Every song has a story and every album has a story. “A Prelude to Tomorrow” (2007) is an album that I recorded after recording school. With only a laptop, an interface with two inputs, and two condenser microphones (both of which were borrowed)…and pretty much living out of my car, couches, and guestrooms, I wanted to record an album of songs that I had been writing. So, the recording was done completely “organically”, meaning, it was done without pickup electronics (unplugged). All of the music from guitar, to vocals, bass, percussion, etc, were all recorded through microphones – two at a time.

Considering the nature of the recording, I collaborated with a friend (who was a graphic design student at the time) to make the album artwork reflective of the concept of the album. All of the cover work was created using construction paper, and then that was photographed for the album art. So, just as the recording is an assembled hodgepodge of raw wav files, the artwork was also cut and pasted together ‘organically.’ The artist, Jared Hogg, created into the cover landscape, icons that illustrate imagery from the songs on the album: a cityscape, ocean, rain, as well as Arizona terrain (where I wrote many of the songs).

I noticed a few themes in this album: I wrote most of the songs at night, and every song is a prayer-song. Because of that the songs are grounded in intimacy with Christ and a longing to know Him more, but I noticed that they came out in the form of my musical influences/roots of jazz and blues, as well as my more familiar folk.