all of my vocals (quantize tempo, reduce loudness, increase softness, tune, etc.). After a few back & forth between him & I we passed it along to Mike Monseur who mastered the track effortlessly!

All in all it was definitely a struggle for me. There were many times where I felt like giving up or trying again to find someone else more readily equipped to do it, but I’m glad I pushed through. This is definitely going to be one of those tracks that I’m not going to be able to enjoy for myself for quite a while, simply because of all the work & stress around it. It doesn’t feel real to me that I’ve put it out, it doesn’t feel real to me that I’m not able to be hyper critical of it anymore & make tweaks, because it’s out. It’s done. It’s time to move on to the next thing & let the song be what it’s going to be!

If you’d like to stream When He Was Me (Acoustic Version) you can find it in the button below!

As Always, Much Love,

-C

Release: When He Was Me

I first heard When He Was Me about five years ago now. I believe it was 2018 but it very well could have been 2019. I had a session with Josh Gleave at his studio on music row. When I walked in Josh was wrapping up work on a demo for the song that Shay Mooney had just recently come in to lay down vocals on. He played me the song in whole since I was present & it immediately grabbed ahold of me. It was one of those songs that catches your breath from the first line & doesn’t let go until the final chord strikes. Time went on & I patiently waited for When He Was Me to make an appearance on a Dan + Shay album, but it never did. As soon as the track listing for the duo’s third album came out I & I saw that the song wasn’t among them I immediately texted Josh to find out if he could reach out to Shay to see if I could cut the song myself. Shay gave not only his blessing but also sent over a folder of about six other songs of which I chose two; When He Was Me & Something To Do (we’ll get to her at a later date). Then began the process.

Being an independent artist can make getting a big boy industry song cleared amongst the big boy music industry a bit of a daunting task. After a few months of my former manager not making any headway on securing the rights we parted ways (for a number of reasons outside of the song itself). The task then fell upon Evan & I, but mostly Evan who loves himself some admin work, to get the song cleared. Of which he went through multiple different sources to find the proper avenues to secure the song.

We ended up doing the recording of When He Was Me right before the pandemic hit but I found that the more I sat with the recording, the more I felt it was lacking something, specifically where my vocal performance was concerned, so once we had a dip in quarantine restrictions & covid numbers, I headed back in the studio with Josh & Greg Breal to do a different vocal take, which I much prefer to the one we initially had. We also added a few more sets of BGVs to the song & a bit of vocoder!

After the song was sent off to Jonathan Roye for mix & Mike Monseur for master it sat. For almost three years it sat. Why you may ask? Well this is one of those songs that I wanted to put out right. I wanted all of my ducks in a row & everything to go smoothly, & thus far it has! Additionally, remember how I said I was dealing with big industry things with clearing this song? Well, that was beyond true! Evan counted last night that it took 78 different emails to different people to get this song cleared. That’s not counting the direct messages, phone calls, intermediary texts to find contacts, etc. This song took this long to put out in part because of my status as an independent artist.

But alas, we’re here now! The song has been released! It is out in the world for you all to make your own & to listen to & share amongst your friends & family & in all honesty, I feel good about it. For once I’ve got a release going smoothly with more things to follow. For once I’m not at a place where I’m sick of the song by the time it’s been released & that feels good. I’m at peace with it & am ready to see what comes of it. I’ve released the art to you all to do with as you see fit. I’ve done my part in its execution & now it’s time to let it fly!

When He Was Me was written by Shay Mooney & Benjy Davis. It was produced by Josh Gleave & vocal produced by Greg Breal with drums by Lester Estelle Jr., bass/keys/programing by Josh Gleave, & acoustic/steel/electric/dobro by Devin Malone. It was released through Distrokid & promoted by Trend PR. A special thanks to all who helped this song along the way: Noreen, Patricia, Kendall, Ashley, Alison, Amanda, Ben, & Hunter. A special thanks to Evan for all of his incredible hard work & beautiful content creation & a shoutout to The Fox Bar & Cocktail Club for allowing us to use their venue for photos!

I’ll place a link to the song below though you’re more than welcome to search it on whatever your favorite streaming site may be!

Much Love As Always,

-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: Copious Content Creation

Hiya!

Over the past week I’ve had a ripple of commonality come through multiple times between multiple conversations with several different friends of mine, the issue of content creation. All parties involved, in each individual dialogue, are singer-songwriters, none of whom are signed or have any sort of team behind us pumping out content on our behalf. The complaint that we each had was just how long it takes to make scrollable content & how taxing it can be to constantly be in that mode of creation that has to be, by nature, a tad frivolous.

