ZACHARY JAMES

In an instant life passes by. Before you know it, you are standing in the middle of it, with both ends in plain view, and the inevitable assessment at hand. (Yes, just like the Talking Heads song). The story is common. It is the story of nearly all of us. It is all part of the search.

But when the measure of success for what you create is not rooted in commerce, celebrity, or wealth the reality scorecard is difficult to fill out. The assets and liabilities don’t neatly stack into pluses and minuses on a page. The currencies of experience, love, relationships, health, and creativity are typically not included in the calculations, their deposits often ignored, their true cost buried in our hearts. But these are the economies that matter most, those of the heart and soul.

This journey of 1000 songs is my life’s ledger. It is not a way to sell and promote music. It is a way for me to look at my body of creative work under a holistic narrative lense, release it into the world, and build a better understanding of my place in our shared human experience. It is a way for me to recognize, consistently, on every level, that my lifetime of creative output has value beyond the market, and has helped me grow in connection, healing, love, faith, and understanding. Music saves me. Music fills me. Everyday. 1000 songs? Yes, in the last 20 years. And, if you add in the whole 36 years of music there are another 300. Now, not all good, and I imagine some are not listenable. But many of them have something to offer. They are in various states: voice memos, multi track studio recordings, 4 track demos, etc…

So what exactly am I doing? Each week I am going to focus on one unreleased song from demo to final recording. I’ll talk about the places, people and events that influenced the songs, my personal struggles and triumphs at the time, share alternate versions, with the whole thing culminating in the release of the song. You have seen my different permutations of this already through the years. Lots of starts and stops. But I think this new personal structure of understanding will make it stick. I’m not trying to get through all 1000 songs. It has already taken a lifetime.