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Jeremy Ivey’s Shape Reveals Itself

Recently, the dads sat down with Grammy-nominated songwriter, alt-country artist and father, Jeremy Ivey. But you may know him better as Margo Price’s husband. Ivey has a new album, It’s Shape Will Reveal Itself, out now on Soggy Anvil Records, and it’s a heavy look at the world around us. We will talk about his role as Price’s husband, their partnership in raising their children and songwriting, and how their lives together (and apart) have influenced his art. 

Show Notes

  • 1:10: Donnie admits to being a fan boy and interrupting Jeremy’s dinner before a show in Charlotte, NC, several years ago. What he wanted to ask then, and could ask now, was how Jeremy got into songwriting, and it all started with reading great poetry. 
  • 3:12: Jeremy explains how It’s Shape Will Reveal Itself came together, and the story of “Little Bird” and his daughter’s role on the track.
  • 5:15: A discussion of how the track order, the playing and technical recording impacts the album’s feel, through a patchwork of old and new songs. Also, a CRAZY story about Joan Baez.
  • 10:35: Jeremy’s approach and process, supporting Margo Price and his personal career, and the impact of fatherhood. And a cautionary tale about selling your car with a young child to make an album — this one worked out, but don’t do it, says Jeremy. 
  • 14:10: Balancing home and touring. How Margo and Jeremy find the balance for their music and family, and the hardest part of staying off the road is the FOMO.
  • 16:20: Balancing the creative, romantic and parenting partnerships, and the annual cycle of creativity and support. 
  • 19:30: What does a normal day look like for the Ivey/Price household? Pretty normal, explains Jeremy. It’s complete chaos, with a bunch of toys on the floor. 
  • 21:40: Jeremy explains his writing process and how the chaos around him influences it. And the honest balance between self-indulgence and giving in to the process of songwriting. 
  • 22:57: The difference between songs created for Margo Price’s albums and Jeremy Ivey’s albums.
  • 26:40: The American experience provides an incredible context for creating meaningful and interesting art. 
  • 27:20: The Dad Life Sound Check.  

Mentioned in the Episode

References/Songs:

Transcript

This is Country Music Dads, the parenting podcast with a twang. We’re driving a highly subjective, comically contrarian, often a reverent conversation about fatherhood and country music for people who have a passion for both.

My name is Dave, and I’m a country music dad.

I’m Donnie, and I’m also a country music dad. Today we’re speaking with Grammy nominated songwriter, alt-country artist, and father, Jeremy Ivey. But when you do a search for Ivey on the internets, his top result comes back as Margo Price’s husband.

So on the heels of his most recent album, It’s Shape Will Reveal Itself, now out on Soggy Anvil Records, both streaming and on cassette, we will talk about his role, both as Price’s husband and their partnership in raising their children,

songwriting, and how their lives together and apart have influenced his art. Thanks so very much for joining us and really excited to talk to you about, about your music and then how that all comes together.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

So I’ve been a fan for a long time. I actually met you very briefly in Charlotte.

I came up to you while you were eating dinner before a show and tried not to be like a fan boy and said hello and then left you alone because it’s always weird when random people come up and say hello.

1:10

How Jeremy Ivey got started in songwriting

But I love how your songwriting kind of embodies pain, loss, and hope through like a very raw American poetic lens. How did you get started putting all this music together? Where did the songwriting bug come first for you?

It had to be unrequited love in school.

There was a girl I really liked a lot and I read a lot of poetry, but I started writing verse to her. It’s stuff I never gave her, but that’s where it started. I guess everything creatively starts with the longing, so that was it.

I wanted her to love me and she didn’t. But that couple really falling in love with, even in school, the poetry you’re given in high school, which is like, I really liked Emily Dickinson and TS. Eliot and that kind of stuff.

I wouldn’t do it the other way because I don’t know if you can really have a foundation as a lyric writer without reading that old stuff.

