Remember to Show All Your Work (Recording in Progress)

Can’t you just hear it now from when you were about to take a test in school?: Remember to show all your work.

Whatever the answer, if you couldn’t show how you got there, you didn’t get full credit. The thinking mattered. The process mattered. I hadn’t thought about that in a while, but somewhere along the way, while trying to make a new record, it came back to me. This essay exists as a version of that.

I’ve been writing and recording for the past year, and when I went back and looked at my own notes—pages of dates, guitar choices, drum grooves, abandoned ideas, and small breakthroughs—I realized something important: the work is there. I’ve been doing it. It just needed to be written down, and I wanted to bring you along for the ride.

So this is me doing that.

What’s emerging isn’t a single narrative so much as a shared attentiveness to living inside constraint (emotional, temporal, financial, etc). This record (and yes, I say record, because I am a product of the previous century) is being made in the margins of real life. That context isn’t incidental. It shapes the sound, the pacing, and the kinds of questions the songs are willing to ask.

The Songs

Several songs have moved far enough along to demand attention, not as finished statements, but as works already revealing their intentions.

“Have You Read the News” sits close to the center of the record, even as it resists easy classification. Lyrically, it’s sardonic without being cruel, observant without pretending neutrality. It’s about information saturation, irony fatigue, and the exhaustion of modern doomscrolling. Musically, it’s unsettled. Acoustic guitars carry motion and melody, while the harmonic feel risks sounding almost too bright for the cynicism underneath. That friction is intentional, but unresolved.

“Burn the Ships” is more direct, and more personal. It’s about commitment without romance—about the moment when keeping an escape route open becomes heavier than closing it. The song has been revealing a need for space and texture: live drums, air in the arrangement, and possibly even something unexpected like a concertina to underline its sense of resolve without triumph.

“This Is the Bad One” emerged almost accidentally, initially as a way to show a collaborator the broader emotional range of what I’d been working on. It quickly became something else. Sonically, it leans into unfamiliar territory: a cleaner, more detached vocal approach with an early-80s British feel (think Gerry Rafferty). Lyrically, it circles the moment when denial stops working; when “things are fine” no longer holds.

“Have a Good Day” is the outlier, and intentionally so. It’s playful, bright, and knowingly a little absurd. The phrase itself is so common it barely registers, and that’s part of the point. Who gets to say it? Is the narrator sincere, oblivious, defensive… all of the above? The song has been a joy to work on, leaning into 70s arena-style guitar swagger and momentum. It wants synths. It may end up being the most misleading song on the record. And that’s exactly what I was going for.

Beyond those, several other songs have received recording attention and are actively shaping the collection, even if their final role remains uncertain.

“Fall in the Right Direction” marks a kind of internal course correction and is perhaps the most punk (and most wordy) thing I’ve done in a while.

“Everything Is Super OK” remains unresolved. Its surface reassurance contrasts with the tension underneath, but I’m still questioning whether that softness serves the larger emotional arc of this record. It was a song I needed to write, but it doesn’t say anything “new.”

“No Jim No” occupies a similar liminal space: energetic, distinctive, but possibly belonging to a slightly different emotional ecosystem.

Alongside all of this, I’ve been revisiting the warehouse of unfinished ideas (fragments, sketches, abandoned verses, video files, phone notes) to see what still has relevance. Some may find new life, particularly in the context of FAWM. Others will remain what they are: proof that not every idea needs to be completed to be useful.

Process, Limits, and What Comes Next

I’ve been documenting this record not as promotion, but as accountability. Working this way has been a process of evolution- slow, imperfect, and somewhat in public (including Friday afternoon livestreams). It’s also clarified that several of these songs are ready for the next step.

They want real rooms. Live drums where feel matters. Vocal performances captured with full attention. I think I’ve pushed this project as far as I reasonably can on my own, learning the songs and developing them until the limitations are now practical and not just creative.

After talking this through with my producer/co-conspirator, Terrance, we landed on a clear and realistic next move: later this summer, we’d like to take two or three of these songs into a studio and record live drums and vocals, properly and deliberately. Not the whole record yet—just enough to let a few songs fully become themselves, and to establish a sonic and emotional foundation for what follows.

Um, it’s also where costs become unavoidable.

The Ask

So here’s the question I’m putting into the world.

If you’ve been following this process, if these songs resonate with you, or if you believe careful, independent work like this deserves the chance to be fully realized, I’m inviting you to help make this next step possible.

I’m raising support specifically to cover studio time, musicians, and production costs for recording 2–3 songs later this summer, starting with live drums and vocals, and additional instrumentation only where it truly serves the song.

Here’s the link to the Go Fund Me: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-chris-finish-his-new-album

This isn’t charity, and it isn’t a disguised pre-order. It’s participation. A way of saying: yes, this work is worth finishing well.

I’ll be transparent about where the money goes, and I’ll keep documenting the process. The songs will exist either way- the difference is whether they get to exist fully.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening. And thank you, especially, if you choose to help carry this part of the work forward.

However it unfolds, this record is being made with care. That part isn’t negotiable.