An apology…honestly

I’ve been dreading writing this post for a long while now, but I suppose that an apology is as good a way as any to start the New Year. In May 2008, as I was wrapping up work on my undergraduate degree and looking for a job, I was really itching to get back into the studio and record another full-length solo album.

I had a ton of fresh material from my time at Berklee and I wanted to record before I got caught up in another full-time job; I knew that with family responsibilities, a solo album would be out of the question for a long while if I didn’t do it then.

So, I started gathering material and doing some research on producers.  I eventually got in touch with my friend Aaron Shust’s producer, Dan Hannon (Manchester Orchestra, Art Decade, The Enemy Lovers, etc) and decided that he would produce the album which would eventually become Honestly. By this time (January ’09), I had moved to Australia with my family to take a job working for The Salvation Army in their Creative Arts Department in Melbourne.  Dan and I set a date for the middle of 2009 for me to fly back to Atlanta, we came up with a budget, I raised the money, we recorded the album, and it was released March 15, 2010.

Now, all of this would be well and good if it weren’t for this gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach from the day I first set out to record: something wasn’t right.

If you enjoy listening to any of the tracks off of Honestly, I sincerely hope that you continue to.  I hope that the apology I’m about to make doesn’t taint the album in any way for you.  But for my own artistic and spiritual integrity, I need to make a public apology for the recording on a number of different levels.  Here’s how it all unfolded:

• I committed before I planned. I posted on my blog and on Facebook that I would be releasing an album on such and such a date and even gave details about the recording before I had secured all the details.  The whole thing snowballed until I felt there was no backing out, even though I should’ve.
• I took time off work way too early into the position. I had only been in my job several months before I headed back to the States to record.  Part of this was me being really homesick and missing everything about America.  It was a selfish move, though, and it unfortunately showed that I was more committed to my own personal projects than accomplishing the goals my employer had set out for me.
• My motives were totally out-of-line. And this one is going to take some explaining, so let me stop with the bullet points

I’m actually really proud of some of the songs on the album. “Boy Become A Man” is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. “Well Done” is special to me on a couple of levels: it came out of an actual journey with the congregation in Boston I had the privilege of leading in worship for two years; and, it’s got the amazingly humble and talented Aaron Shust singing on it. No, the songs themselves aren’t my problem with the album. It’s the journey that took place after I decided which songs to do.

I need to take a step back here and tell you that, if you don’t know, being signed to a major record label was a huge idol for a long time in my life.  My heroes are guys like Rich Mullins and Keith Green and I just naturally assumed that God wanted me to be on a label like they were. (It’s possible I still will someday—who knows?)  The problem is that instead of letting God take care of the details of my sphere of influence, over the years I became more and more concentrated on how to make this happen and (when it didn’t happen) why it wasn’t happening in the time frame I imagined.

If I’m honest (no pun intended), even my decision in 2006 to go back to music school was based on the belief that I wasn’t good enough musically and that it was keeping me from getting signed.

And so, when I finished in 2008, I basically decided that I was going to do whatever it took to get me where I was so sure I was supposed to be.  (And here’s where the biggest apology needs to be made.)  In my mind, I had failed to get there on my own efforts, so I would instead listen to other people who knew better. What this meant was that I checked out and put my “fate” in the hands of people who could get me where I wanted to go.

The way this manifested itself in the studio was that I sent Dan (producer) all my songs and asked him to choose the songs that would go on the album.  When we were actually recording, I gave next to nothing in the way of feedback, objection or direction.  This continued through the first mixes, the final mixes and pretty much all the way through to mastering.

The way this manifested itself in the artwork was that I let someone else tell me how I should look, what I should wear, how I should pose, what should be on the front cover, what should be on the back cover, etc, etc, etc.  This isn’t the fault of the one who designed it, it was my fault for not letting my voice be heard, not insisting that, “Hey! This is me we’re talking about—I think I know who I am!”

The hypocrisy gets worse, though.  When looking for titles, what did I decide to call an album whose production doesn’t match my personality and whose artwork doesn’t really match my vibe? Well, Honestly, of course. :[

I need to stop and say that I think the world of Dan Hannon and all the guys he pulled together to make the musicianship and production of the album off the charts, imho.  Nothing I’m saying here should reflect poorly on him at all.  Nor should it reflect poorly on Aaron, my friend who designed the artwork and cover, which look great.  But my goal wasn’t to create good music.  It was to come up with a product that would make me look and sound good and get the attention of people in an industry already full of enough image self-consciousness.

If you want it put crassly, I was attempting to sell myself instead of staying true to my artistic intuitions no matter who liked the end product.  And for that, I truly am sorry.

I’ve learned a lot from the recording of Honestly and I’ll be taking those lessons with me into future projects, no doubt.  I am really looking forward to this year and all that it has in store.  Hope you’ll come along for the ride, maybe give me a chance to make up for past mistakes.  I’ve still got a lot of music left in me…

Yours sincerely,
Phil