If you're not someone whose job depends on how many eyes are on you at a given time this whole blog may come as a surprise to you, but content, in any form takes a long time to put together. I’m going to show you a few examples along the way to help illustrate this point but just know, that’s what you’re in for on this blog.

I’m going to start with a few examples of my own. Let’s talk about blogs. These ones, these one off, ten to fifteen paragraph numbers that I do almost every week take me on average an hour & a half to two hours. If that seems like an odd number to you then let me break it down. If I’m being honest, the days leading up to Friday are spent brainstorming, coming up with ideas for what this week’s topic should be & typically going with the one that feels the most natural or that I feel the most passionate about. We aren’t counting that time in our final number here simply because my ADHD’d brain allows me to do that while I’m doing other things. It’s not dedicated time, but it is still taking up mental space. Then I set aside time to sit down & do what I’m doing right….now! right…..NOW! which is typing out the blog. If there are specific points that I want to hit along the way I’ll type them down below in the order I want to present them in so that I know which way to steer this whole stream of consciousness train, otherwise I derail. Oh look, Squirrel!

Next, after my ten to fifteen plus paragraphs are done, which usually takes over an hour, I go in & edit. After I’m satisfied with my post, or at least deem it passable, it gets uploaded to square space with tags & categories, & all that good stuff. Then I’m still not done. I have to share this mother so that you all will see it. I post it to Facebook, swapping back & forth between my personal & artist page, I make an Instagram story post, & I post it to Twitter (& now I guess Threads too). All of that amounts to the total time of an hour & a half to two-ish minimum. That’s a completely different story for travel blogs.

Travel blogs take me days. I honestly don’t know if I can calculate just how much time goes into them but I have written about this in the past as well. For a travel blog I first have to travel which, yes is fun, but the way I do it, to be able to share an experience that others will want to immolate, I do a lot of research first. I find restaurants, activities, cool locations & dives, & put together a loose itinerary for my trip, broken down (again, loosely) by day. There are certain elements that are higher priority than others on said itinerary that get shifted around as needed.

While on the trip I have to be sure I’m making content; taking videos, taking pictures, writing down where I went, what I ate, etc. I keep a running tab over my whole stay that I refer to throughout my time writing these once I’ve returned. If I’m diving I have to go through & edit the video I took, as well as take screen shots from said videos so that there’s underwater photo content to attach here. That’s usually a several hour endeavor. Then I have to repeat the above blog process all while linking the places mentioned within said blog. Then after the written portion is complete I go in with the photos, upload them, & position them so that they look all nice & pretty. Truly travel blogs take me daaaaaaays to do & that’s even after I split them up into two to three day parts.

Then there’s music. The average songwriting session lasts around three to four hours & often you don’t get to finish the song in its entirety. After that you have to go in & do rewrites for lyrics or melodies that don’t quite work. As far as production goes, there’s tens more hours thrown in. Tracking all takes place in real time but you need to do multiple takes & then also go in & edit said takes. Equalizing, adding effects, mixing, mastering, etc, etc, I would guesstimate that most songs have a minimum of twenty hours thrown into them even before you start promoting, doing photoshoots for promotional content, reaching out to different publications, playlists, etc.

Going back to what each of us were specifically talking about with content creation is video. The first conversation I had was with Leena Regan who put together little highlight videos from the writing camp that Songbird Society put together. Each thirty second video took her around five hours to complete. You have to go in, edit the clips, color correct the clips, pick a song to have them synced to, sync the cuts in the video to the beats of the song, write a personal, catchy caption, share it everywhere you can.

Kate Cosentino was talking about the same thing, about how exhausting it is to make content for scrollable sites like TikTok or Instagram that you pour hours into just to have it be seen by a handful of people. Throwing your efforts into the void, hoping to catch someone’s attention enough to engage with them, failing & having to do it all over again.

For my Tarpons video I had to find a karaoke track of Feed The Birds from Mary Poppins to sing over, rewrite the lyrics to be about tarpons, record & edit vocals, then sync my dive footage up to the beat changes of the song. Probably a good four to five hours of work & the video went nowhere.

