Reflections on the summer of 'For Eden'
touring, writing, questions, and living into the answers
On July 21st of this year, I finally released For Eden, a collection of songs that have been close to my heart for years. I finished mixing and mastering this collection almost 3 years ago, so it felt strange - but decidedly good - to finally let go of the songs.
It can take a long time to put out music. There is a lot to consider; touring, promo, finances, marketing budgets, timing… I’m happy the album came out when it did. Any longer and it might have ended up in my archives forever.
That said, in an ideal world, I think it would have come out sooner, and in the future I am going to strive to make and release music on faster timelines.
I would like to thank everyone who has listened, who has sent me lovely messages, purchased records, and come to shows this summer and fall. Your personal messages in particular keep me motivated and inspired.
taken by Marissa Berard during the shoot for ‘Mesmerized’
After the release of Church of Better Daze, my life became a bit of a whirlwind.
We recorded For Jimmy and I was recording For Eden at the same time, but that was in the last months of the locked-down pandemic years (remember those?) and as soon as the world ‘opened up’, we were all working harder than ever before.
I was unable to get materials together in time to put out For Jimmy quickly, and I was managing everything myself, and so that record turned into an EP and was put out a year later than I had wanted. And then it took another year to get For Eden together. In between all of that we performed over 200 shows - should be at 220 shows by the end of 2024.
this beautiful video documents much of the last couple years!
So while that chapter was crazy, awesome, difficult, beautiful, strange - it is also almost over, and my mind is now more open, moving on to other things.
We have one more leg of headlining shows in October, from Portland to Winnipeg. Beyond that, I have some festivals in 2025, and that is all. So far.
I have a pile of over 60 songs in my demo folder, waiting to be made into something. I recently started working with an excellent management team (yay!) and they are helpful, committed, talented, excited.
My creative world feels open in a way that it hasn’t for a couple years.
How exciting!
How… terrifying?
When I arrive at moments like this, large or small, I always go back to these lines from Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
The person I was when Boy Golden came into existence is long gone, changed by years and tears and work and joy and lessons learned.
My vision as an artist is also murky.
When I started Boy Golden, my vision was crystalline.
I could see through my vision several years into the future, but I have come to a place beyond what I saw in those early visions.
After this next tour, I am going to take some time off touring headline shows.
Not real ‘time off’ exactly - I have too much I want to do - but time off the touring grind.
It’s expensive, hard on the body, and despite that, I love it so much - so this wasn’t an easy decision. Still, the time is right.
Festivals, support shows, cool unique shows - these are things that I am excited about doing.
More than anything, I am excited about creating.
I have some music I am producing other artists that needs to be finished.
I have some music of my own that needs to be made. I feel it coming alive inside me. There is a new vision somewhere out there that needs to be seen to be realized, I just need to figure out where to look.
I’m looking forward to getting back to publishing more here while I am in this process of living the questions. I appreciate you being here for that.
If you would like to see our show before I go into this next phase, please do, the show is the best it has ever been!
Oct 6th - Portland, OR - The Showdown
Oct 8th - Seattle, WA - Sunset Tavern
Oct 9th - Victoria, BC - Wicket Hall
Oct 10th - Vancouver, BC - The Pearl
Oct 11th - Kelowna, BC - Revelry
Oct 12th - Calgary, AB - Commonwealth
Oct 13th - Lethbridge, AB - Geomatic Attic
Oct 15th - Red Deer, AB - Bo’s
Oct 16th - Banff, AB - Melissa’s Missteak
Oct 17th - Edmonton, AB - Starlite Room
Oct 18th - Saskatoon, SK - Amigos
Oct 20th - Winnipeg, MB - Burton Cummings Theatre
Like any upstanding citizen, I was blasting joints and playing video games on my day off. I was failing miserably so I thought, "hey maybe more joints will fix this".
I went outside and it was a clear blue sky. The Geese were flying south for the winter, the squirels hurriedly packing away food.
Grand strategies for blasting peoples heads off didnt not come to me...no...instead a voice came out of the sky and asked me: What is Karma?
Not particularilily surprised, I considered the subject I told the sky: "it is an ancient realization of human soceity, we learned long ago that it is good for everyone to help those who help you."
I began to consider the idea further (putting in extra credit when god throws a pop quiz at you while smoking joints is never a bad idea.) I thought about how in many cultures there are very similar laws; the golden rule in christianity as a strong example, not to mention bhuddism and hinduism which hinge on the concept. I saw that these things-some things people will die for and kill for-are really simply different interpetations of the exact same concept.
Soon I saw myself as nothing more that a pin on a tiny wheel in a vast hyper complex machine that streched across the entire globe and all the way back and forth through time. But I was glad to be tiny and insignificant. My meaninglessness comforted me.
I felt like pollen on the wind. I felt free, terrified yes, but free and somehow filled with the knowledge I would be ok.
I looked back up to the sky to see what magnificent force and taken me and swept me away and I saw only this: The god of all things.
Not the one who asks where you live or what your sexual orientation is no-you know, the one that governs ALL things. It was the sky, but it was also space, and matter...it was omnipotent, but not posessing any power over the material world. It did not care for rights and wrongs it only wished for me to know this one thing:
It was that we are helpless meaningless subjects of its devine mercy. It told me to fear this if I wished, but that to do so would be meaningless. It told me that it had always been so and it will always be so, therefore the question of right and wrong is not applicable. It told me that because of this relationship all religions have formed, all art, all of soceity, knowledge, love-all of it came from this simple fact. Every single one of these things is simply the human craving for rationality in a cruel and chaotic universe.
When I was returned to my regular life It was as if nothing had changed. I was rewarded a grand truth, one that underlies nearly everthing it means to be human...as diasapointing as that truth migth have been. But the entire time your song was ringing in my ears:
"To really know anything is a bit of a curse, I knew that I had changed for better or for worse. But I ain't got much to show for that."
And thats exactly where I'm standing at.
Luvs u guys
Q