Vaya Con Dios is a very intentionally designed concept album that was largely devised and written on the road with my ukulele. I personally rank it as not just my strongest overall album but my own favourite as well. While working overseas in Saudi Arabia, Alana and I took full advantage of our location and frequent holiday time, visiting around 2 dozen countries in those 2 years. We found that life on the road really suited us. And so, after leaving the Kingdom for good, we felt compelled to try Central America next. Not only was it far cheaper than Canada, but we hoped that perhaps learning some Spanish might help with the next leg of our international teaching careers. Thus, we abruptly uprooted one more time and headed to Nicaragua to keep the party going. However, once we got there, despite the lively tropical paradise with stunning landscapes, incredible food and warm oceans, something felt off. Instead of waking up every day with a deep burning desire to see it all, there was just kind of a sense of malaise and existential entrapment. That sort of pervasive ennui was new for us, and it took the wind out of our sails for a while as we tried to decide just what to do with all that discontentment.

That period of grappling with such disorienting inner and outer turmoil was all laid bare on this intensely autobiographical album. First song Coconuts acts like a mission statement for the concept, alluding to the weighty questions to be asked, like if it’s worth being in paradise if you don’t know why you’re there. The rest of the songs narrow in on other unexpected conflicts arising from living without roots, the coming to terms with the staggering implications of your life choices, and even the dissonance between dreams and reality. What conclusions are reached might be modest and sensible, but like all adventures, the journey should prove just as rewarding as the destination.

(I recommend you listen to these tracks with headphones.)

El Bosque

The first track is a recording of jungle and ambient noises made while on holiday in Roatan, Honduras. The island had these massive generators and unceasing boat traffic that would all start up daily around 5am, so I had to get up before then to record this without that snarling mechanical chaos drowning out the nature. I think the disrupted sleep schedule was worth it though, as this opening track—and its sister, the final track Mas Bosque—is able to evoke a highly localized atmospheric tone that reflects the incredible regions where most of the album was written and developed.

Coconuts

As a kid, I never once went on an international flight or to anywhere more exotic than the US. Then, after being unable to find work after university, I was suddenly forced to take overseas jobs in Taiwan and then Saudi Arabia. During those two years in the Middle East, Alana and I had literally months of time off throughout the contract and took advantage of every second of it. We crammed in enough travels to actually fill every page in our passports, and each new one seemed to be filled with exciting places to visit and fascinating people to meet.

When the KSA contract was done, we uprooted almost immediately to Nicaragua to try to learn enough Spanish to perhaps open up more career opportunities in that area. We expected to continue our never-ending road trip in another incredible corner of the world, and upon arrival in stunning San Juan del Sur, felt like we had made the right choice. I remember so vividly going for our first swim, basking in the hot sun and staring at the coconut trees.

However, for the first time, instead of having this drive to travel and soak up every last ounce of life to be had, I felt weird; not free, but trapped, rudderless, with a touch of malaise and despair around the edges. The novelty of travel seemed to have evaporated right there, sucking the life out of us and our plans.

This song not just captures that moment of self-doubt and existential disappointment with that gut-punching realization that something doesn’t feel right. It also acts as an introduction to the album’s conceptual focus on the highs and lows of being a wanderer, trying to decide where home should be, and all the other tough choices you make on the way. Those themes get explored in the rest of the tracks, each one adding to the next until finally, some conclusions can be drawn in the finale.

We find ourselves
Far away from home
Declare us lost
Until we know what way we’re going

Coconuts
Hang on every tree
Paradise
For us adrift at sea
Where no one can see

Abandon ship
Give up the life and quit
Or just hang
Like coconuts


Seashell Cemetery

Someone once commented that I was the only one who could make the ukulele sound sad. As a former emo kid, I took that as a compliment. But they clearly weren’t thinking about this upbeat little number that despite the title is not at all funereal. Instead, with a grin on its face and a hand to hold onto real tight, this effervescent track just can’t stop stomping around the tidal pools, thrilled at just how cool everything is. It’s like the fish and the turtle and the sky and the waves and the shells and the coast are all just so mind-boggling, eh? Be a kid again! Don’t be so uptight! That’s what this one is all about.

