Dear Listener,I'm writing from the Warren, my little house on a Tennessee hill. My dog is barking outside at what I'm pretty sure must be a skunk. I suspect this because Moondog has reeked of skunk for a few weeks now, and today it smelled like he got a fresh spray of it. We don't pet him much these days. My children and wife are fast asleep, and I'm experiencing a sort of postpartum depression.The creative process is in some ways like a birthing. Jamie is quick to remind me that writing a song feels nothing like labor. But still, there's a period of expectation, which includes fear and worry and excitement and hope, followed by a healthy dose of struggle. In the end there's something new in the world, and by God's grace he has allowed you to take part in it. If you're lucky that new thing is beautiful. And when the drama is over you're left feeling...something. Something like emptiness. You might feel useless, or restless, or listless, or sad--even as you're deeply grateful for the gift you've been given. It doesn't last long, and it isn't overpowering, but it's there.The album we just finished recording (though it hasn't been mixed or mastered yet) took a little less than a month, and the writing of the songs started 18 months ago. I went into it with a blank slate: no theme, no album title, no concept. Just thirteen new songs, the Captains Courageous, and the hope that somehow we'd emerge with something that might move people. I wrote the song titles on a marker board in the studio, then I checked off each song as we finished the main tracks, wondering what this album would have to say to you, the Listener. I wondered what it would have to say to me. I'm still not totally sure.I know what the songs are about. Or at least what I meant for them to be about. Several are about this place around me: the Warren, with its trees and trails, the change of light on the hill, the family that gives our little spot in the world life and story, and the God who blesses and keeps us and the land too. The songs are also about hope. And in order for them to be about hope, they have to be about what hope kills: despair. Fear. Loneliness. Hope is the light at the end of the tunnel, and some of these songs were written in the tunnel. I hope they bear some of that light to you.So here I sit at the end of a good day's work, thinking about the hours we spent harnessing these ideas, words, and melodies to binary code so the Listener could hear a song on his or her way to work and feel something in a numbing world. We have done our work, and now it's time for the mystery of music and story to do its work. We have done what we could, and the songs must do what we cannot.As I write this I'm wonder-struck by this world Christ made. How thankful I am that he would give us music, that he would give us time itself so the notes have somewhere to go, that the Word would give us words that carry pictures and ideas and glories from one mind into the secret garden of another, even that he would allow us technology that enables these little kinetic works of art to flit around the world like birds and to make nests in even a single heart.I dreamed of doing this when I was a kid. I tiptoed down my street in the wee hours of morning, down to the dock by the city park, hoping no one would see the guitar in my hand. I dangled my legs over the still water and looked down at the stars and sang every song I knew, wishing I had just one of my own. I had not language (or faith) for it at the time, but looking back I believe I came to the lake because I was called there. Something woke me in the night, and I came. I didn't know it was the Lord. I thought the voice was music itself. I came and said, "You called?" But music said, "No. Go back to bed." Years later, when I still thought music was calling, I came to it only to find restlessness, dissatisfaction, even destruction. I said again, "You called?" And music said, "No. Go back to bed. And next time, when you wake, say 'Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.' "I'm no Samuel, of course, but you get the point. God was calling me (as he's calling you) to something unimaginable. It was not to fame or fortune. It was not to music. It was to himself. And so, at the end of an album I am reminded of all the time I spent twenty years ago with my neighbor's Harmony guitar, learning songs by Tesla, and Extreme, and Skynyrd, never once believing that I'd one day find great pleasure singing songs about, of all people, Jesus. If you had told me then that I'd one day get a chance to make several albums of my own songs (or write books) I would have laughed even as I ached for it to be true. I would have been even more skeptical if you had told me that my real joy wouldn't be found in the music itself, or in the creation of it, but in the communion it creates between you and me--and the sweeter communion between me and the Father.Thanks for supporting me and mine all these years. I love telling these stories. I love writing the songs. Though I'm hardly adequate or wise or deserving of attention, I hope these will find you and water your garden. I hope they become to you more than I can make them.I guess that's it. I have a full heart and needed a place to spill over.Tomorrow morning I plan to head to the coffee shop and answer some snail mail letters from kids who read the Wingfeather Saga, then I'll get busy on book three. I'm sure that later this year when I finish it I'll write another gushy-mushy post about another postpartum funk. I can hardly wait.Sincerely,AP