Do you have other poets that influence you still today?

Yeah, after when I graduated high school, I got really into the Beats and that’s kind of where I sit.

Bukowski and the Beats are like the high water mark for me as far as, and I have some friends that are poets too that put out books and things, but there’s no economy for that these days. But I have a good friend named Sampson Starkweather.

He’s got a book called Pain in the Board Game and it’s really good.

Is that a parenting book? Just wondering.

No, he’s not a parent, but he’s a human and pain is part of that whole process. Poetry is something I probably would have done without singing. I’m not particularly a good singer.

I don’t love hearing my voice. I guess we would consider it we’re post-poetry. You can’t make a living at that anymore.

You have to sing it. But otherwise, it probably would just be making books.

3:12

“Its Shape Will Reveal Itself” and “Little Bird”

So, your new album just came out in February.

Can you tell us a little bit about the album and how it all came together?

Well, it feels kind of like a half thought to me. I’d like some of the songs on the album. But it really was about me getting this recorder that I got in working shape.

And I just was playing around with it. And after I’d get a couple tapes, I was recording some songs. I would play them for Margo, and she would say, Oh, that’s really good.

And so I never really wasn’t supposed to be an album. It just kind of like, like you’re walking around, you trip and fall, and an album comes out kind of a thing. It’s hard to even talk about it as a record.

I do have a record that I’ve worked a long time on that I made with Matt Ross Spang that I’m going to put out at some point soon. But this was, and it was fun. I’m not downplaying any of it, but I did all the instruments myself.

And so it’s loose in the way that I play. I think it’s got some charms, I guess. It’s got a couple of songs I’m proud of.

On Little Bird, it sounds like a child’s voice on it.

Is that your daughter on the track?

That’s Ramona, yeah. It’s a song that I composed as a medium to put her to sleep. So I used to sing it, and I was singing it when I didn’t have any words for it.

And then eventually I made the story. And then she was singing it with me when I was putting her to bed. And she has the fear of the red light like we all do.

So when I brought her in to record it, she just was so sheepish. She wouldn’t project. So I just recorded what she did.

And when I went to go mix it, I was asking the guy that helped me mix it, Drew Carroll. I said, what should we do? When should I bring her voice in?

He’s like, just have it in the whole time. Like, it’s charming in its own way. But she knows all the words.

She was shy, so that’s how she sang it, you know? But that was all live, and that was my son Drew to play in the hand drums.

Okay.

It’s really quite lovely.

5:15

How Ivey’s latest album came together + Joan Baez

It definitely sounds like a song that you would make up to sing to a kid. And I like it as the closing, and it gets me to my next question because Edge of Darkness starts the album. That’s a duet with Margo on that part.

It’s kind of nice. It bookends the album with the women in your life. But I did want to talk about the placement of Edge of Darkness and Don’t Sleep on Your Dreams right next to each other.

It seems wildly intentional and the connection of the hopelessness and hope that you may want to find in a poem about raw truth. Was that intentional or did it just come together that way?

It came together that way because I think those were two of the strongest recordings probably. I don’t know.

When I talked to a few people about the sequencing of it, Margo was definitely one and like I said, Drew who works at the bomb shelter, I took this heavy ass machine and brought it in the studio when I wanted to mix it.

And so he had some influence too, but yeah, it is a nice time when the sun come out after the rainstorm. But I think it’s brighter musically, it’s brighter lyrically. But that song, Don’t Sleep On Your Dreams is actually funny.

This whole album is a patchwork of things because Edge of Darkness was a new song. That was one that I had written and I actually, it’s funny, I played it for Joan Baez.

We were at this tribute, it was Joan’s tribute and it was like, the green room was like this powerhouse of amazing writers. It was like Lucinda Williams and Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou and Joan.

And we were getting ready to go sing Times Are a Change and Liam Mardo. And she said, sing that song you’re working on. And of course I was like, no.