Wave after wave on the pearly sand
Meld in tidal traffic jam
Hermit crabs like graveyard cops
Directing traffic, making stops

Driftwood cruising, on the prowl
Looking for trouble, playing foul

Stepping barefoot through the tides
Watching your eyes watching mine
Sandy beds on Neptune’s lawn
I’ll stroke your hair and wait till dawn
We’ll have all the treasures we can carry
Just us in the seashell cemetery

All the turtles wave goodbye
To the final hour of the night

Constellations high and low
Get swept away in the undertow
Hands move soft across my shoulders
If we don’t leave we won’t get older
We’ll have all the treasures we can carry
Just us in the seashell
Us in the seashell cemetery

We’ll have all the treasures we can carry
Just us in the seashell
We’ll have all the treasures we can carry
Just us in the seashell cemetery


Honeymoon Suite

This earnest and playful love song was written for Auntie Helen and Uncle Mark’s big anniversary celebrations and was originally performed live there with just the picked electric guitar. Eventually this studio version would ornament that skeletal riff and romantic lyrics with playful cascades of mandolin and subdued vocals, resulting in this catchy little ditty that understands the simple joys of finding that special someone.

I used to wonder what the world would
Look like twenty-five years from then

Aunts and uncles on the moon and
Cities hanging by spider webs

But nothing really changed, except your last name
On the mail box

In front of our first house, still standing
On the solid rock

And you
For worse or for better
Came through
You and I together
And you
Are right where you belong
I just never knew
The honeymoon could
Last this long

One by one the whole house filled up
With minds to raise

Then one by one, they all left us
Alone again

And though people come and visit, I don’t mind
All the empty rooms

The only room I need is the honeymoon suite
For the bride and groom

I haven’t forgotten
The vow to spoil you rotten
But I’ve still got years with you to do that


Spotting Wilbur

This song blends a bit of obtuse suburban philosophizing with downbeat vocals that at first seems to be not so different from a uke-driven variation on my older song, Evening Ghost. However, stick around after that first false ending and you’ll found yourself wrapped up in a swirling coda with soaring vocals eulogizing this “mundane cowboy” who is still waiting for “the perfect end.” When the track gracefully winds down the incantations, you’ll be glad you stayed.

No rain pouring down
Not a puff of smoke
Or smog to choke on

Just the flickering lights
Breathing down my neck
Giving no respect

For Jack’s fatigue
When everything I need
Is in a bottle

The last thing that I need
Is a primary coloured pitfall
To appear.

The perfect end
To a mundane cowboy

Waiting to appear.


Vows

I took a very fun creative writing class in university that included a range of genres to explore and collaborative editing projects as well. For me, the most impactful assignment from that class was writing classical sonnets; something about the precise nature of the word choice and thematic explorations just really appealed to me. I did a little flurry of them around that time and each one felt like such a cool little accomplishment. I even did one for my wedding vows, that I imagined being read aloud at the ceremony. However, I actually lost that version and forgot all about it until rediscovering a rough draft scribbled down in a notebook years later. I adapted that sonnet into these much better lyrics, and used delicate ukulele picking and sumptuous harmonies to retain the classical nature I had in mind when I wrote it as an ode to the only one that matters.

And faced with time unending, how I could
Not cease to pray—our love unveiled in just
The most undying threads of tensile trust,
Ensconced in thickest drapes of comfort. Should
I dare display a fragment of our faith

Ellipses feign to designate the sum
Of what our passioned language might become.
You radiate an aura, featherweight
And pure, a volume naught
Of flesh contraption, born of Eve

Temperament of soul, yet bred in spirit,
Which assured, I pledge to love,
O Holy Spirit, come anoint us
and I’ll keep you close

Temperament of soul, yet bred in spirit,
Which assured, I pledge to love,
My devotion, to your emotion
Long after breath endures
Born of Eve


I Can See the Moon

This song was conceived as a sort of very knowing challenge to myself to create something radically different from my usual musical output. Specifically, I had long rolled my eyes at my own tendency to overwrite and extend my lyrics until they were pages long and required me to print them out for shows, just in case I forgot any of the many, many lines that somehow ended up in there. And so, as I lay in a hammock on Roatan, staring up at the night sky, contemplating those intentions of lyrical simplicity, I was struck by the massive full moon overhead, gleaming white through a break in the canopy. As I stared and strummed idly at my uke, a line popped into my mind: “I can see the moon.” At first I thought about trying to have a song where only that line would get repeated over and over, like a mantra—and this song admittedly does not have much more than that—but I eventually felt a few more words and then a second short verse were needed to flesh out the concept.

The song begins slowly, with a single uke chord glowing in the darkness like that titular body overhead. Gradually the chord becomes a simple progression, which then forms the musical framework for the rest of the piece. Soon some organ rises up to join the uke and give it a dancing partner. Then that drops away and is replaced by a plucked banjo, its hollow resonance crisply cutting through the shadows. Suddenly, just as the layers begin to coalesce into a textured whole, everything vanishes. All that’s left is uke, strumming out a melody all by itself. And then comes the thunderstorm. A trio of guitars roll in like purple clouds rippling with electricity, trying to blot out the moon with their snarling foreboding violence. The storm feels endless, battering your senses with its rising distorted assault. Behind the madness, the moon is still there, distant and pale, but not gone. The storms make one final attempt but they know their moment is fleeting. The clouds part, the last of the rain splashes on your face, and all that’s left, once again, is the moon. I can still see it.

