My first song release ever!
The Gift
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Conceived in the heart of Epic Love
And planned before the dawn of time,
The Gift was sent to a manger in Bethlehem
With YOUR name on it for one reason only -
YOU ARE LOVED.
"Love is the face at the center of our universe; A sacred smile.
Holiness ready to die for intimacy."
- Ann Voskamp
My debut album, Epic Love, is almost complete and I am so excited to share it with you! Follow me on Facebook for news and release dates! You can also subscribe to my Youtube channel for new music videos (The Gift is out; Epic Love is coming soon!) and other creative content!
How The Gift of Music Became Epic Love
I was eighteen years old when I first picked up a guitar - my dad’s beloved 25 year old Guild, as it were. Practice an hour a day for two weeks and you’ll be playing songs - so he told me. I was determined to get through that first two weeks and graduate a master guitarist but the repetition of practicing chord transitions was just too boring for me. I’ve never been a quitter, so to make it more interesting I started making up my own songs to go with the chords. Just like that, I became a song writer. Not saying I'd ever willingly let anyone hear anything I wrote back then, but good or bad I was still a songwriter.
Less than two years later my dad took me to a music store to buy my twenty-first birthday present a full year early. (He told my mom he wanted his guitar back.) I returned home the proud owner of a brand new HD35 Martin. I named it Apollos. I’d never had anything so posh before. By then times for my family weren’t quite as hard, but from my childhood life with a family of seven in a one bedroom trailer out in the sticks of the Ozark Mountains, a brand new Martin guitar really felt almost bougie. No one could have known how precious a gift my parents had given me when they gave me music.
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Some of my favorite memories are of sitting around a bonfire with a bunch of friends strumming guitars, pounding on hand drums, singing melody and harmony to every praise and worship song we knew from dusk into the wee hours of the morning. Those were the rare times. The rest of the time I was on my own, wandering in a cadence of words and chords and notes, weaving them into songs like thread following the shuttle through the loom.
The cruelty of life on planet Earth caught up with me as a young adult. Trauma, confusion, and the search for ways to keep my heart alive turned that Martin in my hands into a way of coping with PTSD. Playing guitar and writing songs gave me an outlet, a way to express myself in the midst of a life that left me reeling — broken, unheard, lost.
I found so much comfort in the love of God, and was endlessly grateful that I'd been given the gift of music.
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Ever since we first met, my best friend, Buck, who had worked for awhile in the music industry in Nashville, encouraged me to take my music onto a public stage. I just shook my head. I didn’t think I was good enough — as a singer, a musician, or a songwriter. Who would want to hear what I was writing about, anyway? Who cared about my life, my pain, my faith, my love?
Speaking of faith and love, I really love Jesus. In the spring of 2022, I was writing love songs for Him. I’d written four of them in as many months. On April 28th, 2022, God wrote one back to me. I was blown away. I called it Epic Love. I believe with all my heart that what God said to me in that song, He wants to say to every single person that He ever brought to live on planet Earth.
For the first time, I felt like I had a gift worth sharing. God had given me something, and I couldn’t just keep it to myself. I decided on Youtube as the best way to get it out there for you all to hear it. I had my work cut out for me because when you set out to do something for God, you don't do it half-ass. I wanted to do this, and do it right.
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So, I called my friend, Buck. He called Pat Holt at Midtown Sound Studios in Nashville. Pat agreed that I had something worth sharing. He became my producer and took me from recording just one song with my new 12 string, to cutting a twelve song album with a full band.
The story of Epic Love is, of course, much longer than that and is full of exciting adventure, new friends from the coasts of Connecticut to the San Juans in Colorado, from recording studios in Nashville to spending the night in my truck in a ghost town. There have been so many unexpected twists and turns with God reaching in again and again to make it all possible. Hopefully I'll have a chance to share that story with you soon on.
I didn’t begin this musical journey with any motivation other than to take a gift I’d been given and share it with as many of you as would like to listen. God gave me a talent. I’m not going to bury it any more. As long as I can, I’m going to take what I’ve been given, and I’m going to share it with you. Hopefully, something beautiful will brush your heart, you will find some comfort in the midst of your journey, and you will get a taste that makes you want more of the intimate Epic Love of God.