Track 09

River of Secrets

Video coming soon · check back for the official track video

Winter view from my Columbia, Maryland home.

Its Place in the Story

The Jungian psychologist James Hollis writes, “We live with expensive ghosts in memory’s unmade bed for what we don’t remember remembers us nonetheless.” I had this in mind when I wrote the lines,

All our secrets
have conspired
to tell us lies
as we fall back asleep.

Hollis’ ghosts are “expensive.” We can pay a high price for unknowingly living with them as they construct the inner narratives that confine and deceive us, often in a misguided attempt at self-protection. It’s what causes our evil twin to spring to life long after you thought he was vanquished.

Mindfulness practice is about making the unconscious conscious so that we can work with what was previously hidden in constructive ways–by identifying and befriending the ghosts before they can undermine us.

In short, then, River of Secrets is about the stories that flow from our deepest fears — fears so deep they are often secret, even to ourselves.

Winter view from my Columbia, Maryland home.

River of Secrets marks a slow shift in the album’s narrative. If TBH is about clinging to something painful simply because it’s all that remains of something precious, River of Secrets is about coming to grips with the unseen forces that can destroy something we hold dear.

we had arrived · we were safe

The exhilaration of “Boyfriend” had not yet faded, but the uncertainty had. We had arrived. We were safe.

I also borrowed a little from Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”: “Had we but world enough and time.” Indeed, for a moment, it seemed like we had all the world and time one could ask for.

A Few Words

The production of this track was an odyssey in itself. It began as an exceedingly spare, quiet tune. You can hear one of those early takes below.

Unhappy with my own guitar playing, I reached out to Riccardo Mazzaglia, a guitarist I found on Fiverr, and asked him to lend his considerable talents to the track. He outdid himself, supplying multiple tracks of acoustic guitar and bass. His playing opened up a second version of the song, far different from the spare arrangement I originally had in mind. My job was then to make all the parts fit. It was a struggle.

While the album was technically “finished” in late 2025, a naming dispute with Spotify over the title of “Prelude South” forced me to pull the album back. That delay turned out to be a blessing in disguise; it gave me the space to realize that “River of Secrets” was drowning in its own bass.

What I thought would be a quick “bass fix” turned into a three-month deep dive throughout early 2026. Because my voice sits in a lower register, it was constantly being masked by the heavy low-mid energy of the track. I spent January and February experimenting with different guitar and keyboard arrangements, trying to give the vocal space while keeping the atmosphere I was trying to create.

In search of that middle ground, I ended up moving away from much of Riccardo’s playing in what became the third draft of the track. You can still hear Riccardo’s beautiful playing in the instrumental version below.

The breakthrough came with an “aha” moment about dynamics. I had always heard the song in three sections, building progressively, but by the third section, the mix kept becoming too heavy-handed. Eventually I realized that, for the song to build without becoming too loud, it had to begin much more quietly than it had. By making the first section quieter, I finally created the runway the song needed.

It took eight revisions with mastering engineer Alan Douches—who was a saint of patience throughout the process—to finally balance the clarity of the vocal with the weight of the arrangement.

Stopping in South Carolina on the way.

The Vault

Demos · Alternate Takes · Behind the Curtain

Early demos for this one were so different you might not recognize them.

Early Demo

Instrumental version

This instrumental version highlights Riccardo Mazzaglia’s playing. Getting my vocal to audibly fit was a challenge.

Early Demo

Early spare demo

This early spare demo Is one version of how I originally planned the song. It was a long, meandering road to arrive at the final version.

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