You know, and but she, you know, so I was saying a couple of verses of it and then and Joan really liked it.

And she even said, I’ll sing on that if you want me to, which I was, I never cashed in that check because I don’t like to, as you talk about going up to people in the restaurant, like even if someone says they want to do it, I don’t want to bother

them with their time for something. But either way, I felt honored with the approval that she liked it. So that’s a side tangent. But what my point is, that was an intentional song I meant to put on the album.

It was a new one. I was excited about it. But the album wasn’t that way all the way through.

Dulcy Bugger Dreams was a song that I found on a phone that I had forgotten that even worked. And I plugged it in. It was from 2018 and it came on.

And I went through my voice memos because I just have like billions of voice memos. And there was like some realized songs that I don’t remember ever writing. No memory of writing.

No memory why I thought they didn’t do anything. But that’s just the nature of who I am. So that one and Modern World were from 2018 from a phone that I found.

So yeah, it’s a weird album that way. It’s patched together. About half of it is new and about half of it is stuff that I found laying around that I never recorded.

That’s pretty wild, I gotta say.

Listening to the album through a few times, it doesn’t seem like that at all. It really seems like it is intentionally brought together. So that’s pretty wild, I have to say.

Well, if I have anything going for myself, I have this that no one can do under pressure of me.

I sound like myself. I am myself for bad or good. So it probably has a cohesiveness because it’s just me.

Yeah.

It’s cool though that you were… I didn’t realize you were doing all the instruments. The raw flavor of the sound and the lyrics together, really, that to me is where the cohesion comes together, is the intentional raw flavor that comes up.

Yeah, it could be the recording of it that makes it sound so cohesive because you could do all the songs different ways.

But one thing is the amateur-ness of the playing is evident. And some things I’m good at, I’m a good bass player, I’m a good rhythm guitar player, but some stuff that I was doing on it, I don’t play. Like I’ve never played a dulcimer in my life.

And Margo’s got one laid around. So I think about four or five tracks have dulcimer on them, which is funny because I’m not playing it the way people play it. You’re supposed to kind of strum it.

I’m picking notes and making it sound more like an Irish kind of thing. And speaking of Irish, Edge of Darkness, the melody is Whiskey in a Jar.

It’s an old Irish song, and I started getting into that the way that early Dylan used to take old melodies and write new lyrics to them. I knew that song from Thin Lizzy, but it’s an old Irish song that the Dubliners do too.

And it’s kind of a nice melody. So people sometimes, I went on the road with Margo recently on a few shows. I was playing, we did that song live together as a duo.

And after the show, the people would be sheepish to be like, I don’t mean to say that you’re ripping something off, but that melody reminds me, I’m like, yes, it absolutely is that on purpose, you know?

Hey man, at least people are picking it up, right?

Yeah, it’s a traditional, I mean, it’s not copywritten, so I don’t have to give anyone credit.

10:35

Ivey’s career overview and supporting Margo Price

It’s everybody’s.

I wanted to talk about your story a little bit, because there’s a couple of things about your story that’s really compelling to me, because I’m a stay-at-home dad, so I’ve taken some steps in the last few years to prioritize my wife’s career, and

I’ve been reinventing myself. So one part of your story is that you spent a better part of a decade co-writing with your wife, Margo Price, whose star has been on the rise over that time period.

And second, you were 41 when you released your first solo album after Becoming a Father. So how did that arrangement with you and your wife come together for you guys early on?

And what changed, if anything, to kind of bring about the launch of the solo part of your career?

Well, you know, we were in a band together, a rock and roll band called Buffalo Clover, and we had all our eggs in that basket. We wrote it together and we performed. We had a pretty loose but stonzy vibe, you know?

And I did that for a while. We thought a couple of times it was going to happen, it was going to take off for us. And like we, our good friend Brittany Howard sang on, after she blown up with the album of Shakes, she sang on a track or albums.

