Old Notebooks

This is a short piece about how albums actually get made — not in the studio, but long before that. About notebooks, road miles, borrowed advice, and how certain tools quietly shape the work. I’m sharing it here as a way in, not as a product. If you feel like supporting this kind of writing and music, there’s an option at the end — but mostly, I just wanted you to have the story.

spoken intro/hiss

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Old Notebooks

I started my first of these notebooks three or four years ago. Thick, leather-bound, a little smaller than 8½ by 11, with off-white pages and standard lines. There’s a ribbon attached to the spine to keep your place, and a space on the first page for your name and contact.

The first one was a deep brown. I found it at a drug store somewhere in the southeastern U.S., on the road with Scrappy Jud Newcomb, headed to a duo acoustic song-swap gig.

At some point along the drive he said, almost offhand, “You should get a new notebook for yourself. A really nice one. Kind of get your thoughts for the album together—really get into it.”

When I first moved to Texas years earlier, Scrappy was the first cat I saw out there doing something that felt like a life. Over time, without much announcement, that arc shifted—from hero to bandmate to collaborator, to someone whose advice, even when offhand, I’d learned to trust.

I always seem to be the driver on these tours, and Scrappy always ends up the navigator, scrolling through Yelp to find us an Indian restaurant or a farm-to-table spot somewhere along the route. The goal was simple: once a day, eat real food—ideally with something that had been through the photosynthesis process.

Somewhere on a bumpy road between Baton Rouge and Mobile, we stopped at a drug store and I found it. I didn’t overthink it. I liked the idea of taking an unexpected turn with the writing, so I bought it and went for it, tout de suite.

That night, after whatever gig we played, I dove in headfirst. Song lists. Journaling. Notes about what I wanted the album to be, who I wanted to play on it, and—most importantly—how I wanted this new statement to sound.

The move away from legal pads, composition books, bar napkins, and half-finished Word documents quietly changed how I approached that record. I didn’t abandon any of those other tools—I still used voice memos and notes on my phone—but this felt different. It gave the work a clearer container.

After Alone At Sea was finished, I already knew I wanted a new notebook for the next record. Same make. Same size. I ordered it online and chose black. That one traveled with me to the Netherlands, where I recorded an album with a band that had no preconceived ideas about who I was or what I was supposed to sound like. It worked.

When the opportunity came up to make a solo acoustic record—even though that Dutch album wasn’t out yet—I ordered another notebook. Same style again. This one was grey. The Bend was different by design: one instrument and one voice per song. Keeping the projects, and the notebooks, separate helped everything stay in its lane.

More recently, I found myself back in the studio recording new material for that Dutch-band album—this time in Texas, with a different set of players. I remembered the black notebook still had plenty of unused pages in the back. Picking it up again made it easier to slip back into band mode, and back toward the bluesier, roots-driven music I started with before moving to Texas.

That black notebook dropped me off on a street corner somewhere between Robert Randolph and J.J. Cale, with Alabama Shakes rolling up behind us—exactly where I needed to be to finish the album.

With the album still unfinished and unreleased, the black notebook is still at work. There are a few empty pages left in the back.

I’m already thinking about the next one. Blue? Green? Green sounds fun.

For more pieces like this — and if you’d like to support my work — you can do that on Patreon. Thank you all.

Plank