When I was still living in the Middle East, I met Andrew Jehan, a very talented film-maker from Toronto who became quite a close friend by the end of our time there. He shot the brilliant cover art for a side project I was in called the Mutawa, and for a long time we had been batting around the idea of working on a music video together as well. In fact, he had shot a bunch of footage of a guy in a train yard back home and had been sitting on it for years, looking for an excuse to use it. I started working on a few ideas for a song to go with it, but wasn’t able to finish anything until our contracts had ended and we all scattered to the winds. However, I realized that this song—in my opinion one of my absolute best tracks—would be a good fit for the clips. And so, Andrew made that a gut-wrenching video that perfects captures both the serenity of the first half as well as that thunderous crescendo in the finale. Still the only video for my music, and one I couldn’t be more grateful to have been a part of.

I can see the moon, from here
I can see the moon, and the water too
I can see the moon
I can see the moon
I can see the moon

I can see the mountains and the trees
I can feel a presence, steadying
I can hear the earth
I can hear the earth
And I can see the moon

I can see


Granada

My first trips overseas involved massive guitar cases that were so bulky and awkward, and I just hated dragging them around airports and stuffing them into taxis. Then, the ever-generous Dave Knudsen gave me his own ukulele and suggested I bring it in my backpack for future journeys. I fell in love with the uke at that point, which not only led to many hilarious conversations around the world about my “small guitar”, but also gave me the a more travel-friendly tool to write this album on the road. This song, a celebratory little number written in Nicaragua, was one of the earliest songs I wrote on Dave’s uke, and it remains an instrumental favourite. I rarely write songs so joyous and upbeat, but this one just delights from start to finish.

Colourblind

This screed against the destruction of nature lives within a very similar space in my mind as Overpass, from my first album. They both have some pretty solid backing tracks, with multi-layered riffs and distinct sections that work as an overall whole. However, they also suffer from very such weak and cringe-y lyrics, whose preachiness undercuts what could have been a better song. Colourblind sounds like it might have been better if I had found some horn players to replace the vocal melodies with, and just lean into it as a crisp and multilayered instrumental. As is, the song feels to me like a bit of a shrug, but at least it doesn’t waste too much of your time.

In the sober morning we survey
What we have done
Ten thousand rays of light
Reduced to black and white
One million photographs
Of what was here before
But isn’t here any more

The spectrum of blue
Complete from sea to sky
Vistas of green and yellow and white

Wildflowers
And fresh summer fruits
Extinct as the forests with
Its barren roots
Sapped by the devils
In their matte black suits
Pulling the triggers on their poison rivers
And absorbing the final hues

Until all of our homes
Are left monochrome
We’ll open our eyes to find
The rainbow of the Earth’s endeavour
Will be gone forever
Just one nation, colourblind


Fifteen Two, Fifteen Four

I don’t listen to my own music terribly often, and when I do it’s usually because something has made me want to replay one of a handful of tracks that I really love and want to hear again. Therefore, when I decided to write up these new track summaries years later, I usually hadn’t heard most of them since I’d finished whatever record they were on. This has led to a huge amount of surprises for me, as I rediscover so much about those deeper cuts that haven’t been given perhaps enough attention in even my own personal playlists. For example, in my mind this song had been this slight and silly little ditty about love and cribbage that felt like a lesser cut on the album. To my surprise, this tune is actually a delightful and fully realized ode to one of my family’s favourite card games. It’s positively jam-packed with crisp harmonies selling the cheeky extended cribbage metaphors over top of the upbeat music. There’s even a banjo solo in there! Who knew?! Not me, to be honest, but I’m ecstatic that it got snuck in there, as it adds another playful texture to this underrated gem.

Don’t lie to me; I know you saw right through my cards
You had me pegged before the game had even started
Then how did I win?

If I was counting wrong, I’ll let the judges call it
How else could I be sure that my victory won’t have an asterisk
Beside it in the record books

And when the game was done
We both forgot who even won
The only we wanted was the post-game interview

We don’t need to celebrate, we could play again
You may be cutthroat but I’ll skunk you just the same
I think that it’s your turn

You believe in chance
But this is a game of skill, not endurance
And despite what you might say
A double run of three is still just eight

It’s lonely when I win
All I really want is a pair in my crib
Twenty-nine reasons why you should join my team

Let’s make it a best of 3 or
5, 7, 9, or eleven
Or let’s just do the whole thing
Over and over again
Over and over again


Sad Eyes

This song has a bit of an unusual origin story. As I was working on this album, I bought my first harmonica and wanted to write a song in the key of C to try it out, so I just started messing around on the uke with intentionally very simple progressions. I quickly added some lyrics about people I would see on the bus, just to see what happened. That unassuming start led to some sort of alchemy beyond my wildest expectations, leaving behind this short, sweet gut-punch of a song with that first-ever harmonica solo breathing life into its unexpectedly moving soul. This is now easily one of my favourite tracks, of all time, and despite—or maybe due to—it’s brief runtime, I find myself hitting the replay button more often than not. Not too shabby for what was really just meant to be a sort of proof-of-concept experiment.

