40,000 Matches

I recently came across an arsonal (excuse the pun) of custom matchbooks - 2,000 to be exact, containing a grand total of 40,000 matches, which we had originally ordered as freebees to help promote the release of my first solo album, "Matches", in 2007.

I've always had a thing for matchbooks. I used to scribble notes to my college girlfriend in the flaps of matchbooks from restaurants we'd eaten at, (mostly puns like "hey, hot stuff!" and "Light me up- before you go-go"). I collected matchbooks from everywhere, so you can imagine how finally having matches with my own name and website on them felt like a rite of passage for me.

Soon after the release, however, my web domain -which was printed on the all matchbooks- expired, and before I could renew it (literally within a day), some guy in India stole it from under me, leaving me with 2,000 matchbooks that now advertised his new blog about online gambling.

I quickly burned through ideas of what to do with the matches; I had no girlfriend to write love notes to, no interest in arson, and no desire to cultivate a smoking addiction. I could have kept them in the bathroom, but even using three per day, that's still 38 years worth of air-clearing. So I stowed them away in my Dad's garage under boxes of old books and papers (in retrospect, I'm lucky we didn't have a dry summer).

How funny to come across these 40,000 little treasures again, just days before releasing "Leave The Light On". I recorded "Matches" at a time when I was looking for a way to express the spark I felt artistically - a starting point. Now there's a new title track, "Leave the Light On", which I wrote about holding onto that spark in the face of chaos, loss, heartbreak - all things that can complicate us, cripple us, and yet somehow simultaneously save our lives. Great loss has helped me to find myself. Heartbreak has given me a stronger understanding of love. And darkness has always pointed out where the light is. I hope that comes across on this record, in its own way.

Every project is a new beginning. Even the old songs on this new album, like "Ten Thousand People in White" -which I wrote at 17 - have been recorded in a new way, reflecting where I am right now. We are constantly in cycles of invention and reinvention - striking, glowing, burning out, and learning how to ignite ourselves again. In that sense, I suppose keeping extra matches around isn't a bad idea.