We thought, this is it, man. This is going to be it. That’s before I understood that people can’t, just because you have a guest on your album, they can’t help you any more than you can help yourself.

So the bang fell flat. We almost got a record deal, it fell through. I think me and Margo were just tired.

It had been like 12 years of it in Nashville trying. At that point, I think we just wanted to get a real job. We had a kid and it was just like, what are we doing?

Then as the story goes, Margo ended up going to jail for drinking and driving. She ended up writing some songs when she was in there. That was a lot of her first album.

So I realized how good that stuff was. I was like, we got to record this. We didn’t have any money to do it.

So we foolishly with a child sold our only car and made a record. Don’t do this, any of this. It’s all bad.

But anyway, that story is out there. You can look that up. Time happened as it does.

Life happens. I never meant to not have my own stuff to do. I just was so focused on her and us making a living and her getting what she deserved because I thought she was so talented and believed in her.

I was just focused on her. I was writing songs there. About half of her first album I wrote, about half of her second, throughout all of them.

I was busy doing that. But I think when it came to me doing my own thing, what happened was I just was too restless and I was writing too much for her to be able to even compute what I was talking about half the time.

She’s like, I can’t, if she’s writing early, I can’t cover everything you write, you have to sing your own songs. Because I would just say, here, sing this and that, just endless amounts of jibbles from my pen.

Yeah, it started, again, the first album wasn’t supposed to be an album either. I went in to make demos to just get the bug out, to get some songs down that no one else is going to sing.

Somehow, my good buddy, Darren Bradbury went to go have a meeting about his album and about him signing with Anti Records. Instead of talking about his album, he was talking about me. I’m like, don’t do that, you’re going to screw up your chance.

Anti ended up being interested in my album too. That’s how it started. Everything I do is an accident, apparently.

Oops.

I also read that you and your wife don’t tour together as often anymore with the kids at home.

14:10

Balancing home and touring

Is that a balance that you guys have to try to work out?

Yeah. I was in the touring band for years and years. I started out when she got signed.

The third band, I was the bass player and played bass for a long time. I switched my roles and then for a while I was home. Then I joined the band full time and I was an integral part.

Then it was about, it was 2024, it was my last full touring year. Then subsequently she switched bands too. She had been with the same band for over a decade.

So I just started saying home more and now I can go out, play a few shows and we’ll do like an acoustic portion of her show, which is nice and she’ll let me sing a song of mine or something. So I think it works out. I need to be home with the kids.

They need me here and I get a lot more writing done when I’m here. That’s the situation now but the cool thing is I can pick and choose the fun stuff I want to do.

Like I always go to a farm and I can join the road when I feel like it, which is nice because right now she’s in freezing cold Toronto and I’m here and it’s 60 degrees outside. There’s perks.

It works out.

What do you think is the hardest part of being home solo with the kids when Margo is out on the road?

I’m not always solo. I have her mom stays with me sometimes and that’s usually how I can go out and join her or whatever. I guess the hardest part was just the FOMO.

She has a really good show and I’m like, I wish I was there, but I guess it makes it more special when I am there.

But I’ll tell you what, ironically, what probably one of the biggest things that’s hard for me, besides being away from my darling wife, is the food. I miss living like Anthony Bourdain.

I miss traveling and eating at whole-the-wall spots that I’m discovering every time I go back to a town that I’ve been to before and I miss that unmoved lifestyle.

Yeah, I think we all could appreciate that aspect of it as well. It’s always good to have that incredibly good meal.

Nice to go away through the country.

Yeah, to eat your way across the country seems fabulous.

16:20

Balancing the creative, romantic and parenting partnerships

I wouldn’t last a year. I’d keel over from a heart attack or something like that. You’ve touched on it a little bit, your working relationship with Margo and you write a lot of her songs.

