However, we brilliantly decided to take our blissful condition and smash it into pieces. We thought it’d be better to become our own gods, and this decision has corrupted every single part of our being. This regretful moment in history is called “the Fall.”

Due to the Fall, our hearts itch to oppose all that is good, true, and beautiful. Sin is actually the only thing we can do. In other words, we are unable not to sin. This is called the “State of Depravity”—Part 2 of the human story.

(Romans 14:23; Hebrews 11:6; Romans 3:10-12; Romans 8:7-8; Ephesians 2:1)

Why, God? Is there anyone worthy to restore us to our former equilibrium? Yes, there is, and his name is Christ the Messiah. He came to save his people from the slave-chains of sin and death. This miserable condition would have otherwise lasted forever.

Jesus lived a perfectly sinless life, yet became sin for us, was tortured and killed, endured the eternal wrath that we deserved, declared us free from sin and death, ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father, and now rules over his flock through the workings of the Holy Spirit.

As a result, we are finally able not to sin! (Whereas before, sin is literally all we could do). This doesn’t mean we’re sinless—that comes later. What it does mean is that it is now possible for us to not sin.

Christ freed his people from that wretched state of depravity, has made us new creations, and has ushered us into a new state of being for all who put their trust in him. It’s called the “State of Grace”—Part 3 of the human story.

What does this have to do with my anti-abortion song?

Let’s revisit the first sentence of this whole article: I don’t enjoy controversy. I really don’t. Who does? Some lawyers I suppose, and we all have that one uncle. But despite not preferring it, here I am in the middle of this controversial topic.

So I felt compelled to provide the context in which this controversy exists—the human story, and the reality of human sin. It’s important to keep the overall story in mind so you have the bird’s-eye-view on this whole situation.

The state of depravity is the reason we look around at the world and see such horrid, heart-twisting, stomach-turning abominations, committed with callousness of heart, and utmost hatred to our holy God.

But as Christians, we are in a different state. We are in the state of Grace. We are called higher.

This is not a “holier than thou” kind of remark. I’m not looking down my nose at “those dirty sinners over there” so I can feel better about myself. I understand I have no more dignity than the most repugnant of sinners, even child murderers (called abortionists).

But because of Christ in us, we are new creations, capable of not only perceiving sin and holiness more clearly, but implementing real goodness into the world around us and pushing back the darkness.

It’s crucial to view any controversial issue through a biblical lens, but especially an issue as big as this.

That Spiritual Warfare tactic called Propaganda

Before I go further, I want to apologize for even using the term “abortion” at any point in this article. At this point, I think it’s a propaganda term meant to soften the brutal reality of what the word actually represents so that people can stomach it more easily.

When we hear the word “abortion” today, we simply think of a young woman deciding not to go through with her pregnancy. But even just wording the narrative in that way is pure deception, and unfortunately it has worked really well.

This deception works so well, in fact, that it has produced more than 60 million innocent infant corpses since 1973 when we made it legal. And that’s just the United States.

Spiritual warfare often manifests itself as ideological warfare. And in the battleground of ideas, the Devil’s tactic is to cleverly blur the meaning of words. So his followers will defend abortion, saying, “A woman deserves to have healthcare for her body.”

When the true meaning behind the Devil’s forked tongue is: “Women shall murder their own children with methods like poisoning, dismembering, and crushing the head.”

The true sentence will twist your stomach into knots, while the lie sentence will leave you feeling good. But the lie sentence also leads to the systematic slaughter of innocent children, so we must not speak it that way, even if it feels good.

Speaking the truth is the only thing that counteracts lies. And this particular lie is important to counteract because it has fostered the slaughter of hundreds of millions of precious children.

The reality is that a horrid, bloody genocide is lurking behind that nice-looking curtain of “a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.”

If you are in Christ, you have the ability not to sin. You are in that “State of Grace” I talked about earlier. You are able to do what is good, and for the right reason, to glorify God.

Protect the little ones made in his image. We are called higher than the world. Let’s respond to the call of Proverbs 24:

The story behind the song

I wrote the music to “Heard About A Murder” after watching the movie Unplanned in 2020. It tells the story of Abby Johnson, who was a young college grad who was tricked into thinking murdering children is women’s healthcare.

Under the devil’s delusion, Johnson took an entry-level job at Planned Parenthood, the Auschwitz of our time. She believed she was doing something good, so she climbed the corporate ladder and had success in the deathcare business.

Eventually, she watched one of the murder procedures via ultrasound, and saw in real time a baby’s little body being torn limb from limb as he writhed in pain in his last moments.

She saw the dismembered bodies of innocent children lying on trays. She saw gigantic barrels filled with dead children being sold to corporations and scientists for profit.

By God’s grace she had a major crisis of conscience, prompting her to quit Planned Parenthood and become a pro-life activist instead. Hallelujah, Praise God.

I watched the movie and was left sickened. My stomach was in knots. I cried. I don’t cry, but I cried some real tears. Sam cried in the car the other day just thinking about this stuff.

With these raw emotions swelling, I picked up my guitar, strummed some sad chords, and hummed a melody that matched the feeling of the moment. Then I wrote down some lyrics. Unfortunately they were bad. So, so bad. So I just put the song on the shelf where it sat for five years.

When it came time to release my album, I really wanted this song to be on it. It had such deep feeling in it musically, but it desperately needed new lyrics to better communicate the message.

By God’s grace, five years later my songwriting had improved and matured, so I sat down to write the real lyrics. The first thing out of my mouth was, “I heard about a murder happening today.” It felt right. I ran with it. And a couple hours later the song was finished.

*hits record*

Quick side story: Ashley Bratcher, the lead actress for the movie Unplanned, commented on the song on Instagram, and we ended up messaging back and forth a few times. I got to tell her the story—how the song started with her movie. She said the whole team, including creators/directors of the film, all saw my video. Wow.

The Aftermath

As soon as I starting posting clips of the song on social media, it struck a nerve. Suddenly I was receiving DMs from all sorts of pro-life freedom fighters. Save the Storks, a ministry I had donated to in the past, reached out and did a video interview with me and posted a clip of it on their page.

Another organization I connected with is Seven Weeks Coffee, which is a pro-life coffee company that donates 10% of every sale to pro-life crisis pregnancy centers. They call themselves “Seven Weeks” because that’s when a baby is the size of a coffee bean. They were so kind and gifted me four bags of coffee (honestly it’s some of the best coffee I ever had…my favorite is the Hope Blend!).

I also heard from Americans United for Life, who said they want to organize some pro-life benefit concerts with me as a headliner. I heard from a bunch of others, too. It seems that because of this song I am being pulled into the pro-life movement. Pray for me.

I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but I am willing to serve the Lord in this way if it is his desire. Lord, here I am, send me. Your will be done, not mine, but yours.

Let’s see what happens.

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Please Support My Work

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to share the newsletter with a friend.

If you haven’t already, rconsider a paid subscription to support my work and help me provide for my sweet wife Samantha and our daughter on the way. Contributing $5/month is the financial equivalent of streaming my music 2,000+ times a month!

You’ll also get bonus content like the podcast “member block” where I respond to questions, explore deeper, and play some acoustic songs (I take requests). Plus, you’ll get all my songs before release, both in raw demo-form and in fully produced form.

God bless. See you next time.

FYI: Zero percent of this article was written by AI. I just like em-dashes—always have. I’m not gonna stop using them just because AI uses them too, lol.

The idea here is that this will be an extension of my bi-weekly newsletter. Here’s the way it’ll go:

You’ll receive a weekly newsletter every Thursday morning, just like you have been as of late. The only difference is now some of those will be video podcasts.

So one week it’ll be something I wrote, the next week it’ll be a video podcast I recorded, alternating weekly.

Aren’t you excited! I am. Podcasting is a great way to express myself more completely.

Don’t get me wrong. Writing is an amazing way to communicate with you, as it allows me to iron out my thoughts in the most organized possible way. That’s why I’m going to continue doing it.

But talking to the camera can be even more expressive and nuanced and dynamic and fun. It gives me the chance to think of stories and illustrations on the fly and be more candid than I can be when writing.

It’s also a great format in which to answer your questions directly, conversationally, and even play some acoustic music for you every once in a while.

The podcast will be FREE for everyone. Then, at the end of each episode, there will be an additional “member block” of bonus content, where I spend an additional 10-15 minutes with you.

