After my EP release in 2017, I had a creative dry season that lasted almost four years. I released a handful of singles in that time, but even with that, half of them were old songs that I revived and revised. Things were slow to a point where every time I sat at the piano to try and write, I could feel creativity leave me. It was a very difficult time for making music.
Then, in mid 2021, it was impressed on my heart to make an album called ‘Zion.’ That is the best way I can describe what happened. I didn’t sit down and think about it one day. I don’t even remember what I was doing when it happened; that’s how normal the day was. Something or someone just gently nudged me, and before I knew what songs would be on the album, I had the title. I never spoke about it out loud, but I thought about it each day for a few days after that. One morning shortly after that, my wife and I took our sons to see their grandparents. There, we talked with my parents, and my mother turns to me and says, “So what’s the name of your next album? Zion?”
That confirmed it for me.
Very shortly after that, song ideas, sounds, and lyrics began to flow through my mind again. I found myself writing like I used to, but this time, it was different. After 4 long years of a creative drought, I realized that somehow, G-d was preparing my heart for this project. Each song I wrote, when I finished writing, I would say “man, this really brings the whole album together.” I found myself saying that over and over until I completed the writing process and realized how crucial each one was to the overall message.
‘Zion’ is an album of both breaking away from and returning to. I’ve found that the former is the easy thing to both do and write about, but the latter is more difficult. Breaking away from a corrupt system, singing about it, and being angry, is both cathartic and obviously liberating, but it is only the first part of liberation. The other, and arguably much more important part is where one goes once they are liberated. It’s easier to buck the evil system than it is to cling to a righteous system. The song ‘Return’ speaks to this. Based on Malachi 4:5-6 (or 3:23-24 depending on what version of the prophets one reads), the first part of the song is directed at a personification of the evil system, but then ends with a focus on who we are returning to. “The hearts of the father’s return to the children. The hearts of the children, return to the father,” becomes a rallying cry for those who desire restoration in their personal lives. Again, the title is ‘Return’ with the secondary title, ‘With No Due Respect.’ It’s starts off as a kind of letter to Babylon, and it ends with a call to the rest of us.
Right in the middle of the Zion album are two songs that I like to collectively call The Suite, but they have two distinct titles. The first one is called Yom HaShem (Hebrew for ‘Day of the Lord), and the second is called Procession.
Yom Hashem is mentioned by the prophets many, many times throughout scripture; a time when great and terrible things will happen, but ultimately will come to the end of time as we know it. One aspect of Yom HaShem I wanted to highlight in the song is the false prophets, and what will happen to those who speak lies and claim G-d told them to speak. The scriptures are very clear about what will happen to those who perpetrate as G-d’s mouthpiece, and the prophet Zechariah speaks on this in the book of Zechariah chapter 13:1-6. I had never noticed that passage before, but after I read it, the song came to me that same day.
Procession is a song that I was writing at the same time Yom Hashem was being written. I didn’t know at the time that they would go together, but one thing I’ve found in this work is that my responsibility is to not try and understand everything as I go, but to speak, act, and write as I’m being led. Procession takes the song preceding it and moves it into the next ‘act’ if you will. The song has a jovial, inviting type of feel that is reminiscent of beloved 60s and 70s artists like The 5th Dimension, Earth Wind and Fire, and the Motown greats. The song itself has three different movements to it with instrumental sections that invite you to dance your way to Zion with us!
From there, the album goes into more specific messages of redemption, and eventual victory over ‘Babylon,’ which was both a physical place in ancient times, but also alludes to wickedness, and the Accuser, Satan himself. Modern day ‘Babylon’ has often been identified with the global multibillion dollar child sex trafficking industry, for example. Another example is the abortion industry that abortions 40 to 50 million babies globally per year (about 3,000 babies per day). Babylon is not simply evil, but a firmly established and well-oiled system with countless benefactors and moguls heavily invested in its survival and continues success. Babylon is a wicked system, and the final song of the album is a celebration on Mt. Zion of the destruction of that very system. It is a celebration of the destruction of Babylon and of HaShem reigning victorious. This is both reflective in the prophets, psalms, and what we Christians call the New Testament, in the book of Revelation.
I could sit here and type that I planned all of this from the beginning, and that before I started writing, I put together a big excel spreadsheet highlighting the themes I wanted to touch on within this Zion narrative, but I would be lying. Songs came to me, and I wrote them. The ones I listed, and the ones I did not mention, including even the one love song, all of them are an intricate part of the core message of the project. Why? That is beyond my pay grade. I can tell you the ‘what.’ But the ‘why’ is up to Hashem.
I would be extremely remiss if I did not mention the fact that going to Zion is not only a beautiful metaphor that I’ve used to make a large orchestral/soulful album, but a literal event that will happen at the end of time itself. That, however, deserves its own attention. For now, I will leave you with this excerpt from the prophets:
"…and many peoples shall come, and say: 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.'"
Isaiah 2:3