10/19/2026
Last week, we looked backward… This week, we're going to .
While REWIND was about revisiting songs written years ago, FAST-FORWARD is an entirely different animal. These are all BRAND-NEW SONGS, years in the making… Okay, so maybe "brand-new" needs a little more explanation.
Some of these songs started as nothing more than a few lines scribbled in a notebook twenty years ago. Others were little melodies, half-written choruses, random titles, or ideas buried in folders on external hard drives that probably should've stopped working a decade ago, but every one of them deserved a second chance.
And over the last several months, those little sparks finally became full songs. Not unfinished demos. Not old recordings with a fresh coat of paint. Brand-new songs, written and completed the way I always believed they deserved to be. There are songs about falling in love, falling apart, ridiculous observations, and all the strange little things that make life worth writing about… Some are funny, some are angry. Some are romantic, and some are going to hurt.
Especially three of them.
Earlier this year, I lost my dad. And while I've always used songwriting to process the things happening around me, I wasn't prepared for what it would feel like to start writing songs about a world without him in it. Three songs on FAST-FORWARD were written after he passed, and each one approaches that loss from a completely different place.
“Waiting for You Next to the Prettiest View” - This one grew from the poem I wrote for his funeral brochure. Taking words that were originally meant to help us say goodbye and turning them into a song about the love, the loss, and the hope of seeing someone again someday.
“The Weight” - This one is about the part of grief I wasn't prepared for. The struggle between allowing myself to fall apart and feeling like I need to hold everything together for the family that still depends on me… How do you make room for your own grief when you're also trying to be the husband and father your family needs?
“What's a Guy Gotta Do…” was probably the most emotionally difficult and personal song I've ever written. It's built around a familiar phrase he used with his grandkids. Something so ordinary, so completely him, that I never imagined that hearing those words in my head would someday hurt as much as it does.
Those three songs mean more to me than I could possibly explain in a social media post. And while sharing them with everyone is going to be difficult, I'm also incredibly proud of what they've become.
That's what FAST-FORWARD is… It's the excitement of everything still ahead of us, the mistakes we haven't made yet, the people we love, the things that make us laugh, and the moments that change our lives forever.
Because moving forward doesn't always mean leaving the past behind… Sometimes it means learning how to carry it with you.
There are plenty of songs here that have absolutely NOTHING to do with making you cry, I promise. This is the second of THREE full albums from You and Your Adventures. As always, THANK YOU for continuing to come along for the ride.
Some stories sound better when you can’t slow them down.
