20 years ago, in the middle of my junior year at Virginia Tech, I convinced some of my best friends that I was a songwriter and that I had an album of songs that were worth recording and releasing to the world. While time has not been kind to the finished product, the heart and spirit of the songs and my burgeoning songwriter's heart remain. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to revisit what was a dream come true for me and the project that would spur the last 20 years of songwriting, live performances and recording efforts in my part-time, part-time music career.
The album was called One Foot In The Door. The cover photo is my right leg in baggy carpenter jeans and my right hiking boot set against the backdrop of the front door to apartment 5400E in Foxridge Apartments. The cover photo was fitting since the apartment was not only where I lived but where I tracked all of my guitars and vocals for the record and where my roommate and friend, George Linkenhoker, did most of the heavy lifting of mixing and production. The songs were the stories of a hopeless romantic, a follower of Jesus trying to make sense of my own struggles and the struggles of my friend Daniel, and my growing affection for an amazing young woman named Mary who was sweeping me off of my feet. It was my first attempt to follow the script of my heroes John Denver and James Taylor - write good songs and find the best musicians you can to lend their heart, soul and talent to those songs. In principle, it worked. Nic Uebel, Zack Reuter, Sean Aiken, Adam Hall and Doug Bender were the musicians, and George Linkenhoker and Mike Snow did the engineering and producing. As I listen back through the record, I hear the amazing talent of my friends. While the production suffered from some of our lack of access to the best technology and mostly my mediocre skills as a rhythm and fingerstyle guitarist, the seeds were planted for how that formula would be refined in my future endeavors Grace, It's Better Out Here, Home and Family Man.
As soon as I could play three chords, I started to write. I had been a singer for 8 years before I got my first guitar. My favorite CCM artists over those 8 years were Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith. What intrigued me most about them was that the liner notes of all the cassettes I owned said they wrote their own songs. So, when I started learning to play the guitar, my natural inclination was to mimic those guys and write my own songs to sing. As my musical interests expanded to the Beatles, the Beach Boys and other 60’s and 70’s rock and folk rock, I saw the same pattern. Then I discovered the singer/songwriter greats – John Denver, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Paul Simon, Don McLean, Carol King, Joni Mitchell, etc. Thus began my pursuit of writing songs that were born out of my life and experience and that fit my tenor vocal range.
The music industry and how people consume music has changed so much over the last several years. In the digital streaming age, singles and one-off songs seem to be the rage. In that, I fear the concept of an album has been cast aside. However, in 2003, it was still very much a thing. My love of 70’s singer/songwriter music and a lot of the independent Christian artists I followed at the time was rooted in their albums. Yes, they wrote great songs. But I loved the concept of writing 10 to 12 songs that all told a great individual story yet still could tell an overarching story as a collective whole. Because of this, I found myself often writing songs in this manner. I was telling individual stories, but they were also grouping themselves together in blocks that could be albums – a reflection of the seasons of my life that were the genesis of the songs and stories.
The songs for One Foot In The Door started emerging in the spring and summer of 2002. As I chronicle each tune, I’ll put the song in context and tell the story behind it. I’ll also provide some new audio recordings as I try to move past the production flaws to allow the songs to be the best versions of themselves. I hope you enjoy the musings of a middle-aged man reliving his college days and my memories of love, loss, faith, grace, heartache, and the hope of redemption!
