I have too many ghost stories to tell. Shit, sometimes my whole life feels like a ghost story.
Earlier today, I had a vision of a woman sitting in a chair, holding court with a ghost. Behind her stood a giant window flooded with sunlight. The ghost itself was nothing more than a distorted shape formed by dust swirling through the beams.
But in my mind, the woman was saying goodbye to the ghosts of her past. She was making amends one final time.
Everyday Ghost Stories includes songs about all kinds of ghosts—the lost, the lonely, the restless, the beloved, and the ones we are finally ready to release.
One of my favorite new songs is called “Ghost Riders in the Glow.” It is about celebrating the future while saying goodbye to the past, much like the woman making peace with a ghost made of dust and sunlight.
There is no fog here. No fuzziness. No lingering question about whether we should turn around and go back.
We are simply moving on.
“Ghost Riders in the Glow” became a kind of prayer to myself. As I wrote it, I imagined dancing in the moonlight with the ghosts—all of us joining hands, spinning around and around beneath the stars. It is one of those songs that puts an immediate smile on my face. The ghosts are still there, but they are no longer frightening. For one beautiful moment, we are all celebrating together. Unity, bitch.
Then there is “Blue Lou.”
This time, I imagined a Ghost Whisperer-type woman stumbling across a spirit named Lou—Louie, actually. He was a French fur trapper in the 1800s who suffered what feels like two deaths: first, a gunshot wound, and then the terrible misfortune of catching his ankle in a bear trap.
He bled out before anyone could find him.
Now his ghost wanders through the wilderness, confused and unable to understand what happened to him. He does not know where he is supposed to go. He only knows that he is still there.
So my girl—the singer—makes him a promise.
She is going to help Blue Lou find the light. Fun, right?
Autumn is my favorite season, although it is something of an antithesis to my personality.
I am a Leo. I am summer. Warm and shiny, I am.
And yet, the first whispers of autumn have always carried a sense of newness with them. Maybe that feeling comes from the beginning of the school year, but I think I am also drawn to the way everything quiets down for a moment.
The ground begins to harden. The crops fall silent. The trees go bald, and the flowers take their final bow for the season—depending on where you live, of course. The devil is always in the details.
There is something oddly familiar, almost inevitable, about autumn’s slow crawl toward stillness. Families begin gathering closer, preparing to bed down for the winter. Labor Day gives way to Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and before long, the entire year is folding itself up.
The colors become muted, but everything somehow feels warmer.
This album is a tribute to the country music of the past. My grandparents loved this genre, and I loved it right along with them: Kenny, Dolly, Reba, Clint, Faith, George, Alan, Trisha, Tim, Martina—and too many others to name without turning this into a roll call.
The final song on the album is called “Pearly Gates”. I wrote it about one of my great-grandmothers.
She did not have an easy life, but she loved her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren with everything she had in her. She was a wholesome woman who showed her love through food. Grams was always in the kitchen.
When I was very young, she would sit with me and watch the birds. She fed me toast covered in cinnamon and butter, and together we would look out the window as if the birds were the most fascinating creatures God had ever made.
Years later, while visiting her in the nursing home, she finally told me her secret:
She hated birds.
The look on my face must have been something. At first, I was shocked. Then I doubled over laughing, and soon we were both laughing together over a banana.
I could not understand why someone who loathed birds had spent so much time pointing them out to me with such robust enthusiasm.
But that was Grams.
She taught me that sometimes love is watching the shit you hate simply because you love the joy it brings to someone else.
And she loved robustly.
She cooked with the fervor of a hundred German women, and when her time came, she informed me plainly:
“The Pearly Gates are open.”
It was as though she knew her time on this earth was drawing thin. I was only twelve years old, so I did not know what to make of it. Two days before she died, I dreamed about her.
Naturally, she made a dramatic exit.
She waited until both of her sons were standing beside her, each holding her hand. Then—and only then—did she take her final breath.
We cried and mourned together for days after her death – my family and I. We shared funny stories, inspirational stories, teachable moments, and all of those precious little Grandma-isms that become family scripture after someone is gone.
The one I remember most is:
“Love is like a bag of wind.”
My aunt used to call her every Sunday. As we walked away from the grave, my aunt asked through her tears, “I wonder what the number is to Heaven?”
Everyone close enough to hear her broke open again. A fresh wave of tears. Deep, audible sobs pulled straight from the gut.
That is the strange cruelty of grief. One small sentence can bring an entire person back into the room.
I dedicate this album to my grandparents.
All of them.
The whole wrinkled lot.
Thank you.
These songs brought each of you back to me one note at a time.