All of this is not meant as a poor poor me type of thing. I write all of this to make you all aware, to show you what it looks like to be a modern artist trying to promote yourself in hopes that one day you’ll have a team behind you who pays someone else to put hours of their time into these posts instead of cutting into your already limited time. I also write all of this so that maybe you’ll be a little more loving to the content people put out, especially your friends! These videos that make you laugh or smile or cry take time & work. These songs that you put onto your shuffle & never listen to with intention again take time & love & effort & are snippets of people’s lives! These blogs, especially the travel ones, take a lot & we do it because it’s what we love, but when you’re constantly throwing yourself out there into the oblivion & finding yourself fallen short each time it gets incredibly disheartening. That’s what causes creators to stop, that’s what causes musicians & artists to sell their gear, causes creatives to get a desk job, because they have tested their metal against the void & the void has swallowed them up.

If you’re here, reading this blog I’m so grateful for you. If you listen to my music, share my posts, anything that supports me in even the tiniest bit as a creator & an artist, I thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. You never know how far a simple comment, a like, a repost, a whatever else that takes five seconds to do means to someone in our field. Please be appreciative of the content creators in your life, without them this life would be so damn boring.

Much love as always,

-C

Blog: I, Charlie Rogers, Am...

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog you’ll know that every year I make a Pride post within the first week or so of June. Usually that post consists of the current reasons that Pride is relevant & necessary, not only as a celebration, but also as a way to draw attention to the issues still affecting the LGBTQIA+ community. This year I wanted to do something a little different. You see for years & years I feel I’ve skirted around the reasons that my passions run so deep for this particular community, though in hindsight it seems something only the most thinly veiled. I am so invested in the ongoings of the world where LGBTQIA+ rights are concerned because it is a community that I am not only happily entrenched in, but its also a community that I am a part of.

I, Charlie Rogers, am a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

I, Charlie Rogers, am a bisexual man.

This is not a new development, it’s something that a lot of people have known for a very long time. It’s also not something that I’ve been overly coy about in recent years, especially around June. A lot of my friends & family have known & celebrated the person that I am for almost over half a decade now but for some reason I felt it was finally time to just be blatant & call out the rainbow elephant in the room.

I never wanted my sexual identity to be a big deal, I never wanted it to be the thing that defined me. I don’t want to be the bi-artist or the bi-influencer or traveller, because I think that I am so much more than that. Is it a part of who I am? No doubt, but is it the only part of who I am? Absolutely not.

I was so afraid of being pigeon holed for so long that I simple kept who I am & who I love locked away. I was told being open & honest would ruin my career. That I’d never make it in Nashville being open & honest about the person I am because history says that’s true, but history also gets changed all the time. Just because something is, doesn’t mean it should & though I know that’s an uphill, losing fight, it’s one that I would be disappointed in myself for at least not trying because at the end of the day, at least I can say I was authentic.

So yes, I’m bisexual. I’ve been so as long as I can remember & in a world that likes to present itself as black & white that can be hard. For the longest time I thought I had to choose, I thought that I could only be straight or gay. Even as a kid I remember only ever voicing my attractions to the females in the media, because I grew up in a time & a place where to do the opposite was taboo, ungodly, sinful, perverse. I thought I had to choose & silence a part of myself that was aching to be heard so naturally I took the easiest path & was exclusively '“straight,” but as the saying goes “we make plans & God laughs.”

I had always had flirtationships with members of the same sex, but never outright relationships. That changed when I met Evan. There was something about him that made me want to be honest, there was something about him that was calming to me, & the more time I spent in his presence & around his being, the more I found love to be the most easy, natural thing. I found myself not caring about the pretense, not caring about what others thought, not caring about the difficult path I knew I was facing by owning up to the way I felt & instead I leaned into that which ultimately terrified me.

I came out to my sister first & she met me with nothing but grace, love, & acceptance. I am so unfathomably grateful for her & the heart of overflowing kindness & beauty that beats beneath her chest. A few months later I wrote letters to my parents, to be frank & transparent, it didn’t go so great but they’re my parents & I’ve had the fortune of seeing their heartfelt transformations, something not everyone in my shoes gets the privilege of. It took a lot of time & uncomfortable conversations but I’m proud of the progress they’re making.

If I’m being honest this blog terrified me to write. As of this paragraph I’m on my third rendition of it because I kept diverting course to what was comfortable & writing the blog I typically write in June, about the current state of Pride, even though I said I wasn’t going to do that right off the bat. I’m actually typing above basically a fully finished blog about the 2023 GLAAD Accelerating Acceptance Report as the link to the report sits staring me down from my tabs. That wasn’t my purpose today, that wasn’t why I sat down to write. I didn’t come to play it say or continue the status quo because I’m tired of that. I’m tired of hiding parts of who I am out of fear or because I think it somehow protects me. I think all that it does is diminish me. It does a disservice to you as a reader of these postings, as a listener to my music, as an observer of my life, & for that I am sorry.

