Do you use tech to collaborate musically over distance? And if so what program do you use? We’re making music together 2259 miles away over Jack Trip. So far it’s been pretty smooth.

We are so divided. And every once in a while I see someone willing to ask the question that they’re afraid to know the answers to. And watching this reminds me that we have the capacity to expand, if we can tolerate knowing each other on a deeper level.

I think this looks like seeing the differences, staying connected, and choosing each other. A version of us that is both together and free.

Why is this so hard?

Here’s the start…

I wont go to war with you
No, I’m not afraid to lose
It’s winning that would do me in
When I break what should only bend

I started listening to the recordings of him writing new songs, the TV on low in the background, unscripted moments that likely pulled from whatever he was living through that day. Something about the lo fi, unscripted nature of it made me feel like I was in the room, a fly on the wall of my family’s past.

Then one day, a song called Second Hand came on. I’d never heard it before, but somehow it was familiar. My mom was known in our family as an avid second hand shopper, so the title caught me. I listened to the lyrics and they fit... I went to his lyric books and found it was written during the years they were together.

The lyrics say she never lets him down, that she never makes him feel second hand. He’s singing about feeling unseen out in the world, then coming home to a woman who made him feel like he mattered. In that moment, sitting with a song I never knew existed, about two people I thought I already knew everything about, I felt like I’d stumbled onto gold. I felt rich.

I had his cassettes too. I would listen and rewind them over and over, scribbling down every lyric by hand, desperate to understand his world even from a distance.

When I was nineteen and in college, we finally reconnected. One day he called and asked me to drop out of school to join his band. He wanted me on bass. I wanted to play guitar. We went back and forth, playfully debating the structure of a band that didn’t exist yet.

I thought about it seriously. In the end, I said no. I had wanted to make music with my dad for as long as I could remember, but his life was untethered, and at that point I needed stability. So I stayed in school. I took music classes alongside everything else, songwriting, voice lessons, guitar, choir, music theory, djembe drum. Anything I could find to keep my musical side breathing.

In 2006, I got a call from Judith, my stepmom. My dad had passed away, ultimately succumbing to the substances he had used all his life. Our chance to make music together, to build something real between us, was gone.

I regretted staying in school for a long time after that.

Years later, I felt myself sinking back into that old ache. Then I looked up and there were my two little girls, watching me. Something shifted. I didn’t have to stay stuck in what I had missed. I could build it right here, with them.

So we did. We started singing together, picking up instruments, making music that sounded like us. It became the connection I had always longed for, a tie to a past we only know through song. I get to live in that world now, with my daughters Elliot and Logan. Singing his songs in our voices, writing our own, making harmonies and memories as we go.

This is how Samson Cats came to be. Samson is my maiden name, my dad’s last name, and the musical thread running through the generations of my family. It lived then, with him. It lives now, with us. And it will hopefully carry on long after we are gone.

And now you are a Samson Cat too. Welcome. We are so glad you are here.

Years later, when Cameron got sick I added a bridge to the song (not included in the recording). It read:

Before I fall asleep keep your body close to me

I’m waiting on the edge to see if you’ll wake up next to me

Cameron was sick for six months and died shortly after his 40th birthday. When he died the words in the song hit different. Suddenly it wasn’t just about wrestling with faith and identity. It was about loss, grief, and surviving in a reality I didn’t ask for and didn’t want.

There’s something beautiful about watching a song age with you. It was a reminder that time moves in cycles, and the things we create stay close to us and keep speaking to us long after we think they’re done.

I have more to say about the cyclical nature of time and music moving through the Samson family line, but for now here’s the video of me singing Sweet By and By from 2014.

Don’t wake me up, I’ve closed my eyes

Let me surrender to the night

I’ll float away, don’t hold my tail

Let my soul set sail

My body’s in the way of what my lips have to say

We’re still alive tell me why, sweet by and by

You’ve got everything that you say I need

And it’s all within reach, lucky you, lucky me

My body’s in the way of what my lips have to say

We’re still alive tell me why, sweet by and by

Oh, we’re still alive tell me why, sweet by and by