In member block, I will:

• go a bit deeper

• react to comments

• talk about books I’m reading

• answer your questions directly

• play songs live based on your requests

At the top of this post, you’ll find episode #1. Please enjoy and let me know your thoughts!

P.S. There’s going to be something that says “this post is for paid subscribers” right below this sentence. It’s wrong—this post is for all y’all. The reason it says paid only is because I have a members-only segment at the end of the video. So it wrongly thinks the whole thing is paid-only when only some of it is. Just ignore it.

Blessings to you.

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She will call me things like “uncle noodle-doink” and “booger head” followed by a high-pitched giggle. But one day when her grandmother asked her, “who is Jesus to you?” The little toddler replied:

“Jesus is the Word of God.”

Needless to say, our jaws were on the floor…

(Shout out to her father who makes sure she’s in Sunday school/catechism. And to parents all over the place who catechize their kids…Lord knows we need it).

Since my little niece already summarized gave us the one sentence summary of my new song, “A Good Word,” I’ll take you deeper into the meaning and context of the songwriting.

Let’s do this.

Stream or purchase

Lyric Sheet

The Bible Verses

I’m going to do something a little different this time. I’m going to give you a challenge. It’s optional, but you’re required to participate.

I’m going to drop a list of bible verses that form the backbone of this song. Your job is to listen through and match the bible verses the the corresponding lyrics. You can use the lyric sheet (button above) and then stream the song while looking at the lyrics and these verses side by side.

The lyric sheet is publicly editable (although y’all are the only ones who know that), so feel free to edit the sheet to add verse references. It can be one big collab.

• Proverbs 18:21 — “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”

• James 3:5–6 — “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.”

• Proverbs 12:18 — “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

• Proverbs 12:25 — “Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.”

• Proverbs 15:4 — “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.”

• Proverbs 16:24 — “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.”

• Proverbs 25:11 — “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.”

• Proverbs 31:30 — “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”

• Proverbs 13:20 — “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.”

• John 1:1, 14 — “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” / “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”

• John 14:6 — “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

As you can see, this song is pretty much all bible verses adapted to fit the music and cadence. I’ll explain a little background as to why I wrote it this way.

The backstory

So my friend Carlos, the boys director at my former church’s youth group program, is a wisdom-lover. He even had a little non-exclusive “inner circle” where if any of the boys showed interest in character development, he would invite them to join his wisdom club.

At wisdom club, the boys would meet up periodically and talk about the wisdom literature in the bible, particularly the proverbs. There was an ongoing challenge in this club: to read one chapter of Proverbs per day.

Why? Because if you read one chapter of proverbs per day, then you’ll finish the book in one month (Proverbs has 31 chapters). Then, if you repeat that each month, you’ll have read the whole book, the heart of the Bible’s wisdom literature, twelve times in one year.

There’s no way to not get wiser as a result. You certainly won’t become less wise. And wisdom is so so good to have.

While I didn’t have time to technically join wisdom club, I made time every morning to read a chapter of Proverbs in addition to my typical reading that day. And I did it every day for a month. And I did that every month for a year. And if my math is mathing that means I read it twelve times. But who’s counting…

Now, proverbs will pop into my head through the day. In normal conversations I’ll be reminded of a certain proverb and be able to apply it to the scenario before me.

If you’re interested in increasing your practical wisdom and challenging yourself to increase in holiness, this is a great thing to do. This isn’t the know-it-all kind of wisdom we’re seeking. It’s the kind that flows from the heart. The kind that takes over your gut-level decision making, daily, so that you live a better life, for God’s glory.

This song is the result of committing to this challenge, and I am so glad I did it.

Getting a song out of it is just an added perk.

Please Support My Work

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to share the newsletter with a friend.

If you haven’t already, consider subscribing to a free or paid subscription to support my work and help me provide for my sweet wife Samantha and our daughter on the way.

Contributing just $5/month is the financial equivalent of streaming my music 2,000+ times a month, which makes a really big difference for us. It’s the heartbeat that keeps this project going!

God bless. See you next time.

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For some of you, the music on this album might be just some good God-honoring acoustic music to have on in the background, at the party, in the car, doing dishes or what have you (all are great settings in which to listen by the way). But for me, creating this album was like taking an industrial scale suction device, placing it on my chest, and cranking it up to max capacity until two large pieces of my heart and soul had been extracted and then re-shaped into a CD.

You might be thinking, ok settle down now, it’s just some music.

And fair enough. There isn’t necessarily anything special about this album in terms of it being set apart from the work of other artists. In that sense, maybe it’s just some more music that’s been uploaded to the internet. Maybe my above illustration of what the making of this album felt like—maybe that’s just how all artists feel when making an album.

Click here for a document containing the lyrics for every song on the album.

Often times these feelings of intensity are transmitted to the listener. But sometimes it’s just some more music to the listener, and that’s fine. Not everyone resonates with everything as deeply as it is possible to resonate with that thing. So let me take a crack as explaining it.

Think of a time when you’ve had an overwhelming day, or week, or month, or season of life. Everyone has experienced something really emotionally and spiritually intense. If, when you’re in the heights of that intensity, you play a song, then what often happens is something psychologists call “anchoring.”

That feeling of intensity you were experiencing—whether it was positive intensity or negative intensity or a mix of both—is stored somewhere in that song, so that a year later you can play that song and those feelings will surge back to some degree.

Maybe you’ve experienced it on a smaller scale, where you hear a song that brings you back to some neutral childhood memory that doesn’t seem that significant, but you remember the moment because that’s when you first heard that song, and now when you hear that song years later, you say, “oh wow, I remember exactly where I was when I heard this song for the first time. I was twelve and my mom was driving me to basketball practice in a snowstorm and she was singing along at the top of her lungs.”

If you’re old enough to remember the tragic day of September 11, 2001, then you likely remember where you were when you first saw the video footage and the feeling you had when you saw it. Maybe there was a song blasting in your house when you saw it, and when you hear that song you return to that feeling of bewilderment.

Hopefully now you know what I mean, and can imagine a time when a certain song captured an important moment in time in your life, and the feelings of that time are reawakened when you hear that song.

Well, now imaging that you were the one who wrote that song. And you not only wrote it but you produced it. And it was excruciating because you had a teach yourself how to produce and buy all the equipment and learn how to use it and pull your hair out every day trying to climb that learning curve, but you climbed it anyways because you so deeply believed in the song.

That song would be very very deep in your soul and in your bones and your organs and your blood.

Now imagine that you had a really intense season of life, such that there were several sub-seasons within it, and every sub-season was extremely intense (good or bad). Now imagine that each of those intense sub-seasons was captured in a song. And now imagine that you were the one who labored so vigorously to create that song and to pour into it every feeling of that sub-season.

And by the end of the overall season you had thirteen songs, altogether representing your story so far. You can trace God’s hand in all the highs and lows and you are gobsmacked and awestruck by his goodness and mercy and judgement and harshness in order to make a new creation in you.

That’s what I feel right now. And that feeling was very concentrated the night of the release of this album.

That night after dinner, I picked up my guitar, slouched back in my chair, closed my eyes, and very quietly played “A Good Word” to myself. Almost in a whisper. I couldn’t even get through the song without choking up and tears welling up behind my eyes. In that moment, not only did the emotions from that song come out, but all the emotions from all the songs came crashing over me together, like a vivid dream and a tsunami of memories. My heart was twisting around like it was trying to give birth, and maybe that’s exactly what was happening.

You know, I’ve heard authors and artists describe this “pregnant” feeling when they have an artistic intuition or idea that they feel an overwhelming need to create art to express it. And until they can complete that expression in a certain form, exactly as they see it in their imagination, they feel like they are pregnant.

They feel heavier, carrying extra weight, their body working harder to process the extra life within.

But once the artist is able to place a stamp of completion on that artistic expression, it feels like having given birth to a child. That visceral and weighty feeling of carrying around some gripping idea all by yourself—that feeling finally goes away and the artist feels relief. Now he can focus on raising it and bringing it up in the world, waiting to see what kind of personality it develops.

Maybe I’m being over-dramatic again, or maybe this is just what it’s like releasing your first album. Or maybe this is what it’s like making an album almost from scratch with no label behind you, no producer to take on the technical work of making the songs (other my friend Ben who did mixing work on half the songs), no marketing team to handle the effort of making sure the world hears it, no administrative staff to handle the mountain of miscellaneous tasks that piles up daily. All this as a first-timer.