You co-wrote, I think, every song on the latest album, earned a lot of accolades and all of that. How do you balance the working part of the relationship, especially in the creative things? Because you could see butting heads with a creative partner.

When you also are, she’s your spouse and a co-parent, and how do you balance all those different aspects of the relationship?

Well, it’s not easy and it doesn’t always balance. I think from the outside, it looks like, oh, what a dream you set up, but it’s complicated, you know what I mean?

About every year or so, Margo’s my favorite songwriter that I know personally, but she doesn’t write as much as she used to because she’s so busy with the life of being Margo Price.

There’s too many interviews, there’s too many things that she’s got to be.

There’s a whole lot more paperwork in this situation than I thought it would be, but she’s got a lot of stuff that she’s got to do day to day on the computer, and so she doesn’t get as much time to write like I do.

I’m free, my meditation is always engaged, I don’t have to focus on… This is something rare, I don’t do interviews very often, not because I don’t want to, I’m not in demand, so it’s a different thing for me.

So anyway, about once a year she’ll get frustrated and be like, I don’t want to write with you anymore. She’ll say, no offense, I need to write my own songs, I need to do my own thing, and I’m like, fine, I’m totally cool with that.

And then time will go by and she’ll be busy the whole time, and she’ll say, man, I need to make a record. I’m like, okay. And I’ll sit back and not try to invade the space too much.

And then time will get closer, and she’ll talk to someone about a certain time frame date. She’s got a studio she wants to go to, and we’re still here with not really maybe one or two songs.

And so then I’m like, hey, you want me to work on some stuff that you could help me with? So that being said, it’s always a fine line. And eventually she’s like, yes, you’re my favorite writer, come help me.

And we’ll write together. So yeah, it’s complicated. It’s like to be in love and be, we just try not to think about it as a job.

That’s the main thing. You’re doing it because you love it. It’s a passion.

And the day you start thinking about clocking in and doing it, then it loses all its personality. We still like to think of ourselves as like, we cheated the system somehow, and we’re able to make a living at doing something that we actually loved.

That seems like a good cheat. And if you can figure out how to put that down on paper, please let me know. I would appreciate it.

I’m sure there is no one way to do that one. But as you said, sometimes it is hard.

Last year, after the Grammy nominations came out and the first wave of PR came out, People Magazine had an interview with Margo, and it was about the two of you and your kids. And she said that you’ve somehow beaten the odds as a couple.

19:30

What does a normal day look like for the Ivey/Price household?

This kind of feels like a fairly normal statement for a couple who have been married for the better part of almost two decades.

And we’ve been together for 22 years.

What does a normal day look like in the Ivey Price household? You know, getting everybody out and writing the songs and figuring out the schedules. What’s that look like to you guys?

Usually it’s once the kids are, it’s an early morning because our son is in high school now, for some dumb reason, this public school decided that they wanted to start school at 7 o’clock in the morning.

No one should do that. I didn’t do that when I was a kid. My school started at 8.15.

So we have to, and that school is also half an hour away. So not to bore you with all these details, but it’s an early morning.

So we get up around 6 o’clock and our daughter, he was six and a half, she’s at that point in life where she’s so excited about being alive that she just gets up really early to get to start it, you know?

Yeah, don’t show up that.

So she’s already up and she’s playing in the house. And once we get all that together, the food and the lunches and they’re out, it’s usually, I do one or two things.

I usually either come back home, straighten up the house a little bit, maybe grab a guitar, see if there’s anything left in the tank, or I go play basketball or do some sort of exercise or occupy my body and therefore numb my mind that way.

But yeah, there’s no actual routine. It’s complete chaos. That’s what it is.

And I would like to be able to be that guy who’s in an interview talking like Bob Dylan in Riddles. I could do that. But really, my life is just a bunch of toys on the floor.

There’s not a whole lot of mystery to it. When it comes down to it, being a dad is something that doesn’t lend itself to the mysterious inelst. But I love my kids.