There's no sun today, I can see your sad, sad eyes
It’s been decided, your accomplices
Are taking off their
Disguises

If we hadn’t met,
When we were soaking wet
Then it would still be anyone’s guess
What sort of image we’d reflect

We might find it surprising
All the words that we won’t speak
Losing days embalmed in silence
Or be Sid and Nancy within a week

There’s no sun today, I can see your sad sad eyes

Are you always so dejected?
It’s not what I expected


Stay At Home

The concept beyond this song started very early in the process of working on this album. I had the idea of working on a sort of “travel record” that was originally meant to be 100% ukulele tracks—the end result isn’t that far off—and that I would work on while we were on the road after leaving Saudi Arabia. I brought my uke and my “studio” (aka 1 mic and a basic AD/DA convertor) in my backpack as we spent a few months or so hopping around Central America—thus all the Spanish names and references. This song however came to me while I was on a plane to visit some in-laws back home. I was staring out the little round window when suddenly the main chord progression for the chorus just sort of popped into my mind, fully formed and crystallized, with the sense that it was something very exciting to pursue later. So as was my occasional habit, I recorded myself singing that part into a voice memo so I didn’t forget it, but by then it was already burnt into my memory. Over the years, I tried countless times to come up with lyrics and other ideas for the song, but nothing seemed to ever feel right. I had a tendency of coming up with great song ideas in my mind that inevitably felt disappointingly lackluster and bland in their eventual incarnations, and I really didn’t want that to happen here. This concept that felt so pure and perfect in my head that it deserved plenty of time to grow and evolve in some creative womb. Finally, after many years of false starts and revisions, with everything else on the album almost done, I knew I had to deal with this track, no more procrastinating. The song pointedly alludes to the rest of album and my life experiences at the time, recalling the themes and imagery in the name of offering a conceptual conclusion to whole thing. I recorded the uke and vocals in one take, and then spent a lot of very frustrating time adding bits and pieces to it and just hating those dubs immensely whenever I worked on them. Eventually I realized the song needs simplicity and purity to balance the denser and more complicated tracks on the rest of the album. That is the final version on there now: just me and my uke, both recorded together in one take, sharing some lessons from the road for those who might want to hear them. The perfect ending after all.

There are doubts that you may find
Luminous in moonlight
And washed up on the shore

You haven’t been mistaken
If every night you’re taken
Home

When you go away
Take the right one with you
Pray
That you’ll get there safe
Lay
Where the water meets the shore
And stay
Where you feel at home

There’s always diamonds in the rough
And every beach has coconuts,
There’s always treasures to unearth

So when you’re staring out the window
Deciding where you should go
It’s who you’re with that makes it worth it

When you go away
Take the right one with you
Pray
That you’ll get there safe
Lay
Where the water meets the shore
And stay
Where you feel at home

Never say that you’re too old
Maybe this time you’ll say no
Determine when it’s time to go
And when it’s time to stay

When you go away
Take the right one with you
Pray
That you’ll get there safe
Lay
Where the water meets the shore
And stay
Where you feel at home


Mas Bosque

The final track once again features ambient recordings from Honduras, meant to be a meditative coda to the grand thematic finale of Stay At Home. However, arising out of the contemplative rainforest comes this dreamlike song as the briefest of encores for those who stuck around to listen. Originally part of a song called Embers that was written after a particularly transcendent bonfire in the forest during university, this two-verse interpretation adds a few final thoughts about the nature of dream and reality and the eternal tensions trying to draw the line between the two. Then it’s back the forest, to ponder everything that was touched on in the album, and start to decide what to make of it all.

I’m forever grateful to have had the chance to make this album, but not merely for the joy of creativity behind it, but because of the therapeutic nature of my autobiographical songwriting. For me, each song conjures up a hyper-specific era and setting, life experiences I was wrestling with, and the need to sort it out through some sort of output. I hope therefore that other people can perhaps related to these diary entries of mine and find something to take away from all of that lived experience. If not, maybe you’ll at least find it catchy. That’s good enough too.

Wait, wait, wait
Until this fugue abates
I'm lost between the two

Pause, pause, pause
Between the sand and the stars
I know I'm only one dream away from you,
From you