I think the sheer difficulty of doing all that stuff by yourself multiplies the birth pains to a level that no label-backed artist could ever understand.

I’ll end it there.

See you soon for deeper breakdowns and reflections on each of the new songs on the album.

Please Support My Work

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to share the newsletter with a friend.

If you haven’t already, consider subscribing to a free or paid subscription to support my work and help me provide for my sweet wife Samantha and our daughter on the way.

Contributing just $5/month is the financial equivalent of streaming my music 2,000+ times a month, which makes a really big difference for us. It’s the heartbeat that keeps this project going!

God bless. See you next time.

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Furthermore, I wanted to give you a glimpse of what Sam and I have been through this past year, with me embarking on my music career full-time. It’s been incredibly fruitful, life-giving, and terrifying all at once.

And I think this video captures the emotion of this season—this absolutely wild season in which this album was created. There are tears. There is laughter. There is intensity. There is levity. And everything in between, including awkwardness haha.

A huge thank you to Brandon and Fiona Wildwood, who came to our friends’ house where we were living for a brief period of time, and made this film with skill and care, all with the perspective of capturing a story that glorifies the name of Christ.

If you want a glimpse into the Wildwoods’ Christ-centered filmmaking mission, check out their website StoriedPies.

Again, this was made as a private time capsule, but I loved how it captured the vast emotion of this season, so I decided to share it with you who have been hear through it all and deserve to see behind the curtain. There may be more videos to come from this film session, which I would then share on YouTube publicly, but this one will be just for this Substack community right here.

Without further ado, here it is…the private YouTube link that only you all have access to.

Enjoy the story.

If you’re a paid member, you’ve already downloaded the whole album for free, so you can disregard this. I hope you have been enjoying blasting this song while you drive, cook, exercise, hike, swim (?) and everything else. (First person to listen to the song underwater gets a free tee shirt.)

But this time the song is available for all y’all!

This song is the result of me reading the whole Book of Proverbs every month for a year. For those of you who genuinely desire to increase your wisdom (real wisdom, like the kind that’s deep in your heart, not stuck rattling around as facts in your head), I highly recommend this system:

Starting on the first of the month, read one chapter of Proverbs each day. Since it has exactly 31 chapters, that means you will have read through the whole book by the end of the month. Repeat that every month, and after a year you will have read through the whole book 12 times.

Shout out to my good friend Carlos who taught me the wisdom method. If you plan to give it a try, let me know! I’d love to help process the proverbs with you. Some of them require a closer look because there’s a language/culture gap between ancient Jews and modern Westerners.

I’ve read some commentaries as well, usually the ESV Study Bible, so I have a pretty good understanding of what each proverb is trying to say. As you go, you’ll start to see real wisdom shaping you at the gut level. I’m talking real, instinctive prudence. Hallelujah! You are now wiser and purer. This song came from my experience doing (trying) just that.

The Proverbs have multiple themes that run throughout the book, but I focused on the ones about how to use WORDS well (e.g. to lift up instead of tear down). I also pulled some from the book of James, which is often considered the “wisdom literature of the New Testament.”

On another note, this song is dedicated to the youth group leaders around the world, who struggle to see maturity increasing in their students, but pray for it every day. It’s also dedicated to those youth group students—high schoolers and middle schoolers—who desperately need solid discipleship.

Maybe some kids at youth group genuinely want to be there, and good for them if they do. But most aren’t necessarily “there yet.” It’s rare to see a kid go to youth group on their own volition, intentionally, with the purpose of worshipping their savior and sanctifying their soul.

I pray this song can get that much-needed wisdom into his or her heart more easily.

So, without further ado, here is “A Good Word”:

“A Good Word” — Download Link

Please Support My Work

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to share the newsletter with a friend.

If you haven’t already, consider subscribing to a free or paid subscription to support my work and help me provide for my sweet wife Samantha and our daughter on the way.

Contributing just $5/month is the financial equivalent of streaming my music 2,000+ times a month, which makes a really big difference for us. It’s the heartbeat that keeps this project going!

God bless. See you next time.

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I don’t remember seeing that in the Bible.

The first time I listened to this song, I was obsessed. It got stuck in my head and I was singing it to myself over and over again.

As I did, I slowly started to pick up on the lyrics. As I pondered them, frankly, I got mildly angry.

But don’t worry, I’ve had time to sit with it, and I’m ready to give this a thoughtful review instead of a hasty rant.

I want to go into this with an open mind, so let’s take a careful look at it together.

Inspecting the lyrics

The first two verses are interesting. He says things like “screaming at the gods” and “the prison still won”—hardened sentiments which create quite a contrast, as later in the song he seems to talk about how “the Lord has won” and his Son has risen.

Throughout the song, he seems to oscillate back and forth between rebellion and repentance. Unfortunately, however, he seems to maintain a much stronger emphasis on rebellion.

Here’s how the song opens:

Gather ‘round this table, boys
Bring your shame, I’ll lose my voice
Screaming at the gods about the bad we’ve done
Merle said, “Mama tried, but the prison still won”

Translation: “Let’s get together, shameful sinners we are, and holler at the moon. We can talk recklessly about the sins we’ve committed. Our mothers tried their best to form us into morally balanced adults, but their efforts failed—for we are still rebellious cretins.”

That last line (Merle said mama tried but the prison still won) is a reference to Merle Haggard’s famous song, “Mama Tried,” about how his mother tried to raise him to be a good boy, but despite her attempts he wound up in prison for burglary.

True story.

Here’s the second verse. Remember, he’s around a table with his boys commiserating about their sins.

Your transgressions are mine as well
Anger grows in my bones if you could not tell
But I’ll find comfort in company
Lord, forgive us, my boys and me

Here Zach directs our attention to the camaraderie he has with his boys. This scene is further developing that sense of togetherness started in the first verse. I love togetherness, everyone does.

But what’s this friendship based on? This doesn’t strike me as Christ-centered fellowship, but sin-centered fraternizing. He’s not saying, “I’ll share the burden of sin with you and help you reach repentance,” like a true brother would.

Instead he seems to be suggesting that he fundamentally identifies with the sins of his buddies—it’s what they share. They commit the same sins, and they do it together.

If you are thinking Zach is writing of a harmless and mildly brainless bro-hang, I’d like to challenge that. Zach and his boys do seem to be embracing a specific identity.

My read is that they fundamentally see themselves as backsliding sinners. Not redeemed sinners.

And they don’t seem to be thinking about repentance…

Until the fourth line.

That fourth line, “Lord, forgive us, my boys and me,” gives us pause.

Is the story about to turn to contrition, confession, and repentance?

Then the chorus hits, and that small glimmer of contrition is shattered into oblivion.

Right after “Lord, forgive us, my boys and me,” he sings:

We’re havin’ an all-night revival
Someone call the women and someone steal the Bible
For the sake of my survival
Baptize me in a bottle of Beam, put Johnny on the vinyl

It’s as if one of the boys says, “Hey guys, maybe we should repent of these sins instead of embracing them?” Then the music stops, everyone looks at him, and after a brief pause, they all burst out laughing, turn the music back up, and pour another round of shots, using the scriptures as napkins.

Now, a brief lesson in songwriting…the chorus is the philosophical center of the song. It’s the thing that you repeat three times or more, because it’s the song’s overall mantra.

In light of all this, I’m left thinking that Zach and the boys have embraced their identity as sinners, genuinely choosing sin over Jesus. And to make matters worse, they made this decision deliberately, not mindlessly.

If you disagree, remember that they briefly acknowledged that repenting would be the right thing to do right before diving head-first into debauchery.

That’d be like saying, to the Creator and King of the Universe who loves and maintains you, “Lord, in a minute I am going to desecrate your image, and you’re gonna forget it ever happened. Got it? Ok, and don’t forget, you serve me, not the other way around. Now go away while I get my drank on.”

As the chorus settles down and the third verse comes in, we have another moment for pause, as Zach enters a moment of honest spiritual reflection.

Like I at the beginning of this article, he oscillates between his lizard-brain lusts and his deeper understanding that Jesus the Lord and it isn’t wise to demolish his name.

Here’s verse 3:

Well, the devil can scrap, but the Lord has won
And I’ll talk to him on the rising sun
His son rose and mine did too
I was coming down, but now I’m talking to you

After a night of revelry, Zach wakes up with a spiritual hangover—and probably a physical one, too.

