From 2008 to 2012, I was the frontman for an all Korean American Los Angeles based evangelical soul-rock group, The Nehemiah Band. Go check out our stuff on Spotify. Teenage Korean boys from Torrance loved us.
In 2012, I moved from Los Angeles to North Carolina because of a sign I once saw on WWE Monday Night Raw (another story for another time). That sign led me to believe it was time to change the trajectory of my life. I honestly believed (and still do believe) that God was communicating directly to me, saying I was to spend the next three years of my life preparing to be a Methodist pastor in a place across the country. I know. I’m crazy.
In my complicated, pride-riddled, false-humility gushing mess, my initial response was, “Yes God! I’ll do anything, go anywhere, give up anything, and be anyone you want me to be!” Once I got to Durham, those words proved hollow. Two of the guys from my old band had started a new group, Monsters Calling Home (now Run River North). And they blew up! Their first year together, they got booked to play on Jimmy Kimmel, toured with Anberlin, and signed a major deal.
On the one hand, I was really happy for them. These guys were the Jeremy Lin of Hipster Folk music - breaking ground that had never been broken before, getting interviewed by major publications, and touring the country sharing the story of their immigrant experience in places that probably had never seen Asian people.
But on the other hand, I was profoundly jealous. And I regretted hearing what I perceived to be God’s voice. I questioned whether that voice was God’s. Right at the start of my response to a vocational calling, I was being forced to lay down dreams from another life. I was being forced to take on a dream not of my own choosing. I had to learn then, and am still learning now, that to respond to a calling that comes from outside of you, is a call to die, and die, and die, and die, and die, and die again.
This track concludes the third movement of the record, and starting with the next line of the next song, themes like hope and covenant, finally enter the stage.
"Collide, collide, collide / All these dreams of yours and mine / All I wanted for my life was to be remembered"
lyrics
Old
These dreams I've held on to
These lofty dreams
I've kept
As a child
Breath
So much wasted without you
I'd grit my teeth
For years
Without a smile
Now my premonitions they won't wait
Forsaking my ambition for my fate
Collide, collide, collide
All these dreams of yours and mine
All I wanted for this life
Was to be remembered
Rain
The seasons ever changing
And my days
For love
They come and go
You
Were you really for the taking?
Do you mean to say
I missed you
On this road?
Collide, collide, collide
All these dreams of yours and mine
All I wanted for my life
Was to be remembered
Alive alive alive
All your tears are soaked in mine
All I wanted for my life
Was to be remembered
Oh...
Jealousy
Burning me
Jealousy burning me to the grave
Of unsurrendered dreams
Collide...
Collide, collide, collide
All these dreams of yours and mine
All I wanted for my life
Was to be remembered
Alive alive alive
All your tears are soaked in mine
All I wanted for my life
Was to be remembered
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