Shelf Life is more than a project about music.
It’s a project about life.
A reminder that we all have a shelf life—but what truly matters is what we create that outlives us.
This project began by breathing new life into old songs.
Where it goes from here, I honestly don’t know.
Like a lot of people, I grew up with a dream. Music wasn’t just a hobby—it was identity, purpose, and possibility wrapped into one. I wrote songs, recorded them, chased the feeling that comes from creating something honest and sharing it with other people. For a while, that felt like the path I was on.
And then life happened.
Responsibilities replaced rehearsals. Practicality slowly crowded out possibility. Careers, family, expectations—none of them were bad things. They were good things. Necessary things. But somewhere along the way, music quietly moved from the center of my life to the margins—through tradeoffs that felt necessary at the time.
For years, I told myself that settling down and having kids was the moment my music dreams ended. That adulthood required a choice—and that I had made mine.
Shelf Life didn’t begin with a plan to challenge that belief.
It began with curiosity.
One day, my kids started asking about my old music. They’d heard a few songs and wanted to know if there was more.
That curiosity sent me digging through dusty hard drives—Pro Tools and Logic files I hadn’t opened in years. Songs recorded in a different season of life that I’d quietly assumed belonged there.
Some of it was rough. Some of it was better than I remembered. All of it carried pieces of who I was when I wrote it—what I cared about, what I was trying to say, what I was trying to figure out.
It reminded me that the dream hadn’t disappeared.
Its shelf life hadn’t expired.
It had just been sitting still—like a time capsule, waiting to be opened.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. The very thing I once believed had ended my pursuit of music—family—was now the reason I was revisiting it.
But it wasn’t just my perspective that had changed. The tools had too.
Music technology had evolved dramatically since I first recorded these songs—making it possible to revisit, rebuild, and reimagine them in ways that once required a million-dollar recording budget.
So I experimented.
Not with the intention of resurrecting a music career or chasing a specific outcome—but out of the same curiosity that led me to write these songs in the first place. Now nearly twenty years later, with a different perspective, deeper appreciation, and access to tools I never had back then.
What surprised me wasn’t just how the songs sounded.
It was how it felt.
Revisiting this music didn’t feel like going backward. It felt like reconnecting—with a version of myself that still mattered, and with a creative instinct that had gone quiet, but had sharpened with time.
That’s when something else clicked.
I never wrote these songs to showcase my voice.
I wrote them to tell a story.
Songwriters come to learn this, sometimes the best way for a song to truly come to life is to give it to another artist. Not because the songwriter failed—but because a different voice can unlock something the song was always reaching for.
For most of music history, that meant letting the song go. Selling it. Giving it away. Watching it become something you no longer completely owned.
But with the way music technology has evolved, I realized I didn’t have to do that.
I could give these songs a new voice on my own.
I could let them breathe in a way they never had before.
And I could still keep them.
Shelf Life isn’t about pretending these songs are new. It’s about accepting that they survived long enough to deserve another life. And sometimes, that means letting go of the idea that the original version—or the original voice—was the final one.
Yes, this project began by revisiting old songs. But it’s also about recognizing how often we underestimate what still has life in it—how often we decide something is “over” simply because we’ve changed, gotten busy, or stopped giving ourselves permission to explore.
I don’t know if Shelf Life ends when I run out of old music.
I don’t know if it opens the door to writing new songs.
I don’t know if it becomes something bigger—or simply remains what it is.
And I’m okay with that.
This project isn’t about reclaiming a past dream or chasing a future outcome. It’s about staying open—about honoring what’s been created, and being honest about what still might be.
We all have a shelf life.
But not everything meaningful in our lives expires when we think it does.
Some things just need time.
Some songs need new tools.
Some stories need a new voice.
Shelf Life is me doing that in real time.
What matters most in life isn’t how long we live, but what we leave behind that outlasts us—whether that’s something we create, or the legacy we help shape in the people we love.
I’m dedicating this project to my kids.
Mia, Kate, Will & Vinny—stay curious.
I love you.