The night before, that wasn’t him. That was the devil trying to “scrap,” and though Satan may have won a small battle, Jesus has already won the overall war. So Zach rests assured that his soul is with God, despite last night’s decisions.

He feels better after preaching the gospel to himself. Now he doesn’t have to dwell in shame because he remembers that God is merciful and forgiving, and his Grace greater than all our sin.

But notice that, although he acknowledges God’s existence and his Grace, there isn’t any hint of contrition or intention to sin no more. He only acknowledges the facts that the Lord has won and Jesus rose.

But he doesn’t submit to that Lordship. He goes back to the party:

‘Cause we’re havin’ an all-night revival
Someone call the women and someone steal the Bible
For the sake of my survival
Baptize me in a bottle of Beam, put Johnny on the vinyl

It’s like he keeps walking up to Jesus, acknowledging he is the Lord, and then smacking him right in the face.

Let’s take each chorus line one at a time.

We’re havin’ an all-night revival… Using the word “revival” in this context is a twisted inversion of the true meaning revival:

Zach takes the word and flips it upside down, using it instead as an emblem of his decision to awaken his sin and not his faith, and to take his buddies down with him. He is engaged with what I’ll call “anti-revival.”

Someone call the women… this is pretty self-explanatory. You don’t know for a fact what Zach and his boys want these women for, but you could probably guess correctly. Sex. Alright I said it. Looks like they forgot about 1 Thessalonians 4:3–5.

Someone steal the bible… this is a clear nod to the Ten Commandments, which explicitly forbids stealing. Yet Zach enlists one of his boys to commit that very sin against the very bible that condemns it!

For the sake of my survival… When Satan tempted Jesus to turn rocks into bread, Jesus answered, “The scripture says ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’.” In other words, the scriptures are the most crucial thing for one’s survival. But just one line back, Zach shows his intention to disregard those scriptures, and thereby forfeit his survival. So again, it’s an inversion of true survival, replaced by anti-survival.

Baptize me in a bottle of Beam... Here he refers to Jim Beam, a popular brand of whiskey. He uses it to invert yet another pillar of Christian faith—baptism. This is a core sacrament of Christianity. True baptism marks you as part of God’s covenant community, yet, for Zach, his is an anti-baptism, which takes the form of a drunken orgy, marking him as part of Jim Beam’s community of drunken clowns.

Put Johnny on the vinyl… In light of the earlier reference to Merle Haggard’s outlaw country song, and the rest of lyrics so far, the reference to Johnny Cash is undoubtedly appealing to Cash’s “outlaw country” persona, which is arguably what he is most known for.

Lastly, after another night of debauchery, in comes the final verse/outro:

Gather ‘round this table, boys
Bring your shame, I’ll lose my voice
Screaming at the gods about the bad we’ve done
Merle said, “Mama tried, but the prison still won”

It’s the same as the first verse, if you didn’t notice.

In songwriting, this is called “bookending” the song—when the two ends of the “book,” the beginning and end, are the same. It’s meant to wrap the song in a single sentiment or theme.

And after all we’ve discussed, we can safely conclude…

Zach is choosing prison instead of salvation.

I’ll leave you with a scripture to meditate on in light of all this. It comes from John’s teaching on “Light and Darkness, Sin and Forgiveness” (1 John 1:5-7):

⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. ⁷ But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all^[b] sin.

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Please Support My Work

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to share the newsletter with a friend.

You can also subscribe to a free or paid subscription to support my work and help me provide for my sweet wife Samantha and our daughter on the way.

I believe this work is ministry, and although it isn’t tax-deductible, supporting this work with a gift of $5/month makes a huge difference in our lives and helps to keep me doing this full-time.

God bless. See you next time.

Honestly I don’t know what I’m doing here half the time. But by God’s grace, he shows me just enough of the path ahead to take the next step.

And right now the next step is to share this whole album with those legendary men and women who have believed in me enough to join the paid subscriber tier.

These subscriptions really matter, especially because we artists mostly receive around $0.003 per stream, and that’s if you own the whole song, which in many cases, such as collab songs, we don’t.

That means that one person’s paid subscription of $5/mo is equivalent to streaming my songs more than 2,000 times every month.

To put that in perspective, here’s how much my “monthly listeners” on Spotify stream my music:

• light listeners - 2 times a month

• moderate listeners - 7 times a month

• super listeners - 38 times a month

And those are just the “active” listeners, which only make up a fraction of the total listener pool. The majority of streams are passive—folks listening to other people’s playlists or algorithmic playlists.

But truly, and I really mean this, it’s not all about money anyways. I’ve never been fully motivated by money alone. My desire is simple: to provide stability for my wife and daughter on the way while somehow continuing to work full time on this project (yes, we had a gender reveal—it’s a girl!).

But money aside, I love this tier because it’s where I get to go even deeper with each of you; it’s where I release all my songs early, even in the roughest forms, and get to hear all your thoughts and feedback.

It’s also where I’ll be rolling out some extra content like live stream performances that I’ll call “coffee shop sessions” or something like that. Plus, I plan to do a podcast where I answer your questions and talk in more depth about each song and article.

And…although she doesn’t know it yet, my prized jewel (Sam) will make appearances on the podcast as well.

Before then, I have a lot of family travel this summer, so while I’ll be posting on Substack and social media, I won’t be able to roll out my podcast and coffee sessions until I’m back and settled in.

Also, as you may know, we are trying to get moved into our new home in South Carolina, which has proved difficult and slow amid all this travel, so if it takes longer because of that, please forgive.

In the meantime, I hope that hearing my raw demos as I’m writing these songs, and hearing each fully finished song before anyone else in the world, and getting some other paid content sprinkled in—I hope these things have been a blessing to you, as you have been a blessing to me.

On that note, here is the full album, A Good Word:

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Is this patriotic, love-of-country folk song I’ve been singing every July 4th since childhood really just the anthem of Communism?

Well that might be taking it a little far…but it might not be. We’ll get into it. But first, you need to know some surprising facts I just learned about the song:

The lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s monumental classic, “This Land Is Your Land,” were written in 1940, recorded in 1944, and released in 1945.

Guthrie didn’t actually write the melody or the instrumentation. He only penned new lyrics to the tune of an already-popular folk song, which had been circulating in folk America for over a decade.

It’s the same exact thing musically. The only difference is the lyric.

But it’s not like the Carter Family made up the tune from nothing. They extracted it from a huge repository of folk tunes that ran deep in America’s oral tradition for generations.

The more I study folk music, the more I learn just how many legendary songs originate this way.

(Bob Dylan’s classic hit, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” was spun off of a slave-tune from the 19th century—a tune sung by newly freed slaves after the U.K. abolished slavery. “I took it off a song called ‘No More Auction Block,’” admitted Dylan to a journalist in 1978.)

The lesson here is simple—folk music is communal.

Melodies that last centuries are shaped by generations of singing and storytelling, and they are open to anyone who wants to use them to write a compelling message.

That said, let’s turn our attention to that strange message which our friend Woody Guthrie decided to send in his song, “This Land Is Your Land.”

Is “This Land Is Your Land” about freedom or Communism?

Although Woody Guthrie wasn’t a card-carrying ideologue committed to using his guitar to push exclusively Communist Party talking points, he did run with some ultra far-left crowds and shared many of their sentiments.

I won’t say it flatly, but one could make a strong argument that Guthrie was just flat out Communist.

After all:

• he wrote a weekly column for People’s World, a Communist Party paper based in San Francisco.

• his daughter Nora said he formally joined the Communist Party USA, though some historians dispute that claim.

• he is quoted saying, “If you call me a Communist, I am very proud,” according to Joe Klein’s biography, Woody Guthrie: A Life.

Legend has it This Land Is Your Land was written in response to Irving Berlin’s famous God Bless America, which was quite popular at the time. Guthrie was constantly hearing the following words on the radio, and found them irritating:

While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free.
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

God bless America, land that I love.…

Guthrie had doubts about whether America was truly fair and free. He had seen a lot of poverty and suffering in his life.

I get it, it’s true. There is a lot of inequality out there and it’s difficult to comprehend how it could be fair. But there are ways to reconcile this difficulty (more on that later).

Like any good leftist, Guthrie had a serious distaste for private property rights—unable to see why one person can “own” land that was there before he was ever born, and not only own it for himself but also to keep out all others.