I know we all must do things in our own time but this is something that has been screaming from me at the inside for far too long & I finally decided that it was time to put on my big boy pants & be an artist, not just a pretender.

I say to you all, once again, with my whole chest; I, Charlie Rogers, am a bisexual man!

I want to wish you all the happiest & safest of Pride Months wherever you are on your journey. If you have any questions for me please feel free to leave them below or reach out directly! Remember, your timing is your own just as your feelings & your life are. I’m proud of you & 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

Blog: You'll Worry Yourself Sick

I think it’s no secret at this point in our society that our emotions & the things that we give “energy” to end up coming to fruition. Call it laws of attraction, quantum physics, etc, we now have fairly solid volumes of evidence to indicate that where we place our minds, especially where our health & wellness are concerned, ends up becoming our reality. I’m a very strong believer in this & so too are many people around the globe, whether they realize it or not.

I’m going to be using the term “energy” quite often in this blog. I don’t necessarily mean a physical voltage or anything of that nature, although that is also part of it to a degree. Instead I tend to mean more about your physical, mental, social, productive, & spiritual energy. The finite amount of internal processing power we have to give in the day to day or the moment to moment.

I want to circle back to something that I said in at the end of the first paragraph before we go any farther. I mentioned that a lot of people, globally, practice & believe in this philosophy, whether or not they realize it. I mean that simply in the context of prayer. Millions, or even billions, of people around the world pray daily, some more than daily. They put thought & energy towards a desired outcome, an aspiration, &/or a need. A lot of the time these come from a place of lack; Lord, keep me safe, heal my father, help me accomplish my goals, etc, etc, etc. & I think the laws of attraction would tell us this behavior only repels our desired outcome. Our prayers are not but energy put towards what we have each decided to call our own creator. I think there’s no denying that this all functions well outside of the religious or spiritual worlds as well.

So why make this the topic of today’s conversation? Why put energy towards it?

Well, it seems over the last week I’ve been running into synchronicities. This topic seems to be popping up left & right. It’s appeared in conversations I’ve had with at least three separate individuals, it’s appeared as one of the primary topics in one of the books that I’m reading, it’s been on the Tik Toks & Instagrams I’ve been receiving. Really the frequency of its occurrence has been startling!

I think it’s also worth mentioning that I’m not here advocating for toxic positivity, which is very much a real thing. I’ve just noticed that when you live believing the worst it tends to come to fruition.

So what is worry? Why do we as a species have it? The simple answer is that is was designed to keep us alive. Worry is what propelled us forwards as a social civilization, worry towards where our next meal is going to come from, whether our kids are safe, whether there’s a predator lurking in the brush that we can’t see, but I personally don’t think it serves us as much in our present society & way of living as it use to. Worry is how we kept ourselves safe & sustained but it can also very easily be debilitating.

Much like almost anything else, too much worry can be incredibly harmful. It locks us down, prevents us from taking risks, I’d even go as far to say that it prevents us from living altogether. But the worst part of worry is that it can literally cause you to worry yourself sick or even dead.

Worry is brought on by adrenaline, it’s a form of anxiety that saps your adrenals & can cause anything from chronic fatigue to anemia. When we force our body into constant survival states of fight or flight, a state we’re only supposed to be in in short bursts to keep us alive, it wears down the body pretty quickly. This, in addition to being bad for the heart, is bad for the immune system at large. There have even been studies of people who have worried themselves into organ failure, tumors, chronic sicknesses, autoimmune diseases, etc.

Again, not harping on exclusive positivity here, I think a little worry is good for you, but as the saying goes “worry is away present energy towards & unknown tomorrow.

What am I advising? How do I recommend you behave? How do you limit your worry?

I, for one, compartmentalize my worry into rational or irrational. Is what I’m afraid of a rational thought or likely to happen? If no, then I do my best to brush it off. If it continues to nag me I sit with it & try to find the reason behind its existence in my brain. Why am I worried about this? What caused me to worry about this? How can I show my body that this is not something worth worrying about?

