In my last post I left you with a couple of things that were going to happen. They both happened.

First, Meg and I got married on May 10th...in her driveway. That might sound a bit haphazard, but it was exactly one year from our first date, on the exact spot where we first kissed. And since that first date was a Back to the Future musical, we decided to cosplay a little and get married as Marty and Jennifer. It was pretty rad.

And then the table read a couple weeks later.

This was the part I'd been waiting on for months. Actual actors in a room, saying the words I wrote out loud. The question going in was whether those words sounded like sentences functioning adults would say. They mostly did. I learned a lot about what's working and what still needs fixing. So, the script is changing for the better. But mostly I just got to spend a couple hours in a room full of talented people. Some of whom I've admired for a long, long time. It was an amazing day.

So! Where things stand now...

Casting.

We went through a few dozen taped submissions for the part of Marty, and it was a very surreal process. We initially had about 700 submissions for the role, and that alone was daunting. So over the course of a couple weeks we watched a lot of reels. Like...a LOT. And some of them had me feeling a little like a fanboy. I'd hit play on someone's reel and suddenly there would be an episode of Psych and I'd be all "I remember this! That guy killed that other guy! He's a jerk! We should hire him!" Which...there's a sentence I never thought I'd say. Either way, we're down to 10 actors with callbacks coming up. This time we'll be hopping into some kind of video call that looks like an AOL chat room and spending 15 minutes with each person, going over lines and trying things out. This is the part where it gets pretty difficult. All 10 actors already feel like Marty to me. I have no idea how casting directors make these decisions. But in the next couple weeks, we'll have our Marty for the POC. And that's wicked exciting to me!

Location.

OMFG...location. Let me just say...this has been the worst part about the whole process. It wasn't even like I was getting rejections anywhere. I was just flat out being ignored. Trying to find a grocery store to film in felt like one of those anxiety dreams where you're in a packed room, you open your mouth to scream, and nothing comes out. Except I wasn't sleeping and the packed room was just a series of grocery stores...and the dream went on for about six weeks. I reached out to well over 40 places and got a total of 3 responses. All of them were “No”. I sent emails. I made phone calls. I walked into buildings asking to chat...and...nothing. I would have thought show business was filled with rejection. But I'm learning it's just filled with silence. Either way, after enough pounding, I finally walked through the right door and talked to an owner who was just amazing. And now we have a location for the end of July. Talk about a weight lifting off! And the sense of accomplishment here is real.

Anyway. I've rambled long enough. Now we go through over 1,000 cashier submissions and find the person who will unwittingly crush our beloved hero.

Until we meet again!

So I've been a little absent. And I want to be honest about why, because "life has been busy" is the kind of thing people say when they don't feel like explaining anything. The truth is simpler and, I think, better. I've mostly just been enjoying my life.

Back in August, I had shoulder surgery. Three months of being essentially useless followed. Now, I thought I was good at being still. I can lock myself down for an entire day with a video game like a freaking champ. Turns out that's different. Because that's a choice. This was not a choice. I got antsy. Very antsy. Eventually the shoulder came back online and I rejoined the human race. Yay.

So from there I coasted for a while in Meg's company. A little of this, a little of that. It's been a dream. Then on Christmas, I proposed. Meg and I have always joked that we're entangled, in the physics sense of the word. Just two particles that, regardless of distance or circumstance, are bound to each other. So honestly, the yes felt less like a decision and more like the universe just confirming what we already knew. On May 10th, I will be promoted from husband-elect to husband. She's very proud of me.

Then January rolled around and we suddenly had a project. Her house needed to be ready to sell, which meant we ripped up her kitchen floor. And yes, we put a new one down. We're not animals. Then we painted pretty much the entire inside of the house. It was a lot. It was also kind of great.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I've been quietly working on a screenplay. It's built around one of my old songs, "Did It Wrong." The song is the center of the whole thing, which means I'm going back in to re-record it. There is a table read coming up at the end of May, which is exciting. Actual actors are going to say the words I wrote out loud. And we'll find out if the sentences I wrote sound like words a functioning adult would say.

Anyway! More updates soon. Cheers.

My shoulder surgery recovery team (mom and Meg)

A handful of new songs are lined up for release in 2025, starting with "Mixtape" on March 1. This one has a bit of history. It’s a song I originally wrote and recorded with Transmission Fields, but I’ve reimagined it for my solo project. You could call it a cover of myself, though this version leans more into the organic side of things. Acoustic guitars, strings, trumpets…giving an old song a new feel while keeping its heart intact.

Like a lot of what I’ve been writing lately, these songs center around connection and nostalgia. Two themes I keep circling back to, whether I mean to or not. The music blends folk, indie rock, and whatever else naturally finds its way in. For those who followed my music in the past, the melodies are still there, just shaped by a more stripped-down, personal approach.

More to come throughout the year. Looking forward to sharing it.

Lee

This past weekend we loaded up the car, headed down to Southport, NC, and spent a couple days shooting some video for Vacation Song with Garrick Lane of Table Rock Media. Before heading down, I spent about 5 hours on Google maps scouting out locations to potentially shoot. Let me tell you the life lesson I learned….nothing looks like Google maps says it does. Well, at least not locations that have a growing population. And…is there really any place not being hit by urban sprawl anymore? Either way…we were given some good locations by some locals and were set to start shooting by noon on Saturday.

We started off by getting some shots at a local gelato shop. Then headed to a bike shop to rent some wheels and film cruising on the bikes under some live oak tree tunnels (Garrick showed off his multitasking ability by operating a camera while on a long board!), and then went to get a bite to eat before filming some band performance shots down by the water.

This is where mother nature threatened to shut it down. While we were sitting in the little restaurant on the pier, the skies quickly started to darken and the coast guard came rolling up telling the place to hunker down as things were about to get serious. And, sure enough, within minutes, the bottom dropped out of the sky and the place was quickly filled with pedestrians running inside in order to avoid the stormy wrath. BUT! As is typically the case at the beach, within an hour things started to clear up, the skies turned a few shades of awesome, and the game was back on!

Filming the band stuff was just such a blast. I found a local drummer from Wilmington (James Tomlinson) to bring out a minimalist kit for the shoot and then my friends Leigh Ann and Michael Gruver rocked on the bass and guitar, respectively. 

The next day we headed to the beach at sunrise in order to get some beach walking shots. This is where I learned that YouTube lets you play videos at quicker speeds. Seriously. Go to YouTube, look up your favorite song, and then hit the little gear icon and then change the speed of the song to 1.5. Now sing along. I'll give you a whole dollar if you can accurately sing along to REM's End of the World as We Know It at 1.5 speed.

Once that piece was done we went to pick up The Thing. What is The Thing, you ask? It is a 1973 Volkswagen Thing! Curtis of the Cape Fear Cruisers was kind enough to lend this amazing vehicle. I felt like I was on some kind of safari in some kind of classic film for some kind of adventure. It was some kind of good time!