I mean, I think that’s the most honest answer we’ve had about this.

I think that everybody gets the fact that there is just whirlwind of chaos when you’re trying to get kids out the door in the morning.

Yeah, I try not to, when it comes to writing, I try not to stare too much into the abyss of the news right now.

21:40

Ivey’s writing process

Because it’s always around my head anyway. If I look at it too straight in the eye, then I get so angry that I can’t communicate about it. But if I just don’t, if I don’t look at it and I think about it, then I can write about it.

Yeah.

When I get the kids to school and I come home, if I want to write something, I don’t look at my phone and like, scrolling, oh, the world is awful.

And then because then I’ll just be like, what’s the point in even writing a song? Which I always teeter on that line. I think all good writers are always like, is this pointless?

Because is it self-indulgent to write a song or is it giving? I think it’s both. But it is a little bit like, oh, the world’s up in flames and instead of grabbing water and trying to put it out, you’re just singing a song about the flames.

So I can look at it both ways and I can definitely tell myself in all honesty that it’s not as important as sometimes I think it is.

And it’s kind of the style comparison between the songs that you write with Margo and the ones that I guess you write with Margo as well for your own…

This is a moonshot by the way.

Well, so is this. No, hey man, you got to do what you got to do.

If I was to put a very fine point on a comparison between the song styles that you create together and the ones that end up on different albums, it’s very clear that you both explore the American experience, the life that people live, the space that

we create with each other, the poetic narrative of American life. we create with each other, the poetic narrative of American life.

22:57

The difference between songs created for Margo Price’s albums and Jeremy Ivey’s albums

But if I was to try to find a difference, it would be that she’s taking a more narrative personal approach, and you come from this omniscient narrative perspective of what’s going on.

Is that accurate or am I just trying really hard to sound like a blowhard music critic?

No, that’s very accurate. It’s funny because no one’s ever pointed it out, and something has just been true forever.

Margo approaches it as it’s her life story she’s telling you, which is sometimes we come into contention because I don’t look at it that way. I look at it like it’s everyone’s life story. I look at it like this is why.

I was born, I was adopted, I was an orphan.

So I think that my identity is like, instead of I’m this guy and I belong to this family and I’m from this land, all that is kind of like got stirred up with me and muddled where Margo has more of a sense of identity than I do.

But that served me in a good way because not knowing what my lineage is, who I am has been great as far as an artistic thing for me to search and try to find answers that way.

But yeah, you’re right, Margo has like, this is me, this is my experience, I’m telling you what I went through. And even when sometimes I’ll bring a song like, hey, and it’s like a her or him sort of thing, she’s like, nah, it’s I.

So yeah, that is true. I don’t know, it probably will be that way forever. I can write from my own point of view, but and I have a point of view, I just don’t think it’s, how do I say it?

Because I have not locked in to one POV. I try to see the world from all the angles. But Margo, it’s not a bad thing.

She’s empathetic and she definitely feels other people’s pain, but she tells it from her point of view.

It’s very clear that you both care about how the world is going to be and how you’re going to leave it. The stories that she is telling and the stories you are telling are, they belong in the same genre of theme.

They just are presented in different ways. It was an interesting comparison considering you both are writers on both sets of songs.

It’s how the story gets told through the vehicle of the artists who are singing, not just necessarily the artists who are writing it.

You can go through her albums and whenever there’s a switch in voice like that, it usually is a song of mine. If you look at her first album, Tennessee song is a song that I pretty much wrote myself.

It doesn’t say I am doing this and it says, let’s do this. Hey, you tell me how you’re feeling and what’s going on. We do this.

But it’s funny if you think about it, you can go through her albums and be like, that must be a Germany thing. But as far as the American thing, it’s folk music no matter what genre you put.

Lyrically, it’s folk music and that’s why it’s regional because that’s what folk music is.

