Look for the fire.

PLAYLIST NO. 11, FEATURING THE FOLLOWING ARTISTS:

Stephen Fryrear, Ry-Lo, Andrew Belle, Brandon Flowers, Adam Agin, Drew Holcomb, and others. 

This volume of the boombox playlist is bookended with two songs by a musician named Stephen Fryrear. Here's my little rant about why I think that's important:

A few weeks ago, as I boarded a plane to Arizona,  a Spotify notification told me that an artist I follow had released a new album. Three minutes later I was in my seat and hard-core concentrating on downloading the album before putting my phone into airplane mode. The musician is named Stephen Fryrear and the album is titled "The Badlands."  His sophomore release, the "Heartstrings" EP, was pretty much the soundtrack to my sophomore year of high school, so when I saw that he'd released a new album I couldn't wait to hear it. I pressed play on track one, and after about a minute I was drawn in and felt like it was 2008 all over again. Each track on "The Badlands" is written with honesty and the production quality is gold.

As I sit here listening to his entire discography,  I've come to realize something: 

The musicians, artists, writers, and creators that draw us in the most are not necessarily the ones that belong to the biggest label, band, or publishing company. The words and notes that stick the most come from people with fire in their eyes. 

On the best albums, you can hear the presence of something bigger than the hands that made it. And you can tell that the artist sincerely cares about sharing that "bigger than us" idea in their work. 

Below is a note I saved from Stephen Fryrear back in high school.  I briefly remember emailing him something, and the next thing I knew this note and copies of his EP were at my doorstep. Please take a moment to think about the sincerity involved in something like that. That's the fire I'm talking about.  

Most of you reading this probably couldn't care less about a note I saved from nine years ago. But the fact that there are people who care about their work enough that it spills over onto handwritten notes saved for years, that's the good and real stuff, friends. Even at age 14, I subconsciously acknowledged that, otherwise I'd have thrown this note out before the ink faded. This is me encouraging you to surround yourself with people who have this fire. Find the folks that ask more questions and talk about themselves less, the one's that make a bigger deal about others than claiming credits or a byline. Here's twenty tracks from folks who I think fit this description. 

Listen here. 

If you want to know more about why I started this Boombox playlist series, you can read about that here.