Listening to the Right Voice

“Don’t forget this one…” The muffled sound of music plays in the background.

“Which one?” I ask, not able to discern a melody. She can’t remember the title, but she will.

My sister, Jody, sings along with the music in the car, “Call me from this boat, I wanna walk on the water.” It’s my song about wanting to escape from the doldrums of life, into something more fantastic. There’s got to be something more, kind of thing.

“Oh yeah, I love that one,” I reply.

Jody and I try to talk on the phone every Friday morning on her way to work, me on my way to a weekly meeting with some guys. It’s our regular time together. And it’s usually therapy for one of us.

“But my favorite is still ‘hold onto me forever, and I’ll hold onto you,’” more singing. That someone would actually like my music enough to consider one a favorite is mind-boggling to me. But I don’t have the average sister.

Throughout most of the Nashville years, she has been a steady source of encouragement to me about my music. She keeps old cassettes I’ve sent to her over the years, and plays them in her car. Or jams along to the tunes in her basement music room. She makes me think there’s actually value to some of my songs, when it seems like no one else in the world cares. I have always believed what my sister said because she was older, which meant wiser.


Besides, she was always the more talented sibling, the leader. I was the follower, the imitator. They say I didn’t even talk until I was three; Jody simply did all the talking for me. I watched her to see what I should do, what I should be. She sang, so I wanted to sing. She was a writer, so I wanted to write. It’s like growing up in a house with a great chef; you kind of automatically have the desire to cook, as well.

When I discovered acting, and then later, singing, I found what I thought was my voice. People would watch and listen to me up front, and then they’d applaud. They appreciated what I did. They liked how I made them feel. Which made me feel valuable and important, even if I was merely reciting someone else’s words. I was the tool for someone else’s message.

I knew that if I really wanted to have a voice, I would have to learn to write, so I could sing my own words, pronouncing my feelings at the top of my lungs, thereby validating them, perhaps by sheer volume.

Little did I know, but a town driven by songwriters would be the absolute best place for me to learn the craft. In Nashville, they say, “It all begins with a song.” Hundreds of people spend hours upon hours digging for gold in tiny writer’s rooms with out-of-tune pianos, keys drenched with spilled coffee.

They say you have to write a lot of crappy songs before you write one really great song. Most people don’t have the tenacity to write a bunch of bad songs, they simply think they are the exception; that perhaps they’ve struck gold with the very first handful of songs they’ve written. That’s been my problem. It’s a kind of like falling in love with the idea of being in love, even though you don’t really like the other person, yet. Not that I have any experience with that.

I have considered many of the songs I wrote early on to be “great,” simply because I was so blown away by the fact that I wrote them. Now I tend to look at those early songs as “not quite finished.” To an undiscerning ear, the song might sound great, but it would never be able to be recorded by another artist for a variety of reasons. Not commercial enough, too personal, too boring, too emotional…I’ve heard it all, trust me.

I had to figure out who I was writing for. I decided it was me.

Yes, it’d be great to write for other people, to have really famous people sing my songs, but even better for me to have a cadre of tunes that provided glimpses into my own story, songs that communicated places of hope, desire, brokenness, determination, devotion, etc. If I could effectively communicate my story, allowing other people to see themselves in my story, bringing them pieces of hope and encouragement, then I believe I’d actually be a success.

There’s a desire deep in my bones for my life to be special. To be amazing. To be a person of impact and influence. But there’s also a feeling, almost as deep, that I’m incredibly inadequate. That I’m average, mediocre, and basically silly. So life becomes a balancing act—attempting to live each day with the weight of both sides pulling on me. Many days it pulls me into lethargy; a dragging, of sorts, into nothingness. My safe place. A place where I justify not doing anything, as a kind of artistic prison.

The way out? For me, it’s gratitude. And listening to my sister’s voice.

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