Clouds O'er Fields of May

An Album

For as long as I can remember, I've always loved the rain. As a boy, I found it puzzling the rather bleak and gloomy reputation it seemed to hold in our culture and language: "don't let me rain on your parade", or "why don't you save that for a rainy day?"

Of course, I understood the metaphors. But I always felt that just as well, those metaphors alone missed something deep and non-trivial about the rain. Or at least that something more than mere doom and gloom were to be found out there in those grey and lonely skies.

It's often said that beauty calls to oneself. That before one can put into words or reason why he must step into the unknown, the unknown will call to him first; a lover who catches your eye long before you have the words to describe just why you can't look away. You are captivated by something that transcends you, and calls you forward into its arms—into adventure.

Those soft, grey clouds, and dark, rainy skies were that glimmer in the deep for me. And so began a lifelong love affair between a lowly poet and the beautiful world perpetually beyond him and his pen.

I don't thinks it's ever entirely for one to say what an album is "about" in any final sense. But in some ways, this album is in part a love letter to the rain that I have come to know in just 25 short years and a lifetime. And it's not just the rain that we blame for our muddy shoes and cancelled plans.

Because sometimes it needs to rain. Sometimes you need the rain. Sometimes, something bigger than you needs the rain. Sometimes it's going to rain whether you like it or not. And sometimes it's not. Sometimes the rain is what you need, and you just don't want the things you need.

But there's something beautiful about a sky that is always above you and always beyond you, and always beyond your control. Because the things in life that are under your control are never wholly that way in the end.

In the end, there's something deep and terrifying, something awful and mysterious, something horrible and heart-wrenching—but something beautiful about learning to yield everything that you are to everything that is beyond you, and daring to find meaning in the in-between.

To quote the song for which the album gets its name, "Her sweet smile has brought me the rain, like clouds o'er fields of May."

A Word of Thanks

In some ways this album is a telling of my story, through the songs I've written along the way. But maybe it's your story too. I may have put these words to pen, but in some sense these songs are not wholly mine. What is art apart from we who cherish it? What does it mean in the absence of we who find meaning in it? Even if you've just taken the time read here today, thank you for being a part of my story. And thank you for letting me be a part of yours.

As for the album, it's currently underway. Ahead of its official release I'll be posting demos of all the tracks here on this site, along with lyrics, production notes, and stories behind the songs. As the album begins to take shape, it will all be shared here.

To adventure.

And a life well-lived,

— David Kennedy