Morse Code Update

There are two ways you can do something like this. One way is, you hide your way through, you only put your best side out, your washed face, your good manners.

The other is, you just say it plain, throw wide the doors, let everything in while you let everything out.

You know what category I'm in.

I'm about to do something I've never done before, which is to tell you everything I know, and give you everything I have, about my dream. My big dream. The one that keeps me up at night. The one that keeps me moving through whatever idea I have called 'forward' even though there have been 172 times I've wanted to lay down in the road and not get back up. I have a dream. A dream is one of the best gifts you could ever be given. A dream is sacred. If you're lucky enough to have one, you better honor it.

So here's me doing everything I can.

You know about Morse Code. My show. It started as a dream I didn't even know I had. It started because I lost my voice and couldn't sing and started losing my gigs. I thought I would try acting. As with most things with me, there was zero strategy. Just a feeling. The poet T.S. Eliot calls them 'hints and guesses.'

I found out I liked it. Acting. I found out I had a little talent for it. The first time I was on a set I had the exact same feeling I had when I was 15. When I finally figured out how to play Stairway to Heaven. This is magic, the feeling said. You have to do this.

I wrote something that i felt might be true to what a lot of creative types feel. Singing your little song in a world drowning in noise.

I kept the ambition low enough to have a chance at pulling it off. But I made sure it said something I wanted to say. I've always had a lot to say.

We filmed the little story I wrote. A ton of people helped. I learned how to edit for sound and picture. Because I had no money. More people helped. It started becoming more of an us thing than a me thing. An east nashville thing. A music community thing.

The final product - the first episode of Morse Code - was six minutes long. The Tennessean premiered it. They called it "charming and dryly funny." I agreed.

We made more episodes. It took months to write, cast, organize the locations, plan the shoots. I paid people whatever I could. I was on tour a lot. Playing live shows has been my job for fifteen years. I thought, what the hell am I doing. Who do you think you are?

Then I thought, well. I'm an artist, and artists change. I know how to make records, I know how to play shows, I know how to write a book. I don't know how to make a TV show. Whats that Ralph Waldo Emerson said? All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better. I'm terrified pretty much the whole time. I worry about what other people think of me. Or that I'm not allowed. Or that I'm obnoxious. And then I just go and do it anyway. And it mostly seems to work out.

So we kept making the episodes and they got more ambitious, and expensive, and harder to pull off.

Then my sister died. Then I stopped trying.

I left town. Stopped answering emails. Everything I was pursuing suddenly felt very shallow. Momentum is a powerful thing. It drags you along. But you can't be sure where it's dragging you. I wasn't sure where I was going. I wasn't sure I would be happy I'd arrived.

I prayed a lot, in my clumsy way. I prayed that I didn't know what I was doing anymore and that I was tired. Really really tired. And that if God or Whoever You Are would show me what to do, I would do it. Just show me. I didn't want to build a monument to myself any more. I just wanted to be free of all that. I just wanted to make the world more gentle. Even a little bit would be good.

I let go of all the stuff I thought was so important. I had a little ceremony even. I wrote it down on little pieces of paper, all the stuff I thought I was, or had to be. The labels. I put them in a bucket and carried out to the middle of the pasture. I burned everything in that bucket. Did I feel better? Not at first. Mostly I just wondered what next.

I came back to Nashville with my eyes peeled. I wasn't sure I was supposed to be here anymore. I was open to not being. I missed home. Out west. I was open to anything. I think back to that time as being one of the freest I've ever felt. Surrender is the hardest best thing you'll ever do.

A lot of stuff has happened since then. Some people I didn't know two years ago came into my life and changed it. They became my close friends and champions. They made my thing our thing, which is all I ever wanted.

Now we are here, and it is a crossroads moment. I can feel it. This is either going to happen, or it's not. On the one hand I want it with every fiber of my being. I feel like I've been training my whole life for it. All the writing, the touring, the singing, the learning the million little skills. I feel like I'm really the only person who could tell this exact story, and it's a story worth telling. I believe in it. In my heart I do.

On the other hand, I've learned that line between finessing and forcing is thin. I have no interest in working against the grain. That's not me.

The Morse Code team - Travis and Dona and me - have slated the last week of April to film the new pilot for our show. We feel like it's important to make this top shelf broadcast-ready version of our story so we can tell the story we want to tell -- these themes, these characters, this location. East Nashville. Travis and I basically spent the entire pandemic writing the new script. It went through more versions than I can count. Our feeling was, there was no reason to try and film something that didn't absolutely shimmer on paper. Pretty pictures and people and sounds I love, but I will always be, in my heart of hearts, a writer.

Dona created the budget spreadsheet for the prospective 5 day shoot. It runs to 8 pages. Every nickel accounted for. Dona has worked on films with multi-million dollar budgets. A lot of them. She's the perfect person for this.

The point is, the table is set, and the only thing standing between us and the feast is the money.

We worked with an attorney to help us set up the investor agreement and I'm confident we have a package that is as promising in terms of seeing a financial return as an indie film project can be. A lot of people love Morse Code already. We just want to take that number and multiply it by a million.

So these next months are critical. We are reaching out to all the potential investors we know, and giving it our absolute best shot to put this dream in the air.

One thing I've learned, is that you never know where the help is going to come from. So I'm putting this out to you, my friends and fans. You have been with me since the beginning. many of you know the story I just told. Maybe there's someone in your life who wants to be part of the Morse Code story. Reach out to me by replying to this email and I'll send you the concise proposal package we have for the last two weeks been sending out to everyone we know. A short email, the graphic pitch deck, the budget spreadsheet, the existing webisodes, and the investment proposal. The script is available on request. I'll send it to anyone. Just ask. My gut feeling is our biggest angel is going to be someone close to home.

If you're free Wednesday night, I'm doing a short live show on Youtube live, and instagram. Gonna play some new songs, and I have a big announcement I'll share then too. I do love a little excitement.

Live from Ranch Vovo #1

Wednesday Feb 3 at 9pm central

Link to watch on Youtube Live.

I have some new things I've got coming I'm really excited about. I'll share those soon, but this one is dedicated to Morse Code. Because it's time.

Thank you for being part of my life. Stay passionate. korby