Soon, oh so soon we will be dropping a single – called Bluebird. So, I figured it would be a good time for a blog…

Bluebird is a joke, a wound, and a truth all rolled into one.

My family has a history of hoarding. My great‑grandparents lived through the Depression and instilled in their children the “waste not, want not” belief. Admirable on one hand, sure, but it can also lead to stacks of magazines that will never be read, piles of thrift‑store clothes, and more “junk” than anyone could ever need in a lifetime.

As parents age, it falls on my generation to help clean up that lifestyle, to reopen rooms, to make homes habitable again. But hoarding is a sickness, and it doesn’t fade just because the calendar does.

“Some wounds, they close but never all the way.”

So when I got the text, “I am the patron saint of dads with OCD,” from my cousin (who was mid hoarder house cleaning at the time) my mind went wild. It’s just a perfect line of dark humor: you can feel the funny in it and the pain baked right underneath. Sad and hilarious at the same time. I can’t take credit for it, but the moment I read it, I knew I had to build a song around it.

The remaining lyrics are about the loss of my aunt to cancer, the struggle of dealing with a mentally ill parent and the pain of loss. Often, people with mental disorders can be “contained” by a high‑functioning and loving partner. That was my aunt. She was lost too soon to breast cancer.

At the same time, I had been batting around a riff for a while, but it needed a punchy first line. And oh man, this was it. But the song also needed something my band never really had before. Dynamic piano – and oh man did Amy Trail deliver. From there, the song nearly wrote itself. The band jammed the tune and we found a spark.

Bluebird is about struggle: helping an aging parent, living in the shadow of loss, and carrying around the heavy, unspoken wounds that never really heal.

Bluebird and Blue Bird mean two different things, and I love both. One is the sky stretching for miles, blue as can be and sunny, the perfect day. The other is my home state’s bird, a symbol of hope and freedom. My aunt… she was a Bluebird and a Blue Bird.

This is my Bluebird. I hope it lands the way it was meant to. Fuck cancer. Treat your mental illness.  

Thank you Damon Bradshaw for the great art.

Much Love,

RDK