In the context of prayer or manifestations how do we reframe our wants & navigate away from this place of lack? Always go from a place of gratitude & joy. Instead of “heal my father” think of how joyous the miraculous reparation would feel or how incredibly it would be to reach your goals! Instead of asking for safety be grateful that you have been kept safe thus far! The key to all of this is of course belief & not letting fear, doubt, worry, & suffering embed their hooks into you & literally drag you down into sickness.

I know all of this is easier said than done. I know, especially for those of you with anxiety it’s like you telling me to just be happy as someone with depression or to pay attention as someone with ADHD, but I promise, as someone who literally had shot adrenals, that there is a path forwards that leads to an easier, more worry-free future.

As always, much love to you all,

-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: #Goals! Wait, Scratch That, #VisionBoards!

I’ve never been much for goal setting, though I’ve never been entirely sure why. Whether it has something to do with the fleeting fancies of ADHD or the feeling that somehow, if I don’t complete everything on it, I’m some sort of a failure, I’ve never been able to stick out my goals & make actual steps towards their achievement. That’s not to say I never meet my goals, but for some reason there’s a sterile pressure around the idea & practice of goal setting; it feels oddly corporate or cheesy, like something you do in a quarterly review with a higher up who really doesn’t care whether or not your aspirations are met. I guess a part of me still attributes goal setting to the academic setting, a worksheet to hand in for trivial credit that never actually amounts to much.

If you’ve read my previous blogs that were written around the transition between the old & new year, you’ll see that I also am not an advocate for the new year’s resolution, nor for that matter is science. Simply stated, they don’t work, they fizzle out. To some degree I’d say I feel the same about goal setting. In all honesty, I’m sure, if you’re like me, that you saw the title of this blog about “goal setting” & probably didn’t even click the link. I guess we’ll never know though seeing as the simple window shopping didn't come in to investigate.

This past year both myself & my lovely friend, Kate Cosentino, came across the same TikTok around the same week. It was a woman talking about how she, like me, hated the traditional form of goal setting & why said past goal setting attempts didn't work for her. Her approach, instead, was that of a guest who had previously appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. If their segment they talked about vision boards & what to do with them/how to place & arrange them in a way that allows you to use them towards the aims you were after. Their method was quarterly, requiring a new vision board every three months, & asked you, not only, to visualize your board on the front, but also to write your visions & goals out on the back. In this way it was similar to the “Mind Movies” that Dr Joe Dispenza uses in his seminars to teach shifting perspective & mental energy in alignment with the things you desire. As aforementioned, the vision board you’ve created is meant to be revisited on a quarterly basis, the only difference from your first board being that you are meant to review & revise.

Let’s say you put on your vision board that you want to rekindle a relationship with your parents. If at the end of Q1 you’ve made attempts & gotten no where near where you want to be you write on the back of your Q2 vision board the same goal emphasizing the things that worked & writing & evaluating a new path forward. I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that you’re meant to write how you plan to go about your visions on the back of the Q1 board.

Another major component of the vision boarding is that you’re meant to do so with a group & share your vision board with said group when you are finished. The day Kate & I came across out vision board TikTok we both planned an evening with Kimi Most & Evan to create together & share. This outward expression of your desires helps to get the word out, it helps to solidify the things you want in the words you say. After all, how can it be known what you want if you won’t ask? In this way it gets you accustomed to speaking on your wants, your shortcomings, & your plans with those who will love & nurture you along the way. It also allows people the chance to help you if something comes up on your board that they feel they have insight on.

So how did my vision boarding go? How did it turn out. Well, much like I mentioned above with goal setting, we all fell off the wagon. We did the one evening of work & then never followed up with the next three quarterly reports. That’s not to say it was a failure though as yet another aspect of this vision board journey is that you place your board somewhere you see it daily & somewhere people who enter your home will see it & can ask you about it. Again, the goal is to talk about the things you want, to keep them at the forefront of your mind so that they become the magnetic north that guides your internal compass. Mine & Evan’s have been in the kitchen, right next to the place where we consume majority of our meals. Both boards are highly visible & both have been talked about openly amongst each other, friend, & the like. I’d say of the twenty-five things I have on my board, around seven of them came true in one form or another. That’s not bad for not following the program to the letter you’re supposed to.

So why do I draw attention to all of this? Why do I talk vision boards, goals, & the steps it takes to actualize them? Well, because I’d like to, if I may, use the last half of this blog as a digital vision board, so to speak. I’m sure in the type format it will come out looking more like a goals list but I promise you, on the other end of this I will be making a vision board to represent all of the things listed below & probably more. I’m doing this here as a form of accountability. We’re meant to share & talk about our dreams & that’s what I’m doing here. I’d also like, if you may, for you to remind me to revisit this quarterly, checking off & adjusting as we go along!

