Make Me Proud

Another Unfinished Song Idea Finds Its Place

I’m writing you from my dressing room in Cincinnati. We had our first day off in a minute yesterday and in lieu of spending that time in some nondescript hotel room, we collectively decided to park our busses up alongside the Little Miami River outside of town here, fire up the barbecue and float downstream in canoes and kayaks. We didn’t do those things in that order, that would be unsafe, but what a good choice it was to forgo the traditional four wall routine!

We were adrift along the river at some point yesterday early in the afternoon and I started humming a melody that I’d forgotten about for a couple of years. Isn’t it telling how spending (even) mere hours away from our screens can induce states of quiet? Quiet enough that a bird passing overhead whistles a note that catches our ear. We borrow that note and pull on that thread and it unravels a memory of a song from the recent past. In this case it was a song that I had yet to share with anyone save for the guys in my band who may or may not have opened the email it was delivered in.

Either way, I am happy to share it with you. It’s a small idea but hopefully weighted in the right places. I suppose it’s a song about watching someone younger and more courageous than me stand up and speak their mind openly and without reservation. Aging indeed has its benefits, and I wouldn’t want to be any other age than I am, when I am, but seeing a younger person finding their authentic voice and cutting through the noise of their culture seems to be one of the rarest things to witness. Then on the other hand, I suppose it’s possible that it isn’t rare at all, but that in and of itself doesn’t make it any less miraculous.

I hope you enjoy this song idea called ‘Make Me Proud’ and that one day you’ll hum it to yourself while sitting in a quiet place.

-Brandon Boyd