Here are two verses from “This Land Is Your Land” that illustrate (1) Guthrie’s anti-private property opinion, and (2) his general attitude about poverty in America:

As I was walkin’ - I saw a sign there
And that sign said “No trespassin’”
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
If this land's still made for you and me

My thoughts on all this

I’ll start by giving Guthrie the benefit of the doubt. I understand why many folks are persuaded by Communism or Socialism or whatever you want to call it.

It casts a vision for a perfectly sinless utopia, which everyone deeply longs for. We all want to be in Heaven.

We long for a land where there is no suffering, no tears, no emotional turmoil, no heart-twisting horrors.

We sense deep in our bones that we were made for perfection, but we lack it.

The reality is, God made us in his image, and we were created to be perfectly obedient to him. And at first, we were. Back then, that perfect obedience yielded perfect contentedness, happiness, and peace.

Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is our origin. So it’s no wonder people want to return to that place of heavenly Utopia. I do too.

But the reality is that they sinned, as we would have done if we were in their shoes, and evil showed up to the party. We lost our ability to walk in righteousness and obedience to God.

So now we have to walk in suffering, as Christ did, until we reach the pearly gates. We must be patient, and let God take us there on his terms, not ours.

That’s where Communists go wrong. They want Utopia and they want it now. They are, by definition, materialist atheists who don’t think God is real, or don’t care if he is.

Regardless, they are laser-focused on snatching back that once-perfect equality and fairness, thinking we can grant ourselves access to Utopia once more, and do it on our own terms, by means of political maneuvering and revolution.

But the reality is this:

God will be the one to decide if and when each of us will cross back into the promised land. He will decide which of us will be resurrected to live with Christ in perfect unity, and which of us won’t be.

It’ll happen on his terms, not ours. And in the meantime, the role of government can only be to protect individual God-given rights (e.g. police officers protecting us from robbery and murder).

We have to operate the best we can until God brings Utopia back.

It’ll be ugly, but we have to march onwards, committing ourselves to his service and to personal holiness. Going to church, reading our bibles, loving our neighbors, and doing the best we can given the reality that we’re still steeped in sin.

But in the meantime it won’t help to strip away private property rights and return to a world where the government owns and operates everything. Freedom is way better than Communism, because Communism is slavery to the state.

There will be abuses of freedom on this side of eternity, but it’s better to have abuses of freedom than to have abuses of absolute top-down governmental power.

Oil and Water

Now that we’ve touched on the theology of the issue, now let’s move to philosophy.

Personally, I think Communism and Christianity are mutually exclusive.

Marx, the founder of Communism, calls religion an “inverted world consciousness” and the “opium of the masses.”

Simply put, Marx thinks religion is manmade twisted crap.

Communism requires erasing religion and forcing each citizen to exalt the state as the highest thing in their hearts.

That’s why every Communist uprising in all of history has involved the persecution of the Church, often involving the torturing of priests and pastors.

There is one throne on the heart of every man. One thing will occupy it. Christians choose Jesus, Communists choose government. You can’t choose both. You can’t follow Jesus as LORD above all, and also exalt the state as your truest and highest authority.

Mutually exclusive.

Tying it back to Woody Guthrie’s song

I’m not saying that This Land Is Your Land is just a re-articulation of the Communist Manifesto. It’s actually a really pleasant tune and lyric, wheras the Communist Manifesto is a bloody, haunting nightmare.

The reason some think the song itself is too Communistic is because we know who the songwriter is and what he believed politically and religiously.

When Guthrie says, “this land is your land, this land is my land,” he is, in his mind, challenging the concept of private property—a very Communist thing to do.

But you don’t have to see the song through Guthrie’s worldview.

You can listen to this song and enjoy the verses that describe the natural beauty of the USA—the redwood forests, the Gulf Stream waters, the ribbon-like highways, the endless skyways, the golden valleys, the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts, the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling.

These are natural markers of our great nation that show the incredible majesty of God’s mind displayed in his creation. We can all appreciate that, regardless of religion or politics.

If you like the song and it makes your heart gush for your country, then great! Stream it.

But for me, I prefer listening to the Carter Family’s When The World’s On Fire, because it’s the same tune but with biblical, Christ-centered lyrics rooted in the classic hymn “Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” which itself is rooted in the truth of scripture.

Same tune, Christian lyrics.

Or, if you’d like, here’s a version of “This Land Is Your Land” that doesn’t include those two politically-charged verses mentioned above.

Landing the plane

Today is the 4th of July, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t celebrate the fact that we live in the freest country of all time.

Yes we still struggle with corruption, and we are still trying to keep Communism at bay (currently not going so well in New York), but the fact remains that it’s the freest place ever.

That is not hyperbole. If you think it is, then tell me what place is more free and tell me how exactly it’s more free. You can’t.

[Addendum: Wesley Dorst pointed out that there are some current freedom indexes that suggest otherwise. Point well taken. But I would say that as far as all-time freedom goes, over the course of a nation’s history, and I think America still wins.]

Here’s the best part about America:

We have this amazing thing called the First Amendment, which makes it illegal for any government authority to take away our right to worship Christ together.

I hope you’ll be in church tomorrow doing just that, as this kind of freedom is not normal in world history.

Lord, we thank you for our country, and we pray for righteousness to increase in the land.

Come quickly, Lord!

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Please Support My Work

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to share the newsletter with a friend.

You can also subscribe to a free or paid subscription to support my work and help me provide for my sweet wife Samantha and our daughter on the way.

I believe this work is ministry, and although it isn’t tax-deductible, supporting this work with a gift of $5/month makes a huge difference in our lives and helps to keep me doing this full-time.

God bless. See you next time.

Day I Got Saved

A few weeks ago I sent you, my paid subscribers, a post sharing my rough sketch of “Day I Got Saved.” I appreciated your feedback and did incorporate some, if not all of it into the song.

Well, now that the full album is officially done, it’s time to share with you the final version of that song.

It’s still very minimally produced, which is…

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First, I have to thank each of you for being here.

This little newsletter community has been with me pretty much every step of the way—listening to all the singles that would ultimately form the majority of the songs on this album—you were there for those, supporting me and going deep with me in a way that no mere social media follower or Spotify listener ever can.

For that, I love y’all.

(Side note: now that I live in South Carolina, I can say “y’all” with more confidence).

Here’s what’s going to happen as the release date approaches:

In the next week or two, I’ll be sharing the unreleased songs with paid members.

Then…

Two weeks before the album releases to the public, I’ll release the whole album here for everyone—both free and paid subscribers.

In sum, paid subscribers will get it about a month before free subscribers, and free subscribers will get it about 2 weeks before the general public.

On July 31st, the album will be released to the public (i.e. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, etc).

But honestly, the best part about all this is being able to have a connection with you all right here. I’ve found that substack is the best way to go deep with people. While social media is broad and shallow…a substack community is narrow and deep.

For me, this has become the place where fans aren’t just numbers and insta handles on a little screen. It’s the place were I can pour myself out more thoroughly with longform content, where we can have the deep conversations, where everything is animated by our shared passion for folk music and our mutual love for our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom we are the body.

You guys are the true contributors that make all this worth it.

So, while I’m stoked that this album, after so much literal sweat and tears, will be released to the public, I am especially excited to experience it with this circle right here.

To support the release, you can now:

• Presave on Spotify here

• Presave on Apple Music here

• Buy t-shirts here

• Donate to the GoFundMe

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Question for you: should I make CDs or vinyl?

See you next time,

Will

Usually I release everything as a single, but now that I’m working on an album, I have to come up with songs that won’t be pushed as singles, but will be part of a great body of work.

The album will include much simpler, more story and lyric driven stuff li…

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On Friday April 24th, I woke up on a still, sunny morning, lakeside at our family cottage in Northern Michigan.

I had one thing on my mind: that in a matter of hours I’d be performing a full two-hour concert as part of the National Trout Festival.

What is the National Trout Festival, you ask? Great question.

It’s an annual trout-fishing celebration held in a small town called Kalkaska near Traverse City, MI.

Okay, but why is it in this “Kalkaska” place? Isn’t that kind of…random?

Well, as it turns out, Kalkaska is a sort of center for trout fishing. In fact, downtown Kalkaska is home to the famous “National Trout Memorial.”

Okay, back to the morning at the cottage. The sun was out, so I grabbed my stuff and sat out by the lake talking to God, re-reading the sermon on the mount, and reviewing my setlist.