I wish you all the happiest of new years, filled to the brim with love & joy!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Charlie’s 2023 Digital Vision Board

-Sign A Publishing Deal (Smack, Universal, Warner Chapel)

-Get At Least Five Outside Cuts

-Tour As An Opener For A Larger Act

-Sign With A Talent Agency (WME, CAA, ACA)

-Get Paid To Travel

-Get Paid To Promote The Products I Already Use

-Cross Two More Continents Off The Total Seven (Still Need South America, Australia, Africa, & Antarctica)

-Release A Minimum Of One Song Per Quarter

-Get Verified Across All Social Platforms

-Grow Creatively

-Help More People

-Get Social Numbers Up (Instagram 20K BYE, TIKTOK 10K BYE, ETC)

-Get 1K Spotify Followers

-Get On Editorial Playlists For Spotify & Apple Music

-Visit Japan

-See The Northern Lights (Preferably In Iceland)

-Become A Master Diver

-Have At Least One Song Trend

-Write More Honest Lyrics

-Cut Medicine Written By Harry Styles

-Do More Features

-Add At Least Five More Michelin Stars To My Belt

-Find Daily Moments Of Gratitude

-Get Back Into Eating In A Healthier Manner

-Hit The Gym At Least Four Times A Week

-Walk My Dogs More

-Spend More Time With The People Who Bring Me Joy & Less With Those Who Don’t

-Find A Consistent Form Of Financial Freedom That’s Not Soul Sucking

-Embrace The Unknown

Travel Blog: United Kingdom: Part One- York & The Festival

As many of you know, I have a great love for the United Kingdom & the people that live there. It has also been clear, for many years now, that the United Kingdom also shares a great love for yours truly & my music! My first trip there, back in August of 2019, was actually a trip entirely planned around a festival, Park Fest, in Stranraer. Again, that was back in 2019. Naturally, due to the global pandemic, Park Fest was put on hold for 2020 & even 2021 making its resurrection this year some what of a homecoming for a lot of those involved. I was asked fairly early on in the planning phases of this year’s Park Fest whether or not I’d be willing to make the trip to play it, I was more than happy to snag a spot in the line up.

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THE UNITED KINGDOM

PART ONE:

Day One

The original plan for the trip was to arrive Thursday morning, grab the rental car, & immediately make our way to Dumfries. When planning Ali, who was gracious enough to play host to me & contract Ross to help assemble a band on my behalf, & I had originally talked about having the band rehearsal for the show on that Friday before heading to Stranraer on Saturday for the festival. However, plans change & we ended up having to push rehearsal to Saturday afternoon to accommodate all of the musicians playing, totally fine! So now having a new day free we decided to go up the East Coast of England & stay the night in one of the towns there.

We arrived around mid to late morning having barely slept a wink on the flight over. Our immediate mission on the way to the rental agency was to poll our destination. We reached out to all of our UK friends asking whether we should go to Newcastle, Nottingham, Cambridge, or York. Everyone basically unanimously gave us York, so we started up Central England towards York.

We arrived in York in the early evening beelining to our hotel where the plan was to shaft from our travel clothes to something nicer in which to explore the town & take a few choice photos here & there! Our hotel was the Hilton York Tower, set literally across the street from Clifford’s Tower, one of the largest remaining fragments of the York Castle.

Once checked in, showered, & changed we set out to explore the town of York before our evening reservation at the North African restaurant, Los Moros.

Evan had this idea to take what he referred to as my OOTD, or Outfit Of The Day. Despite having packed in a frenzy I had managed to piece together a unique outfit for each day of our trip all while maintaining a suitcase weight of around 40 lbs & compensating for the swings in weather & the varied temperatures we would be experiencing throughout our eight days spent in the United Kingdom.

We actually did a proper photoshoot too, going around the York City Centre finding cool backgrounds to fill the negative space of each of the photos. For this OOTD I had chosen a Scotch & Soda Tan Knit Button Shoulder Sweater, a pair of Light Blue AG Jeans in the Tellis fit, Brown Aston Grey Work Boots, & Keiko glasses by Warby Parker. It was a tad chilly in York so the covering was much appreciated.

After we were satisfied with the photos taken we stopped off in The Shambles, the street of shops that inspired JK Rowling’s creation of Dragon Alley for the Harry Potter books. The parallels are abundantly clear to all who have seen the street as well as partook in Potter media. After our exploratory walk it was dinner time.