But America is also I think the most interesting place in the world as far as culture goes, because we invented blues and country music and we invented all this stuff, amazing inventions.

26:40

The American experience as the context for art

We also invented racism on a new platform that had never been seen before. It’s problematic and whenever we have that kind of drama in that push and pull, then it’s going to be goldmine for art.

We definitely identify as Americans, but we’re 50 percent proud and 50 percent ashamed, like everyone should.

But the push and pull between what we create and what that creation and how that impacts our world and our kids and what we leave behind is quite powerful.

So speaking of things that are powerful, how these things impact us, we’re going to go into our recurring segment.

27:20

The Dad Life Sound Check

We love it when we have guests so we can hear what they’re thinking about. It’s called the Dad Life Sound Check.

In this we share a song that’s speaking to us right now as dads, just as people, we can tell a little bit about the song, maybe the artist and why it’s hitting us right now. So Jeremy, what song is speaking to you right now?

I’m kind of always into The Kink so I like Ray Davies as a writer a lot. There’s an album that’s called Lola vs. Power Man and the Megarans.

It’s got a song called A Long Way From Home. Yeah, it’s a very simple song. It’s just about a friend that’s changed, and how far from getting back to who they were and they are.

That’s what I would pick as far as something that I’ll listen to today that I really liked. But Mike was telling me, he’s like, oh, pick a song that’s like about being a dad and that sort of thing. That would be a different thing.

And ironically, I would suggest, because it’s a song I totally forgot that we even wrote, but a song of me and Margo’s on her album, That’s How Rooms Get Started, there’s a song called Gone to Stay, that we wrote about being on the road and being

away from our kids, and about the locked door that time is, you can’t go back into the room. So those are my two. I’m saying, it’s very self-serving to pick my own song, but I totally forgot that I even wrote it.

And I was thinking about songs like that. So I would say that for just listening, enjoy listening to that King song, but as far as a song about being a parent and being away from your kid and time passing, gone to stay is a good one too.

I love how Little Bird was a song that you sang to your daughter, because that’s the phase that I’m in. I have a new baby at home, my first daughter. So I’m singing lots of lullabies.

And I’m not a songwriter. I have to sing other people’s songs to put her to sleep. And so one that I’m singing a lot is He Stopped Loving Her Today, the George Jones classic.

That’s like one of my go-tos, mostly because I know it. But what surprised me, like I know for artists and songwriters, say before that, they’ll write a love song or they’ll sing a love song early in their career before they have kids.

And then it takes on kind of a new meaning when they have kids, because it kind of shifts, it’s a little bit different. In this case, like I’m having that experience with He Stopped Loving Her Today.

But it’s like, it’s a lot sadder, because I’m thinking about when she grows up, what if she’s gone and she doesn’t talk to me anymore. And that’s what I sing to her, like now several times a day.

And that says a lot about where my mental space is right now. And my state of sleep deprivation and emotional.

Yeah, yeah, I get that.

Emotional turmoil.

I go back to the Khalil Gibran book, The Prophet. It talks about, I love Khalil Gibran. If you guys haven’t read much of him, it’s always worthwhile.

He’s a Confucius where everything he says is like a riddle and amazing.

He talks about having kids and about how they’re not, we tend to, the things that we create, which kids are something we create with the help of the divine, we tend to think that they’re ours.

We don’t tend to think that we’re creating them for other people. We’re not really creating for ourselves. You don’t write a song for yourself, you write it for someone else.

So kids are a creation that we have and we want to own it. We want to say this is mine, but it’s not ours.

And so I think we all have that fear or that things coming up like, oh, the kid’s going to leave the house and they won’t want to talk to me anymore. I have a 15-year-old who already doesn’t want to talk to me. I don’t feel bad.

I know I’m a cool dad. But the fact that he’s in a phase where he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. I spent years and years hanging out with him.

If he doesn’t want to hang out with me, that’s totally fine. But I’m learning to deal with that and say like, he is his own person. He’s a human being in the world.

