About Me
My favorite book is "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein. Where I grew up, in Kindergarden we would sit in circles singing Joni Mitchell songs....as I continue to learn, so much of who we are, what we see, what we are blind to, and what we believe to be possible is deeply rooted in the beginning of our journeys....this of course is nothing new, it just feels more and more real to me as I go further through my life, my yearnings, and the adventure of what it is to be alive in OUR time, with these people...with music. There are also moments in our lives that forever change our paths, our purpose...there are people in our lives that do not merely walk by us in the wake of our shadows. It all matters...and it all hurts...and it all, every piece of what it is to BE, blows my mind every day.....so I write...so I open the window and sit in the hazy gaze of the midnight black with my bare feet sliding on the cold wood floor of my living room and I curl over the piano to try and make sense of it all. Maybe, sometimes it's not supposed to make sense, or maybe it is. I hope the music and my passion for it will speak for itself and that you are thankful for letting me be a small piece of your journey. That means something to me, beyond the success of what may come my way, in the end it is about the music, the connection, the seeking of answers and comfort in all the questions that haunt us and move us forward. I dont' need to state all I have done, or where i have played and how long and how blah blah...just let this moment be enough....at least that's what I try and tell myself.....There is so much more to come...Peace, JAKE
ALIVE and SCREAMING...February 2008
There is an ache that resides within the hope that I carry. This album is the result of every moment I never thought possible in life, and for those who took the time to care and believe in someone. Produced and recorded by Mike Risha and Jake Walden.
Below are random thoughts about each song on the album....a few at a time
The Storm
The most authentic releationships seem to be the ones that remain indefinable; the ones that take us by surprise. There are moments of heightened dark or light that can instantly push us off the line of convention and twist us onto a new plane, a new version of ourselves, a new version of how we see the world that we can never go back from. And life, life is beautiful and dark all at once. The storms we encounter are experienced only through perception....a gift, or a burden. And such is love, the pursuit of understanding, the pursuit of being understood. This song began as a discovered philosophy, a heightened reaction to a week where i took my sister to the Grand Canyon after her heart was torn and crushed so hard and deep that it was all she could do but to just melt down into the ground and die. The song found a melody and lyrics recently as an ode to my friend Jacky. Jacky calls me her "dark light"....and I like that. She has saved my life and dreams many times and continues to be the my partner in discovery and reflection. The greatest gift in life is said to be love, but for me, I believe the greatest gift in life is hope. For love is a given, but hope is so easily swept away by the storms of our lives.
Alive and Screaming
A broken heart is a broken heart. It is the universal experience, the aftermath of the greatest risk we all aspire to take. there is no known path or true wisdom to penetrate the journey of the wounded to the inevitable seasons to come in a life. My Mom is the one person in this world who understands me beyond reason. Once I grew up and let go of a lot of shit, I began to share with her all the intricate truths of my life, my struggles and great dreams, my found loves and lost moments. She has seen me through my triumphs as well as my fears and dissapointments. But most of all she has spoken truth and always made me aware that she looked at me with awe and wonder. In a dark moment of my life, when her worry even worried me, i told her not to worry, that I was alive and screaming. She liked that. It kind of stuck between us. Autumn always makes me think of my Mother, and this song is rooted (at least in my mind) in that time of year/life. Autumn is the time that most feels like home. Autumn is change, the dramatic finale of life's most inspiring, beautiful and mysterious creatures. It is the shedding of what was. It is the forgiveness of youthful mistakes and the challenge to start anew. Autumn brings us the unique ability to embrace that which we had, while at the same time, with conviction and strength, braving the barren time ahead not in hiding...but in wonder.
Too Young
I can still picture myself, this is almost seven years ago now, laying in the grass of the campus of UC Irvine. My best friend and fellow traveler of the world, a great love of mine in retrospect had dropped me off at that place a week before. We had just gotten back from three months backpacking abroad...and before that Yohan and I, and our group, discovered the world of philosophy and music and living our own way...of youth and the beginning of understanding of who we are (or at least were). When you are young and on the brink of the edge, everything is heightened. You forge relationships so strong, so tied to who YOU are that it is impossible to comprehend those friendships fading away into time. In fact, as we grow, we learn that but for the very few, even the most intense of relationships in life eventually find there way into our past. This I would learn is natural and healthy as people change and evolve. I later learned that this didn’t take away from the experience or the time we had..when the world was before us and the thought of tomorrow was a rare blip on the radar...Everything was so far away that it allowed for the mind, body and spirit to live in the now. This time of my life was when I felt most present, not clouded by experience, but consumed by love and heartache and the search for the now. "Too Young" was the first song I ever wrote, even though it would take some years to become a song, and many more years to evolve into the experiment it is today. This melody, the chorus was the first time I got it...songwriting that is...the simplicity, the intricacy...all of it....it was like my first day of Kindergarden and holds a special place for me. It is about the lifelong hope we all carry to keep those we love close....even as they sometimes slip away. I hope you enjoy it....the arrangement was created by Mike and Rob and I in the studio.
We Are
This is a song that I have been wanting to write for too many years. When one performs, looking out at the crowd, there is an overwhelming sense or rush of opportunity to say something that is all at once personal, and , at the same time universal. The only way to live this life, I believe, is with the knowledge and faith, that each and every one of us is doing the best we can with what we know, and what we have been given. One can never know the complex truths and pasts of another, the how and why each of us do what we do. What is obvious to me is that we all want to be better, that we must try and look at each other, and the world, as not only tarnished and hopeless, but also as a beautiful mystery, a woven quilt of dreams both lost and found. It evolved out of my desire to have a song I could sing live, to create a moment that would move the audience to look at each other and see beyond the love and lies we all possess but are so often afraid to express. I love to take walks with my Mom. I love to talk about philosophy and to try and make sense of all the madness, of all the joy. But in the end, i want to tell each and every person who will listen, that we are, we are, we are not broken...anymore.
Wide Awake
WIDE AWAKE begins as a whisper, a somber, yet inspired call to let go of the weight of what has come before us, and to embrace yet agian the simple act of falling....as the song builds, the words and celebration of the gift of connection becomes more and more visceral, free from the fear of what it may bring. The irony is that there is no end to any story, only the strength of character you must find in order to open your eyes, let go, and once again become wide awake. This song was the first I ever wrote with other people. I can picture the day Rob and Dena and Mike and I sat for hours in the studio with a guitar and simply talked for hours....I remember walking into the booth with Dena putting her ear to my mouth and the mic, so I could literally whisper the begining of the song to her. How that moment taught me the control and vulnerability that resided within my voice and performances. I am very proud to have worked with these people, friends and mentors.....Life changes in an instant.
Come Along
Few songs I write come from a place that is solely mine...from my own experience, my own space of loss. Come Along is a song I wrote a couple of years ago, when after the hardest heartbreak of my life, I found myself temporarily living in this tiny converted garage on the other side of town...it was very old, but charming I guess, like a little hut in the backyard of a sweet lady. It was winter and I had my bed, cold tile floors, my piano and a bunch of Xanex. This was not my most shining moment. I could barely breath for months and no light, no light at all could find me. So I wrote, and I hoped,and I remembered. Most of the songs I write come from a place of hope, of an understanding of the yin and yang we all encounter when we risk being fully engaged in our lives. But this one is masked in hope and is truly the saddest song i ever wrote...for it did no good. It took me to demented places of falsehoods and skewed realities. On the other hand, when I listen to it today, especially in this sparse yet warm recording on the album, I think it is one of the best written pieces, lyrically, I have ever written. It captures a moment in time so vivedly. It captures all of who I was at that moment...and I hope it captures a piece of you.