Eventually, the sun grew tired of shining.

Around midday a dark rainstorm rolled in and sent me scrambling indoors. So for the next few hours I sat inside next to the wood-burning stove making some print-outs for my merch table.

Next step: shower, don my new William Toll Mountain Tee, and hit the road.

Arriving at the Venue

Next I met the band at the venue—the Kalkaska Church of Christ—for soundcheck and a brief rehearsal.

Following a brief discussion of Jesus’ “Salt & Light” teaching, we prayed together and dedicated the show to our Father in Heaven.

I was so fortunate to have three guys from the church’s worship band volunteer to back me up so we could have that full-band energy. Total game-changer.

Praise God for the great work of Darrell Boger (lead guitars/mandolin/musical director), Brandon Perryman (bass), and Abram Lantzer (drums). Without these guys, the show wouldn’t have been nearly the same.

Doors opened at 6PM, one hour before showtime, and the first two people to enter are my wife and father-in-law, who proceed to set up the merch stand near the entrance.

I helped them for a few minutes, then some fans began to trickle in.

The first two fans I met really blew my mind. They drove two hours from Grand Rapids just to see the show.

Their names: Gillian.

Check out these hand-stitched t-shirts they made based on my song, “Blessed Are You.” Mind blown…

I was so grateful to have met several more of y’all before the show, too.

It’s hard to describe the feeling of meeting folks face-to-face who stream my music as part of their daily life. It feels like we already know each other on some level.

T-minus twenty ‘till showtime…

I head to the greenroom to hang with the band as the clock slowly creeps closer to 7PM.

We chat casually, and I share with them how the classic rock band The Eagles would huddle up and sing the refrain to their song “Seven Bridges Road” just before stepping on stage.

I asked the guys if they would join me in that ritual. The only difference: that we’d sing The Doxology instead. And sing it we did.

7:02

Showtime.

Chapter 2: During The Show

I’m not good with numbers, but I’d say the room was big enough for 300 human beans.

And if my memory serves aright, it was almost full through the entire night. Praise God for that.

But as I step up to the mic I am totally feeling the nerves.

To be honest, I don’t have a whole lot of experience playing live gigs. It’s always been a here-and-there kind of thing, since almost all my time is spent writing, producing, and promoting the songs.

In any event, me and the band got through the first three songs, and then, slowly, we started to find our footing. The nerves faded from a full jitter to mild background noise.

The self-consciousness turned to full-consciousness as the music, the people, and the Lord came into sharper focus and my self took a back seat. And for the rest of the evening, the Holy Spirit moved the room.

Our prayer was that we’d be passive vessels for God’s glory, and that his people would be nourished. That prayer was answered.

Some highlights of the night

Once I got to “Blessed Are You,” everything seemed to come together. Y’all were fully engaged—clapping, stomping, even singing along.

I think people even got to their feet at one point. As you know, I’m all about that stomp n’ holler energy, and from that point on it was there tangibly.

Another highlight was that, in general, Darrell Boger played his heart out on the mandolin and lead guitars.

Every friend and relative at the show specifically told me sometime after, “that Darrell guy on the left, he was so much fun to watch.”

At any moment I could just step away from the mic, look to my right (your left), strum, and let Darrell go. Guys like him really bring a dynamic experience to an otherwise wooden show.

There’s so much more I could say about this show—things I remember so vividly and hope to never forget.

Little things, like a fan shouting a word of encouragement between songs.

And big things, like sharing my unreleased song “A Good Word” for the first time and seeing how well it was received…

…or playing my song “Man and the Woman” and having a solid moment of eye-contact with my sweet wife Sam in the second row, who co-wrote the song with me.

…or playing the upbeat hymn “I’ll Fly Away” and hearing every voice in the room sing it back to me while clapping along…

…or playing a solo acoustic version of Luke Bower’s “Not My Home” and literally weeping through it by the time I got to the end…

…or teaching y’all in the crowd how to sing along to the lai, lai, lai part of my song “Here I Am” and hearing you sing and clap along so vibrantly.

It’s moments like these that can become part of one’s soul and live forever, and I pray that they will.

Chapter 3: After The Show

As soon as my last song “Here I Am” came to a close, I put my guitar down, thanked my bandmates, and about three seconds later I was approached by a group of around eight friendly young girls that looked like they had just come from a beauty pageant (aged 12-15 I’d guess).

They thanked me for playing and said they had a great time. That’s what I like to hear!

I then went over to the merch table to meet up with my sweet wife Sam and her friendly father John. They were tag-teaming the work at the merch table. I am grateful for them.

They both said they had the best time meeting everyone that came up to the table both before and after the show. Apparently y’all really know how to make a good first impression.

I was so delighted to meet some more fans, including an extremely adorable blond child wearing a pink hat, who came up to me beaming from ear to ear and so nicely asked if I would sign the bill of her cap.

I’ve never been happier to sign something in my life.

I’m still getting used to the idea that some people want my autograph. I pray that God would get all the glory as I honor the request of fans who place a value on my handwritten signature.

I pray that my signature would only ever be a pointer to Him whose Signature is upon my heart and all of my music.

I pray that all of you in Kalkaska that night, who heard the music, who met me in person for the first time—I pray you all would, as a result, be conformed more closely to the image of Christ, our king, friend, and savior.

To the glory of God alone. Amen.

Shoutout to the new subscribers!

First of all, thank you to everyone in Kalkaska who supported by purchasing one of the William Toll Mountain Tees! (Especially you newsletter subscribers, who got a $5 discount).

Shoutout to you special few who took that pivotal next step in our relationship and signed up for this newsletter in person:

• Darrell B.

• Cameron W.

• Reid K.

• Debbie E.

• Annamarie P.

• Joshua F.

• Andy B.

• R. Hodgman

• Austin G.

• Gilly J.

• Kassie H.

• M. Price

• (there may have been other that I missed, so if I missed you, let me know!)

Thanks for reading and supporting. I hope you enjoyed the show if you were there, and if you weren’t, I hope this blog allowed you to feel like you were.

If, and only if, you’re able and feel led to do so—please consider supporting my work, ministry, and family by upgrading to a paid subscription where you get the songs and demos before they’re released, as well as exclusive behind-the-scenes content.

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In this newsletter, you’ll get the story behind the song, the deeper meaning, and the official video & streaming links.

Here we go…

Click here to listen on your preferred streaming platform.

If you’re interested in:

• getting my finished songs before they go public

• hearing unfinished demos and providing feedback

• supporting my music, ministry, and family…

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The Backstory

One day I was strumming Sam’s Yamaha acoustic guitar in my studio/office space. I’m usually not playing guitar in there casually—if I am it’s because I’m recording, doing a live stream, or trying to finish a song I started.

Usually, if I’m just playing casually, it’s in my living room for fun. But I must have been tuning my guitar for a recording session or writing a different song entirely.

When I tune a guitar, the first thing I do after I’m done is play a few chords to make sure it’s sounding right. And often, I just get carried away with a new groove or some new idea I’m having, which almost always turn into new song ideas. I believe this is how “Ready to Run” came to be.

These days I don’t often strum with that beachy swing that you hear in this song. But there was a time in my life when I was borderline obsessed with Jack Johnson—the world-renowned beach-folk singer-songwriter—and I learned half of his catalogue when I was first experimenting with guitar as a teenager.

But as an artist, I tend to lean more toward mountain-folk. So when I spontaneously starting strumming with this beach-folky pattern, I felt that Jack Johnson-style swing, which brought me back to my former self, and a big wave of nostalgia came crashing over me.

Maybe it was being reminded of my former self—dead in my sins—that caused me to think this way, but as far as I can remember, the next thing that came to me after finding the strum pattern and chord progression was the first line:

400 years a slave to sin,

Building bricks for wicked men,

Until our lungs cave in

Right away I knew I had something worth writing all the way through.

The Deeper Meaning

With just these few words I had the beginnings of a poetic interpretation of the Exodus story, through the lens of our New Testament understanding.

Below are the parallel stories that I’m attempting to weave together in this song (click here for bible references).

The Exodus:

1. Israel groans under their slavery to the Egyptian Pharaoh.

2. Moses comes to challenge the slaver (Pharaoh) and set his people free.

3. Moses leads them through the Red Sea, through the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2), and toward the land flowing with milk and honey.