Los Moros is up near York Minster on the North side of the town center. It is in a small, unassuming three story town home that you would never guess, from its exterior, is brimming with color & flavor. Upon arriving we were shown upstairs to our table over looking the street below. I swung back downstairs to wash my hands having tripped on one of the steps near the riverside & was greeted by the cutest of outdoor courtyards where people dined under lattice adorned with tiled lamps & greenery.

Dinner was exquisite. We ordered a bottle or Romanian Pinot Noir to split & order off the menu “family style.” Our dinner consisted of a bowl of Casablanca Olives, Hummus with Rose Harissa, Olive Oil, Pine Nuts, & Flat Bread, Batata Hara, a Spicy Potato dish with Coriander, Garlic, & Turkish Pepper Paste, ZFC Chicken fried in Za’atar & Sumac with a Preserved Lemon Mayonnaise, Smoked Haddock Crocketts with Rosa Harissa Aioli, Beef Tanjia; Slow Cooked Ox Tail with Saffron, Preserved Lemon, Button Creamery Cumin Gouda Mash Potatoes, Pickles, & Lamb Jus, & a Chocolate Cardamom & Coffee Mousse with Chantilly Cream & Pistachio Crumble. Need I say more?! All of it, without exception, was incredible. There isn’t a thing within that order that I would change or alter!

The original plan after dinner was to go out, to hit the town & a few cocktail bars, however, the lack of sleep caught up to us & we made our way sheepishly back to the hotel with stuffed bellies. Pretty sure we were both asleep before our heads hit the pillows.

End Of Day One

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Day Two

We awoke later than we had intended, our initial plan was to get on the road early to Dumfries but we decided to roll with is & grab breakfast before our cross-country drive. I had scouted a restaurant just a short walk from the hotel called The Blue Barbakan. The Blue Barbakan is a Polish Restaurant with an “extra multi-European twist.” We, however, arrived around fifteen minutes prior to their opening & resort to initiating the daily hunt so many of us engage in for caffeine.

Coffee was found just across Foss Bridge from The Barbakan at a very quant little cafe called Kiosk. We used to queue formed out its door as a gage for the coffee being brewed inside & were not let down by the parade of patiently placed patrons. The coffee was wonderful, the venue charming. The owner had even thrown an assortment of ceramic ware specifically for his shop of which the title card for them read “Here There Be Monsteras,” something I still am in awe of each time its cleverness passes my brain.

Coffee acquired & consumed & time passed it was now time to return to The Blue Barbakan!

We stepped up into a wood paneled room adorned with framed photos & chalkboards baring the restaurant’s specials. We were instructed by a woman, who I assume was the owner, to sit anywhere we like so we chose a table sat next to a lace curtained window overlooking the bridge. I ordered another coffee & a water & when I asked the matron of the house what I should get she suggested the Full English. Not usually one to do so, I ignored her recommendation as a weeks worth of “full english breakfasts” were staring me down. I opted for the Duck Rumor with Smoked Salmon & Evan the Poached Eggs with Smoked Salmon.

I was elated with the Duck Rumor. Truthfully, I am so glad I ignored her suggestion & went with my gut. Duck Rumor is a ramequin filled with Buttered Creamed Spinach, topped with Smoked Salmon & a Duck Egg before being baked in the oven. Think of it like an Eastern European Uova In Purgatorio. It was served with fresh Brown Bread to scrape the contents of the ceramic over, I could have eaten it forever.

After we paid the bill we popped back over to our hotel where we gathered our belongings & set off again, waving York a very fond farewell.

The ride to Dumfries took us up by Newcastle, where we originally had planned to stay. We got stuck in traffic here as one of the highways is currently undergoing rather massive renovations. Passing by the Angel of the North we made our way West along the A69, a route that used to be used to patrol Hadrian’s Wall, of which many of the pieces still exist to this day. From Carlisle we went backroads all the way to Dumfries where we arrived in the mid-afternoon.

Not to miss my OOTD, Evan immediately had me go out into the neighborhood & do I brief shoot. Never have I felt more self conscious doing a photoshoot than in the middle of a residential neighborhood but that day the outfit consisted of a Blue Goodlife Pullover, Tan Tellis AG Jeans, Yardley Glasses by Warby Parker, & White Goodfellow Trainers!

