April

Hey guys, wanted to check in with everyone. Hope your year has been going well so far. I must say, I’ve been in good spirits recently what with the music I’ve been a part of making, the music that’s been released in the last month that I was a part of making, & the current state of the industry itself. From last to first, like them or not, I love that bands like Fun., Gotye, & Foster the People have been ruling the Top 40 radio charts. And watching Adele clean up at the Grammys & continue to sell something like 8 million albums a week (I think 21 is close to 1 billion albums sold worldwide…don’t listen to me) is awesome. Why, you say? Because as Top 40 has become so homogenous in the last 5 years, having such different sounding songs & artists do so well is a good sign for all of us.

As far as music that has come out – I spent a lot of last fall writing with & recording Tyler Hilton’s solo album with Tyler & Steve Miller. We had such a great time creating these songs & I am in love with his album. From start to finish, I think it’s great; and knowing Tyler, I think Forget the Storm is such a perfect picture of Tyler as an artist. Also, in December I started what I hope to be a yearly album called The December Sessions. I wrote a blog earlier describing it; but in a nutshell, once a year I want to put out an acoustic set of songs I’ve co-written that haven’t been released yet. I’m really happy with how this first volume turned out, and the feedback from everyone has been really inspiring. I love what Joey Phelps has done with the artwork on the album, and since it doesn’t come with the download on iTunes, we’re going to put a downloadable PDF on this site soon (lyrics, credits, artwork, etc.).

Also this week Jason Mraz is putting out his new album Love Is A Four Letter Word, and we wrote a song together on it called The Woman I Love. He is amazing. And May 1, Carrie Underwood’s new album Blown Away comes out. The song See You Again is one that she & Hillary Lindsey & I wrote and I love it. I can’t wait to hear what you guys think of these 2 songs (and albums) coming up. There’s also a bunch of great stuff coming up (Avril Lavigne, Tristan Prettyman, Haley Reinhart, etc.) that I’ll tell you more about soon, but suffice to say this has been a very inspiring few months.

Thanks again for being with me on this journey. I honestly still continue to be floored that I get to make music with such amazing people & actually get paid to do it. You guys rock.

tell her tunnels end in light,
dh