I wrote “Daddy’s Hands” for my father, Phillip Dunn, and for the kind of man I came to understand more fully as I got older.

He spent most of his working life doing hard, physical work with his hands, especially building fences. Those hands carried the evidence of that life - calluses, cuts, wear, and years of doing whatever needed to be done. But they also represented the things he taught me without ever making a speech about them: keep your word, do a job the best you can, help people when you can, and take pride in honest work.

I didn’t make music while my father was alive. That came later. In some ways, writing this song was my way of finally connecting the life he lived with the life I eventually found for myself.

“Daddy’s Hands” isn’t meant to make him larger than life. He was a humble man. It’s simply a song about what I saw in those hands, what they taught me, and what I understand now that I couldn’t fully understand then.

I released it on September 13, the day that would have been his 100th birthday.

I wrote “Roots Never Took” from the voice of the man I am now, speaking back to the kid who never really had a place to land.

I grew up moving from state to state, house to house, always starting over before anything had time to settle. There wasn’t much room for roots, mentors, or the kind of stability most people take for granted. You learn to raise yourself. You learn to stay light on your feet. You learn that home isn’t always a place — sometimes it’s something you have to build inside yourself.

This song isn’t about regret. It’s about honesty. It’s about looking clearly at where you came from and recognizing the strength it took to grow in the cracks.

Every line carries a piece of that journey — the instability, the grit, the quiet resilience, and even a strange kind of pride in having survived what might have broken you.

I wrote “Time to be Heard” from the perspective of someone who spent a lot of years doing what life required of him before finally deciding there was still something inside worth saying.

For most of my life, music lived in notebooks, ideas, melodies, and unfinished pieces that never had much reason to leave the room. There was work to do, a family to raise, responsibilities to carry, and plenty of reasons to keep putting that part of myself off until later.

Eventually, “later” starts to feel like a decision of its own.

This song is about reaching the point where you stop waiting for permission, stop measuring yourself against when everyone else started, and decide that your voice still matters even if it took a long time to use it.

“Time to be Heard” isn’t about becoming louder. It’s about finally becoming willing to be heard.