The Gospel:

1. You were enslaved to sin.

2. Jesus came to crush the slaver (Satan) and set you free.

3. Now that your soul is eternally saved:

   1. Jesus—through his teachings, the scriptures, and the Holy Spirit—leads you through the wilderness of your new life, melting you down, and re-creating you in his image, through a process called sanctification.

   2. Through this process, you may suffer (like the Jews in the wilderness), but you will thereby increase in holiness, faithfulness, freedom, and joy (like the Israelite’s “greatest generation”—the last generation to live in the wilderness—who crossed the Jordan into the promised land).

   3. Jesus leads you to your final destination as well: the spiritual promised land of Heaven itself. There, you’ll abide with him and glorify him forever; there, you’ll thrive in everlasting purpose, joy, peace, and fulfillment.

I don’t really touch on the wilderness and sanctification part of the story in this song, though it’s there in my mind. But this song really is meant to focus on the excitement and the joy of escaping our former slavery and entering into our newly created path of righteousness heading to the promised land, come what may. With Jesus Christ leading the way, we can walk heavenward in absolute confidence and celebration.

If you’re interested in a deeper study of the scripture through this lens, I made a Google Doc that outlines the bible verses in relation to the two interwoven stories of the Gospel and the Exodus. Check it out.

Please Support My Work

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to share the newsletter or subscribe to a free or paid subscription to support my work (which helps provide for my sweet wife Samantha). I see this music as a ministry, and although it isn’t tax-deductible, supporting this work with a gift of $5/month could make a big difference in our lives.

God bless. See you next time.

It drops on March 27th, but the full song/lyric video is available to paid subscribers right now (link below).

If you’re not a paid member, don’t worry, I made this one-minute sneak peak for free subscribers as well:

If you enjoyed it, I’d love it if you’d consider forwarding this to one or two friends.

For ye who dare enter into member-town, here’s your link to the full lyric video:

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• Personal updates

• New show dates

• Gofundme status (!)

• A new song I’m working on

Life Update March 13

Sharing a working demo with paid subscribers

For paid subscribers, below is a demo of a new song I’m working on for the album. Please listen and chime in with any ideas you might have!

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It released Friday, and since then it’s already had more than 7K streams on Spotify. That’s awesome. Thanks for listening and subscribing. You are slowly changing my life.

In this newsletter, you’ll get:

• the official lyric video

• the streaming links

• the story behind the song

• the deeper meaning

Here we go…

Click here to listen on your preferred streaming platform.

Subscribe now

The Backstory

This song is a collab with my man Ian Austin. He’s a ridiculously talented artist and producer, and I’m grateful to call him my friend.

I met him in the summer of 2024, and before we knew it, we were collaborating on a song called “Storm at Sea,” which is still my most popular song on Spotify, and Ian’s too.

We made Storm at Sea to have a sea-faring, pirate-shanty adventure vibe, and we decided that “Go With You” should have similar energy—only this time it’d be bigger, faster, and downright epic.

Sonically, we took inspiration from the hit song “Bloodline” by Alex Warren and Jellyroll. But lyrically it’s much different. Whereas “Bloodline” is a song about breaking a generational chain of addiction, “Go With You” is about supporting one another in our walk with Christ and on our journey as independent artists.

We’re both in a similar stage in life: newly married and wanting to provide for our families by doing what we love most—making folk music that provides nourishment and delight to the body of Christ, and glorifies God alone.

We’ve both seen God’s goodness in providing so far, but we are still facing a daunting uphill climb financially. Rejoice! He has us put us in this position for a reason.

Without pressure and discipline, we wouldn’t become stronger. He’s using this season as he uses all seasons—to melt us and shape us into his image. If we didn’t believe that, we wouldn’t believe the Bible:

Striving artists operate on a unique and lonely path. It’s extremely rare and intimidating, but the beauty of it is that we don’t have to do it alone. We have each other, plus our other brothers in Christ who are similarly pursuing an “out of the ordinary” life.

As the author of Ecclesiastes writes, “Two are better than one... and a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

“Go With You” is in part about Ian and I deciding to support each other to the end in this unique mission. We are 100% behind each other.

But here’s the rub…

Many times when telling others of our hopes and dreams as artists, we have been met with a painful ridicule—whether it’s a direct challenge, a passive look of judgement, or a minor disapproving tone.

Isn’t this so true of your walk as a follower of Christ? In the world’s eyes, your wisdom is foolishness. And they’ll let you know how they feel, whether it’s in the way they look at you or with direct insults.

I’ll go deeper into the biblical parallels in the next section. But first, some caveats:

I’m not saying being an artist is the same thing as being a Christian, and I’m not saying people who question our decisions are doing the same thing “the world” does when, in it's sin, mocks Christian righteousness. I’m not even saying people are certainly and always wrong to question an artist’s decisions.

I’m just pointing out a similar pattern of facing disapproval from others.

The Deeper Meaning

Any true Christian painfully understands the truth of Jesus’ words when he said, “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

One thing that makes the Christian life difficult is this…

…our consciences are bound in a way that a pagan conscience is not—for we are commanded daily to repent, abandon ourselves, and strive against temptation.

We fight this fight with joy, because the verdict is already in. Christ's perfection is ours. His blood covers every sin—past, present, and future—and on that final day, we will stand before God as righteous and whole.

But knowing this doesn’t mean our hearts won’t feel the anguish of temptation. It doesn’t mean we stop hungering and thirsting for righteousness. It means we take up our cross and saddle up in courage and confidence, and commit to walk in a manner worthy of the King we represent. We continue down that hard road.

As we go, we daily inspect ourselves for pride, lust, lies, greed, anger, and all manner of deadly sins; and upon finding sin, we own up to it, shine light on it, repent, and battle it with all our might—Christ behind us.

If this struggle doesn’t resonate with you on some level, I urge you to pray a prayer of radical repentance and dedicate your life to Christ—your only hope for salvation. Then go tell your local pastor you’ve been born again. Tell him that though the way is hard, you want to enter by the narrow gate. He will guide you on your next steps.

The fact is that if you are a Christian, this is what your life will be like. If you call yourself a Christian and aren’t concerned with these things, then you might be a hypocrite.

Continual repentance hurts a lot. But those who truly love Christ are vividly aware of the riches that come with being a slave to Him.

The Christian life fundamentally a life of contrition, self-denial, and repentance…

…all things which the pagan world around us is not concerned with in the least. That’s partly why he says the gate is narrow and the path is hard and those who find it are few. The good road is a hard road, but most people don’t take it because they’re interested in the path of least resistance, spiritually speaking.

Though it’s hard, there is good news. We don’t have to fight this war alone!! This is where the immense camaraderie of the Christian life comes into view. And that’s what this song is about.

• Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 – “Two are better than one… For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.”

• Galatians 6:2 – “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

• 1 Thessalonians 5:11 – “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.”

• Hebrews 3:13 – “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

• Hebrews 10:24–25 – “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together… but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

• Hebrews 12:1 – “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight… and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

• Job 16:5 – “I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.”

• Isaiah 35:3–4 – “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not.’”

• John 13:34–35 – “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

• Romans 12:10, 15 – “Love one another with brotherly affection… Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

Please Support My Work

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to share the newsletter or subscribe to a free or paid subscription to support my work (which helps provide for my sweet wife Samantha). I see this music as a ministry, and although it isn’t tax-deductible, supporting this work with a gift of $5/month could make a big difference in our lives.

God bless. See you next time.

Bonus Content: “Go With You” Lyrics

Waging war against these winds up against my back,

They try to push me under but I won’t turn back,

Don’t know if I’ll last,

I’ve been sailing in the deep like a captain with no crew,

The current’s getting stronger, don’t know if I’ll make it through,

Brother come soon,

Brother I will go with you, we’ll keep each other in the truth,

We don’t have to fight this war alone,

Together we will run this race, we’ll keep each other walking straight,

Brother I’ll go with you till we’re home,

Running stones against my blade till my knuckles bleed,

Well if iron sharpens iron hey it’s you I need,

Brother will you go with me,

Well the road ahead is narrow as the sharp side of a screw,

I’ve tried to walk alone but we’re stronger two by two,

Brother I will go with you,

Brother I will go with you, we’ll keep each other in the truth,

We don’t have to fight this war alone,

Together we will run this race, we’ll keep each other walking straight,

Brother I’ll go with you till we’re home,

Ohh

Brother I will go with you, we’ll keep each other in the truth,

We don’t have to fight this war alone,

Together we will run this race, we’ll keep each other walking straight,

Brother I’ll go with you till we’re home,

Hey folks,

I am thrilled to announce to you, my inner circle, that I am going to be releasing an ALBUM this spring!

