Downtown Again is out now. Here's the story. I wrote this song way back in 2023. At the time, I was living in an apartment in Arlington, VA. At the end of the day, my standard operating procedure was to head downstairs, take up a barstool, and order myself a drink. The bar was Bronson Bierhall, and if you're an Arlington resident (ex-military, government consultants and tech homies unite) you may know the place. It was my ‘local spot’ and I spent many a night there. I was there during good times (success at work, my promotion to Captain in the Army etc), bad times (break ups, benders, etc) and everything in between. Often, I'd sit at the bar and write lyrics in my notes app. On one such evening, I started typing out the question “why am I downtown again?” with a general sense of curiosity. Coming off a breakup, I was considering how I ended up out, alone, instead of upstairs, inside, with the company that I was missing. The beer I was drinking ended up being the “round of your memory” that I was “face down in.” I wrote all the lyrics sitting at the bar that night, with a faint hum of a melody in the back of my head. It was some mix between a Parker McCollum “Pretty Heart” type vocal thing and a Taylor Swift “Blank Space” type of rhythmic thing. Excited, I closed my tab, went upstairs, grabbed my guitar and threw some chords underneath it. Today, the original voice memo I recorded of it that night is laughable. This was all before I knew how to sing, and maybe I'll share the original voice memo so we all can have a good laugh. But, the song was there. I remember being so proud of it. I felt like I had leveled up my writing, my ability to craft a melody, and my ability to create what could maybe pass as a popular country song. Two and a half years later, having the song done and out in the world feels like a nod to the blissfully ignorant, chaotic writer that I was early in my music journey. I'm so glad that the song is out of my notes app and available to you wherever you stream your music.