He doesn’t owe me anything. It’s hard to look at our kids as individual people. They’re not us.

They are themselves. Just like, you’re not your parents. You are yourself.

I’m trying to get to that early in my kid’s life where I understand that. I’m not offended. If he wants to move to Greece and never speak to me again, that’s okay.

I love him. If he wants to speak to me, I’m here. That’s a hard thing to get to.

But I connect with what you’re saying with that song where it’s like, you do fear the emptiness and like, where if they don’t care about what all the time I put in? Well, they might not. It’s okay.

But do you really care about how many times your parents wiped your ass? Put in perspective from your own point of view.

I’ve heard that’s perspective from some other wise dads. Once another podcasters name is Brock Loosh. I think he’s a listener.

Like having that perspective that your kids aren’t your own, it takes away some of the anxiety that we have as parents too. Like, hey, they’re not mine. They’re put here for their own purpose.

There are mistakes.

They’re not your fault either.

Yeah.

They’re all mistakes.

My first real job that I had over a summer where I had to like get in a car, commute to the office and be there and clock in and clock out like real, not like a babysitting job or mowing lawns or whatever.

I got stuck in like some awful traffic and my mom worked out of the house. My dad stayed at home. And so I texted my mom, it was like early like T9 style texting.

And I’m writing back and forth to her and I was like, this is impossible. I don’t, this is like so much work. And then she wrote back to me like immediately.

She said, one day you’re gonna call me up on the phone and say, mom, how did you do it all and make it look so easy? And then obviously I picked up the phone and called her immediately to say that.

But like that, the amount of work that we’re doing that our kids just won’t see and that’s okay. That’s the point, right? Is that as they get older, hopefully they’ll see some of it, but like they might not and that’s all right.

Which is really the core of the song that I’m like obsessed with right now. And it just, it was just released recently by Nathan Evans Fox. That’s called Lots of Beginnings.

And it’s all about like, it’s essentially the conversation you have with the baby in the hospital where you talk to it. And he’s like, this is everything you need to know, child.

And it just is this really pretty song about how all the things you want to show them and hopefully they’ll grow up and they’ll still love you. And it’s a really pretty song.

And I really, it hit me hard because I had my youngest come in and listen to a song for homework because he had to listen to a song, tell something about it so that he’s hearing it, describing it, you know, using all those things.

He’s in first grade. So it was music homework. And he listened to the song.

He thought the end was funny, which is true. But like, I’m listening to it with my child. Okay.

Hopefully I won’t cry in front of him on this one. But you know, it was one of those like real powerful bit songs. And I just, I think this may have been the most cohesive dad life soundcheck of all time.

So I want to thank you for that. That was the most. Yeah.

We brought that all together in a really tight, tight knot. So obviously, it was intentional.

The final thing I’ll say about being a parent is that the whole thing, you know, it’s like you say, you don’t remember the day to day stuff that your parents did.

You don’t remember all the running around they did, frustration and the working three jobs, all that stuff. They can tell you about it, but you don’t remember it. But what you do remember is one solid picture.

So, it’s like a mosaic where if you zoom in, you can see all the individual days that make up this big picture. But the big picture that kids take away is, was I loved? Do I love my parents?

Was it abusive or was it creative? So that’s really what all we’re trying to do is paint that big picture. It’s like, hey, I love you.

You’re safe with us. You’re safe with me and I want the best for you. That’s what all I care.

When I die, my kids are probably going to be in their, I don’t know, 50s or when I die. I hope that they remember just that one big picture. I love them and I wanted the best for them.

That’s a beautiful way to wrap up our conversation.

Thanks for joining us, Jeremy.

It was a great time talking with you. Thanks for all the stories.

Thank you both.

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And stay tuned to our next episode and until next time, whether you’re at the dance hall, the playground or just folding some laundry. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll talk to you soon.

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