Music

I’ve always grown up with music. I remember laying on my couch listening to Beatles albums when I was four years old for hours, just entranced by the way music worked. After I started being force fed piano at age six, the love of music continued to grow into what it is today. As a songwriter I try to use the transcendent power that music has to stir people to action. With the lyrics I hope to get people thinking and examining their lives. Music, to me, should be both beautiful and dangerous, a golden and pearl-laced dagger that cuts into people’s souls.

I remember sitting down to write my first song when I was in sixth grade. Up until that point, I had never experienced something so thrilling. My fingers were tingling as I scribbled my last stanza on the notebook my parents had given me. My relationship with the piano in front of me, with music in general, shifted from one of a master and slave to one of two lifelong friends sharing a cigar on the back porch. Ever since that day, music has been my processor. The modes and melodies comforted me through heartache, the cadences rejoiced with me in triumph.

In music it is safe to confront the ugliness. Music is where I confronted my own ugliness and processed the wretched world that surrounded me. It was ultimately the way that I related to music that helped save and revitalize my faith in Christ. When Christ seemed like only bullet points on a page, he was cold, a memorized and tired dogma my hands were weary of gripping. It was Christ as the melody and harmony, the ten-thousand octave chorus, that brought me back to vibrancy. I truly believe God gave us music so that we can get a glimpse of how he functions in the world.

I wrote music all throughout high school and college. I still write music today. I hope that the lyrics I write challenge people to look to Jesus. Not only in my song writing, but in my worship leading as well, I hope that the music created reminds people of the joy we can have in Christ. I know that it has been the constant God has used in my life to point to his gladness.

Here is a video I recorded with my friend Matt Graham of a song called City Fell Asleep. It is a post-apocalyptic hymn musing on what life means in light of its inevitable termination.

To listen to some of my music, you can visit my old band, Eliot Fitzgerald’s, Myspace page. To see more recent live versions of newer songs, visit my youtube page.

I have written quite a bit since I last did an official recording, so new stuff will be out momentarily. Stay updated here either through MySpace, Facebook, or this blog about future shows and recordings.