The rest of our evening was pretty relaxed; we ordered Indian take away from Seimo Seito with Carolann (Tikka Masala, Assorted Naans, & Seimo Seito Masala), then Ross & Ali joined after overseeing Panto auditions for the Royal Theatre. We sat around the rest of the evening exchanging stories, talking about the plans for the day to follow, & generally having a grand ole time. It wasn’t until one or two AM that we were all off to bed.

End Of Day Two

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Day Three

The Saturday started about 9 AM with a briefing on the day’s plans from the Donowhos & a cuppa. Ali had a midday set in Stranraer in addition to an evening set in Loch Raven. The plan for me on the other hand was to grab some brekkie, go to band practice, & then make my way to Stranraer where we were to stay the night after my 7 PM set & interview. So having keys in hand & having said goodbye to the Donowhos, wishing Ali lucking in my own special way, we went in search for breakfast in the Dumfries town square.

I can’t recall the place we originally planned to dine but they were closed for whatever reason, so we ended up at Elevenses. I ordered a London Fog, which was on special, & Evan had a cappuccino, both were excellent! For breakfast I had the “Flower Of Scotland” which was basically their Full Scottish Breakfast, Haggis, Tattie Scones, & All! By the time we finished our brunch it was time to head over to the rehearsal space which was a studio just south of the town center.

We arrived just before noon where we were greeted by Ross who informed us that our guitarist for the day, Finlay, had unfortunately missed his bus out of Glasgow & was now running two hours behind. So we rolled with it. I played acoustic, Ross drums, & Ruairi played bass & we just went through the set top to bottom taking the time to make changes & corrections along the way. We had a brief break before Finlay arrived & we ran through the songs once more before throwing all of the gear in the rental & beginning the hour & a half trek to Stranraer.

If any of you have read my previous travel blogs in which I have travelled to The United Kingdom, you will know that I have a great love for a little smokehouse off the route to Stranraer/Port Patrick. It used to go by Marrbury Smokehouse but has since changed hands & now boasts the name OakHill Cafe & Deli. Their smoked salmon is still equally as delightful as before & feeling a bit peckish along the way we just managed to squeeze in before closing time to snag one of their incredible Smoked Salmon Sandwiches. Don’t worry, they pre-make them daily so we didn’t put anyone to work at closing time on our behalf.

We arrived in Stranraer around 5:15 & immediately headed to Agnew Park to check in. Having received our festival wrist bands, dropped gear, & squaring everything away with the festival promotion team, who are lovely by the way, we went to drop our stuff off at the hotel & get changed for the show.

My set was at 7 PM, as aforementioned above, but I think we ended up taking the stage closer to 7:10. I had planned a forty-five minute set that actually ended up being perfectly timed on my behalf actually cutting a few songs before we even rang the first notes. I did an acoustic set in the middle of the overall full band set just to break things up & give the band a bit of a break but over all I was more than happy with how the show went & how it turned out! After we finished I helped the guys pack up their things, took my guitar back to the room, & returned to enjoy the festivities.

Of course the OOTD photoshoot had to happen, so that was also a part of the evening. For my set I had wore an Oversized Jackson Brand White T-Shirt (RIP) under a Mauve Suede Zara Jacket with Light Wash Tellis AG Jeans (noticing a trend here?), & the Goodfellow White Trainers.

After the brief shoot I was due for an interview with Jinx Sullivan of DG9 Radio. I always enjoy my interviews with Jinx because she always asks the most interesting questions! When she last interviewed me she had brought a rolodex of questions that we just kept going through because we were having so much fun with the interview, I think it ended up being at least an hour long though. This time I think we ended up talking for 30-45 minutes, recorded that is, we continued to talk after for a long while before my hunger once again set in & I needed to search the streets for sustenance.

My first time in Stranraer I was introduced to Curry, Cheese, & Chips after my set. It was love at first bite & also somewhat very familiar due to its similarity to Poutine here in the States & Maneet Chauhan having Tandoori Chicken Poutine on her Chauhan menu. It felt like something I needed to carry on as a new tradition though. So with that in mind we ended up at Istanbul Kebab & Pizza House where we both got an order of Curry, Cheese, & Chips only this time with Kebab Chicken added to it! It smacked. Truly, truly smacked.

We hung around the festival a bit longer, taking in several of the other acts, before we headed back to the hotel to tuck in for the night. I suppose its also worth noting that what had started as an afternoon in the high seventies had ended in an evening in the high 40s, so we were also a tad freezing & caught unprepared for the chill.

End Of Day Three

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END OF PART ONE

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