I feel sometimes that life can be very one-dimensional. Work, eat, sleep & repeat. Many times, we need other outlets in life to be anything but one-dimensional. When I wrote Coming Home, I put myself in the shoes of a few people, one being my cousin, who is serving overseas right now, giving a year of his life. I imagine he feels the same as we do in the sense of wanting to come home. But home, as they say, is certainly who you are with, so you’d better make sure who you’re with is worthy of coming into your house. I also feel a deeper sense of the meaning of Coming Home, in the spiritual sense of seeing someone you love again someday. My grandpa comes to mind, who was more of a father than anything to me. I guess all I really mean to say is that everything comes to an end. If it all comes to an end, that's truly what makes it special: being able to have it in the first place. I hope you don’t take your life or the people in your house for granted. We only get this life and the people in it for a short amount of time. I’m learning day by day to show compassion towards those closest and even furthest from me when at times it’s very hard. When it is hardest, that’s when the 30-second dash cam kicks in to record and see if you will pass or fail the test. I hope you pass. Much Love TB
DIALTONE..
Like all my music, I would hope this song is relatable. I know everyone deals with rejection from time to time, and for a lot of us, before we know what’s going on, a parent has already abandoned us. For some of us both. DIALTONE.. for me, is the anthem of abandonment, but it turned into something uplifting and positive. Sometimes, being negative just isn’t fun anymore, and you have to just turn it around. Many times when we grow the most is when life sucks the most, whether we want to believe it or not. If you always take the same path, you’ll always end up in the same place. I think also DIALTONE.. for me, can be a friend that you’re calling over and over, trying to wake them. Trying your best to bring them up a level and get them to step out and try something new and just simply believe in themselves. I hope that I can make an impact positively on someone’s life that’s exactly what I want to do. I know my pop music and also my deathcore band (JUST DUST) isn’t for everyone, but I love having a broad window to reach people and try to help bring them up and help even in a small way to change their lives for the better. If you’re still here with me, I really appreciate it. If you don’t stop, you can’t fail. Much Love TB
Live Like I'm Dead
This song is the epitome of having fun and not taking things so seriously. But only because life, indeed, is serious. Not to run it in the ground, but I had a stroke, and things changed for me, my mindset and actions to match them, most of all. I think we all need that kick in the rear to get ourselves into gear at a certain point. I just realized today, on the day of releasing this song, that in the bridge, I say ‘cuz the hole in my heart feels like a bullet in my head.’ I wrote this two months before I had a stroke, yet I didn’t know at the time that I did indeed have an actual hole in my heart that later was closed with surgery. I think I was running really fast and going a whole lot of nowhere most of that time. Having an event like this changed me. I’m grateful to have had a reset and I’m happy to focus forward and make music that I genuinely love. If I pick up some listeners on the way that sounds pretty good too. I hope you all find your place and passion. Without it, I think you’ll either chase or run, neither of which will get you to your true destiny. Much Love TB
Drown in You
I think at the surface this is another song about a failed or struggling relationship but I find a lot of parallels with it to my inner struggles and mental hurdles I have to jump weekly. It’s like everything you want that is worth anything is usually on the other side of hard work and fear. Trying to get there and just own it and not bail is so easy when people say it that have made it but when you’re in the depths of it it really smacks you in the mouth. Drown in You yes could be relational to someone but I also think it can be something even you’re pursuing. ‘You can drag me though hell and I’ll still be right here’ To me that means my music career, no matter how many days I want to give up because the needle doesn’t feel like its moving I have to keep pushing and just think to myself, ‘They don’t know you, they just don’t see it yet’. One day it’s all going to make sense I have to just keep going. I mean what else am I going to do anyways? I’ve thought about about life and death and when I turn 80 I will NEVER regret a song I recorded and put painstaking hours and love and effort into. So if it takes other people a little time to catch on that’s okay. I’ll still be here grinding and doing what makes me want to wake up every day. I hope you find what does that for you, even if no one cares about it right now but you. They will in time. Much Love TB