But…

I need help.

If you are a paid subscriber, you are already doing your part, so this isn’t directed at you. Thank you so much for your continued support of my work and music ministry. But I can use all the help I can get for this fundraiser, so please help spread the word.

For the rest of you, if you’re thinking, “I’d love to pitch in, but I’m not in a place financially where I can do that comfortably,” then please don’t worry about it.

I am only asking for those who have ample funds to consider donating an amount that you can easily afford, and that you feel would reflect the value of a William Toll album and the effort it will take to create and launch it.

I’ll post the above video on social media soon, but I wanted to come to you all first.

Again, if it would add pressure or pain to donate, please keep your money! I’m just out here doing my due-diligence in letting people know about the fundraiser. I forbid you to feel a shred of guilt if you can’t pull it off. I absolutely understand that you have way more important things demanding your finances right now.

Your prayers are more than enough!

Why I’m staying indie

You might be asking yourself, “why does he need 10k for an album?” Or maybe you’re asking, “Why doesn’t he just take a record deal?” Well, long story short, I feel the need to stay independent. I’ve declined several offers to join this or that distribution company. One even offered a cash advance of $20K. I also got an offer from a catalogue licensing agency who wanted to license a portion of my catalogue in exchange for an up-front cash payment of $30K.

(Both of these cash offers were subject to a variety of fees, allocations, and taxes, so it’s not as much money as it sounds like at first).

But the main thing was that, while the offers were tempting and mildly flattering, they required me to part with a portion of my royalties, which constitute the majority of my income at the moment. None of the cash offers were big enough to justify parting with income right now.

If you check out my GoFundMe page, you’ll find more information about why I want to stay independent, why I have a goal of 10k, and exactly how your donation will help and how it will be used.

Pushing back against AI in music

On a totally different note, we now live in a fascinating world where independent music artists like myself are not only competing with industry label artists, but “AI artists” too.

I recently came across a folk artist who I am 90% sure is actually an AI. My first thought was, “dang, this song is great.” They gave him a look, and backstory, really catchy folk-pop songs, social media content of him lip syncing, and doing basically everything that us real artists do day after day.

But after a while of following, the subtle nuances of deep fakery started to become more and more apparent.

So, your donation also helps push back against the wave of AI generated music, which is already starting to eat away at the royalty pool that real artists feed their families with.

Why am I doing this?

Well, I’ve received many messages from fans who tell me that God has used my music to make a big impact in their lives by drawing them closer to Christ, and I feel called to multiply that impact.

I’m one of only a few artists doing this through folk music instead of worship music, and I’m seeing a large need in this area, as many Christians just don’t resonate with the sonic experience of worship music, and gravitate towards folk music instead.

The only problem is that mainstream folk music isn’t biblically edifying, and is often times spiritually weakening.

I am on a mission to build up and nourish the body of Christ, which is his people, through this music, and I’m already seeing the first few fruits of it.

Now, I’m trying to take it all the way.

Donate

All the recordings are “scratch” recordings, which means I just threw them together so I could start experimenting with different drum and instrument arrangements.

That way I can fl…

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…or at least they look like marble.

How do they do it? Brew dirt for .01 cents and label it a slow-steeped pour-over so they can sell it for $10? Or, perhaps they could just be making a good product at a fair price that a lot of people want to buy.

Anyways, expensive coffee doesn’t have anything to do with this post or this song, and I couldn’t think of a clever transition, so let’s just get into the content un-smoothly.

My new song, “I’ll Follow You,” is OUT.

In this newsletter, you’ll get:

• the official lyric video

• the streaming links

• the story behind the song

• the deeper meaning

Here we go…

Click here to listen on your preferred streaming platform.

Subscribe now

The Backstory & Deeper Meaning

As a man, especially a Christian man, I get major pangs of shame at the thought of failing to provide for my wife financially. After all, coffee is apparently overpriced at airports.

Providing is one of the primary duties in my life, and my calling as a Christian husband and the head of my household. How can I call myself a true head of household if I can’t earn enough to provide for the household in the first place?

The thought of not living up to that calling creates a huge storm in my soul. It’s like the devil is in my head shouting:

“Failure! Ha! Idiot! Everyone hates you including God! The bible says if you don’t provide then you’re worse than an unbeliever! Proof that you’re not a child of God!”

In my “Here I Am” newsletter, I told the story about how I lost the job that provided for my household’s living expenses. Stubbornly focused on music and songwriting, I put her through a terrible season where I tried to figure out how to build a career in music from the ground up, while she worked a full time job that she hated.

She was forced to carry the lion’s share of financial provision at the time, and as a result, I dealt with that screeching inner shame pounding in my spirit daily. But I didn’t have time to think about it. I had work to do. I had to make it happen; to change the tides once again. I must provide, or the storm rages on.

In the midst of it—and I still am largely in the midst of it—I would look to God and pray:

“Lord, please make a way for me to provide. Bless the work of my hands. Music is the one thing I can do well. I will work hard, but I can’t succeed by myself. I need a miracle. Without one, I’ll surely fail. I’m following you through a dark and deadly valley…

…I’m not being lazy. I’m grinding every day, all day, six days a week. I’m working like it depends on me, and praying like it depends on you, because it does. Please show me your power.”

Despite working harder than ever, the results weren’t there yet. But our loving Father slowly started making a way and provided an opening—a path in the wilderness—tight and thorny though it may be.

Even with a thin, unmapped trail, there is direction, and I could start bushwhacking my way through it. And for these past few months, that is exactly what I’ve been doing. I can barely see ten feet in front of me, but on we go, praying that God would send us into a safe clearing and not off a cliff.

By God’s grace, I’m slowly starting to reach a larger audience with my music; the rugged path is starting to open up a little bit at a time. My streaming income (it’s not large) is now our primary income, paying most of our bills (there’s not a lot of them). I also have some income from a small business I started with a couple friends where we produce for other artists and offer artist/producer coaching services.

But as of yet, we still can’t afford a full load of household expenses on my income. So, right when we needed it most, God provided a place for us to stay rent free, giving us a window of time in which to generate the growth needed to upgrade to our own home. Soon, God-willing.

In the midst of this trial, we truly see and feel the Lord’s blessing upon the work I am doing. We are encouraged by the growth, overjoyed he has connected us with each of you, and are continuing to pray for him to provide more resources as the adventure continues.

However, we are also learning a valuable lesson in being content with less. We truly do feel content, and I can confidently speak for both of us. I don’t want anyone to think we are over here trembling and fighting and sweating, eating Spam to survive. Things are under control. We just need things to elevate if we are going to afford to rent or buy our own place.

Right now, Sam and I genuinely feel that we are right where God planned us to be.

We have this deep peace that we are operating according to his perfect plan for our lives. All the pains and joys and the stresses of being a full-time artist trying to pay the bills—it’s all happening according to his perfect providence.

It feels amazing to reflect on that reality; that when we are following him we cannot misstep. For we make our plans, but the Lord establishes our steps.

Deciding to trust and follow him through absolutely anything is the best, most joyous, most exciting part of life by far. Do not lust for creature-comforts in earthly securities like money and safety. He is bigger and better than that. So lay up your treasures in heaven instead.

It brings to mind a quote from The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe when Susan is asking about Aslan (who is God, allegorically). Here’s an abridged version of the exchange:

“Is he—quite safe?” asked Susan.

“‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver. ‘Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Genuinely following the one true God is the adventure of a lifetime—come what may. When it hurts, when things feel unstable, we can find absolute rest in the fact that he is fully in control, using any discomfort to melt and sculpt us into his glorious image.

I’m getting chills just thinking about it. It’s all for our good (Romans 8:28; James 1:2-4).

When you’re struggling with adversity, in the long dark night of the soul, keep the chorus of this song in your back pocket.

Life might hurt a lot at times, but when you’re following a perfect God who holds all the details in the palm of his hand, whatever happens is good.

Please Support My Work

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to share the newsletter or subscribe to a free or paid subscription to support my work (which helps provide for my sweet wife Samantha). I see this music as a ministry, and although it isn’t tax-deductible, supporting this work with a gift of $5/month could make a big difference in our lives.

God bless. See you next time.