I’ve had a lot going on over the last year or so. In addition to my work as a full-time teacher, I have been busy pursuing a Master’s Degree. I get to play music every other month with a great band on Music Row to raise money for clean water, and I am surrounded by music all day every day. I have been working on a series of short stories – the first of which will be released very soon. I have also launched a new workshop for artists and songwriters – helping them find both ideas and community as they wrestle with their careers and callings. So, when it was suddenly time to release my song, “Sweet Marianne” to the wider world this Summer – it offered a welcome reminder of what a blessing this song was – and is – to me. (You can pre-save or pre-order it by clicking here.)

As I listen back to this finished recording, I really do get caught up in it – probably more so than anything I’ve written before. In several ways it embodies not only the sound of community to me, but the underlying prayer for reconciliation that one of the main characters in my novel carried. In the book (The Ballad of the Lost Dogs of East Nashville) the song started as a simple lullaby that a young father wrote for his baby daughter just before he got shipped off to Vietnam. He confesses through the lyrics that he doesn’t feel up to the task of being a dad – but he’s there, trying. Throughout the story, the song comes back, growing, evolving, and expanding. Later in life, as he is estranged from his then-adult kids, it becomes a prayer of confession, and a plea for reconciliation. He finds out that there are multiple generations of people out there singing that same prayer.

I wrote the basic song by myself, in a cabin, as I was finishing the first draft of the book. But I wanted it to grow and evolve beyond my own abilities. First I brought in my friend Dan Wheeler from the UK to help me expand the musical composition. Then, when Phil Keaggy offered to record it and play on it, he heard new opportunities to expand it harmonically – both with his guitar work and backing vocals. He even pushed me to play the acoustic part better than I thought I could. And when we added the amazing Jeff Taylor on accordion – bringing in an element that comes straight from the story – he tapped into my character Cesar’s Norteno influences perfectly. He read sections of the story, stepped into the prayer, and started to dance along with all of the layers that were already there in the “band.” To have Steve Hindalong of The Choir and The Lost Dogs on percussion, adding perfect Beatlesque / Brian Wilson-level sounds, and my wife Michelle Lynn Thompson’s voice on harmonies (we’ve sung together for over 35 years now) pulled the whole thing together. Like true community – the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

We are collectively living through an era of toxic voices and fractured community on all sides. There’s a verse that gets me every time I hear – or sing it. “Many the voices, many the choices, that told us who we are. Running on fumes, living in ruins, loving from afar. But there is a sound, calling us home, back to that light in the dark. Where we find our names, trade beauty for chains, and hearts that carry the scars.” That, to me, is the Gospel.

I had a very rare chance to perform that song, along with other originals and covers that appear in the book, with a band here in Nashville. That band – which included guitar maestro Sam Wade (who just finished 2 years on the road with the traveling company of the Hadestown musical) and current and former Lipscomb students- was a wonderful approximation of the vibe I conjured in the pages. We played songs by Los Lobos, Bill Withers, John Prine, and The Rolling Stones, alongside mine – and it was just that kind of ragged Gospel jam I have always loved. I hope to do it again. (I will be playing with my main “gig” The Wayside – on Sunday, August 16th, at Sacrament Church, btw. Michelle will be with me for this one – along with special guests Elaina Clement and Sam Ule!)

I also just had to re-stock several stores right here in my East Nashville neighborhood. They keep quietly selling out of the book. It’s never going to be on any best-seller lists. It may not be getting any national attention. But my neighbors seem to be responding to it – including a couple hundred neighbors I have never met. That’s enough for me. If you have read it, or if you hear the song when it lands on the streaming platforms this week, I would love to hear what you think. And I hope this serves as some kind of encouragement for you to pursue your own creative endeavors – especially if they bring people together.

Click HERE for more info or to order a signed copy of the book.

Thanks, CCM Magazine, for this great write-up.