Hello family and friends, it’s been a while. My grand plan to blog about politics and culture and theology hasn’t turned out quite the way I wanted. Life with young kids (hello, baby #4!) doesn’t leave me a ton of time and energy to myself, and I’ve found it very difficult—exhausting, actually—to try to write about complex and controversial topics that divide well-meaning people. This has especially been true in the intensity of the pre-election/post-election/post-post-election season.
Instead, I’ve turned my attention to one of my greatest passions: music. And after months of work, I am beyond excited to unveil Remarker, a new musical collaboration between myself and my brother Drew. Today, we're releasing our first single, "Hurricane."
As many of you know, Drew and I made a lot of music together in high school and college. It was a wonderful, crazy, unforgettable experience. But as both of us moved into adulthood and started families, we had to hit pause. Honestly, I had no idea if we would ever play together again. About three years ago, in the midst of a mini-midlife crisis ahead of my thirtieth birthday, I had a crazy idea that maybe Drew and I could find a way to make music across multiple states and two different stages of life. What followed was a three-year journey of figuring out how to produce, record, and mix a song together, using only our laptops and some basic music gear. At many points, the whole project seemed ridiculous and I wasn't sure if we'd ever actually finish a song. But after countless hours of recording and mixing, and more hours of YouTube mixing courses than I'd like to admit, here we are.
Hurricane began as a song fragment in the days of my college band, The Fleeting Moment. I had this image in my head of someone whose world was being swept away in a storm, and crying out to hear God's voice in the midst of it. 2020 turned out to be an appropriate year to finish the lyrics. While I didn't experience a fraction of the pain and loss of many others, I have often wondered what it would be like to lose everything that's precious to me in a single catastrophic moment. And in mid-February of this year, I experienced my own hurricane in the middle of the night, waking up to blood all over our bedroom and racing to the hospital, not knowing if I would lose my baby, my wife, or both of them. By God's grace, Beth and baby are fine. But it made these words very real to me. And I hope they can help you as well.
With blackened sky and dying light
The day is turning into night
The storm is marching in ever closer
And all I’ve built is turned to sand
The sea has overtaken land
This place looks nothing like I remember
When the shingles are all stripped away
I will lift my head and say
Help me find a place
Where I can stand against the wind and rain
And I’ll plant my feet and pray
When you call my name
Let it echo past the hurricane
Before I am swept away
With pounding heart, I fight for breath
Your love is all that I’ve got left
I never knew how much I was handed
My whispered fears become a roar
The wind is breaking down the door
I can’t believe I took this for granted
When all my pretenses are stripped away
I will lift my head and say
Some technical stuff, for those interested: the song was recorded and mixed using Logic Pro X. All guitar and bass tones were recorded using Line 6 Helix LT amp modeling. Drew recorded his drums at Thornapple Covenant Church. Special thanks to Rick Laport for engineering.
"Hurricane" is now available at all major streaming platforms, and also on YouTube. Enjoy!
And yes, I’ll get back to writing about politics and theology at some point. I promise. Hold me to it!