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Waiting: Raise that Glass, Lets Kick Some Ass out August 17th
When my uncle was dying in a military hospital, a chaplain stopped by and asked what denomination he belonged to. He was not doing well. Hooked up to machines and mumbling. But he muttered “Church of the Round Table”.
The chaplain asked again. Same answer.Eventually, my aunt had to explain it. The Church of the Round Table was not a denomination. It was my uncle’s way of looking at the world. He used to say went to the church of the round table so the devil could not corner him.
That line stuck with me because it was funny, stubborn, and somehow completely serious. I was asked to do his eulogy and will never forget telling this story to his family and friends. Watching heads nod in the crowd and smiles cross faces at such a hard time. It said a lot about who he was. Former military. Hard to pin down. Tougher than he probably needed to be. The kind of person who could turn a joke into a life philosophy without making a big speech about it.
His line became the heart of “Waiting.” The song just flowed out from it. I added a saying I had heard on Instagram or in the neither somewhere – “I hope you heal from what you don’t talk about” turned out to be a Kirsten Corley quote, but I didn’t know at the time.
There is a little Lemmy Kilmister in the song too. My uncle probably would not have made the comparison, but they shared the same love the military, both could be a little loud and both certainly had some unpolished defiance. He was more of the Johny Cash hell raising variety, not the Lemmy style.
Either way both like to raise a glass and kick some ass. Turn it up. Keep swinging.
At its core, this song is not really about dying. It is about what remains after someone larger than life is gone. The stories. The scars. The lines you keep repeating because they say more than a whole eulogy ever could.
Musically, “Waiting” is built like a rock song should be: driving riffs, a big chorus, a guitar solo, and breakdowns. It is not the best song in the world, it is a tribute…and not a quiet one.
It is for my uncle, and for anyone who has lost someone they still hear in the back of their head.
Raise that glass, lets kick some ass, the devil can’t corner me.
Much Love, RDK
If You are here we have news…
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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
