My freshman year at Tech, it snowed on October 1st. I grew up and lived only 2 hours away from Blacksburg, but it was a completely different climate. I was waiting for the bus to get back to campus from the Math Emporium one Friday, and it was so windy and cold that I went into the Volume 2 Bookstore and bought a hooded sweatshirt. My mom wasn’t happy that I used my credit card. I guess I wasn’t able to convey just how cold it was. The wind blows in Blacksburg like I’ve never seen it blow anywhere else. When it got cold, it was a biting cold in that wind. Even still, I loved the mountains.
I very distinctly remember the day that I wrote this song. The worst thing to me was when it was in the mid 30’s and raining, a common occurrence in Winston-Salem these days it seems. Just a few degrees cooler and you’d be in a winter wonderland. I was walking on the south side of the Drillfield toward Sandy Hall. That day was one of those days. It was pouring down rain, and it was unbelievably cold. It wasn’t cold enough to snow, and I’m not quite sure how. I was soaking wet and miserable. I think I passed a friend or someone I knew who said hello and the usual “how’s it going?” My response was “Cold and wet!”. Once I was past this person, I mumbled to myself “and confused”. The song was born!
This was not long after the heartbreak I described in the story for “A Thousand Miles”. The theme, by now, was recurring. This song was part heartbreak over a failed relationship and part heartbreak over my sin and my shame. The timeframe here predates my coming to terms with my sin and seeking some real accountability. The bridge is ironic at best as I point out how I continued to foolishly believe I could face it and conquer it on my own. As if my salvation had anything to do with my own merit or ability.
Here also lies the fallacy of westernized Christianity. Reading the Bible now, I see that we were never meant to do it alone. Community is vital to living the Christian life. God invites us into the loving communion of the Trinity, and we best experience that relationship with Him when we enter into a communal relationship with our fellow Christians.
I’m disappointed how the recording of this one turned out because I think it’s a decent song. I shoulder most of the blame. I think the finished track got caught up in the deadline of finishing the record in time to have the physical CD’s available when I led worship for the state Baptist Collegiate Ministry conference at the end of October 2023. Trying to track, mix and master everything while we were all seniors in college was difficult. And the deadline meant we were running out of time. One of the casualties of that was trying to mix or edit things that should have just been redone. As I mentioned before, I just didn’t have the experience to efficiently lay down my guitar parts. Even today, though I’m a much better player than I was back then, I’m still not great at recording. I have gotten better at punching in and out on the digital tracks to fix my mistakes and generate a clean track, allowing me to record more efficiently. But I just didn’t possess those skills back then.
So, I’m giving you two versions of this one. First is the original album track. I wanted to post this because, again, Sean and Zack really nailed the drums and bass parts. I also feel like I sang a great vocal track that George and Mike EQ’d and added effects to almost perfectly. You’ll hear where the guitar messes up, how we botched the mix in a couple of spots, and where we tried to make some edits rather than just redoing a part. The second is a redo with guitar and vocal, trying to capture the song without the distractions I just mentioned. I hope this lets the quality of the song itself come through. Let me know what you think about the story and both versions of “Cold, Wet and Confused”.
