What started as a song for my daughter became a journey I never could have planned.
Over the last 31 days, I’ve been telling the story behind a song called “Her Smile.” If you’ve followed along from the beginning, you already know this song has taken me on one hell of a journey. If you’re just finding the story, this is how we got here.
It started in November of 2025. Harper was only a few months old, and I was sitting in my studio with her nearby. I had started noticing how something as simple as her smile could completely change a room. It didn’t matter what kind of day I was having or what was going on around me. When she smiled, everything else seemed to disappear for a second.
As a songwriter, those are the moments you hope you’re paying attention to.
So I picked up a guitar.
The more I worked on the song, the more I realized I wasn’t really writing about a smile. I was writing about who my daughter was at that exact moment in her life, before the world had a chance to tell her who she should be.
As her dad, I know I can’t protect her from everything that’s coming. Someday life will get louder. There will be opinions, expectations, disappointments, heartbreak, successes, failures and plenty of mistakes along the way. I can’t stop any of that. What I can do is remind her that none of it has to change who she is.
Never let anyone dull your flame. Never be less. Always be yourself.
That became the heart of “Her Smile.”
The first version was simple. Acoustic guitar, vocal and a chord movement underneath it that I absolutely loved. Whiskey Hollow Rush and I started recording the song and slowly began building around that original idea. We layered guitars and experimented with different parts, but I never wanted to lose the simplicity of the song.
Then, right when everything seemed to be coming together, someone I trusted told me something I really didn’t want to hear.
Part of the song sounded too much like something else.
I went back and listened again. I knew what I had to do.
At that point, we were already deep into the recording process. My album was getting close to release and I was preparing to leave for Los Angeles during Grammy Week. I had the World Entertainment Awards ahead of me and an acoustic recording session booked at Sunset Sound. There were plenty of reasons to convince myself the song was fine and keep moving.
But this was Harper’s song.
If I was going to put her name, her story and that message behind something, I needed to know I had done it right.
So I pulled the song and we started figuring out how to save it.
Then I left for Los Angeles.
Well... I tried to.
I left Syracuse during winter weather and made it as far as Charlotte. After a hard landing, delays and eventually grounded flights, what was supposed to be an incredible trip turned into roughly 72 hours stuck in Charlotte. I missed Los Angeles. I missed the awards. I missed Grammy Week. I missed the Sunset Sound session.
Pretty much everything that was supposed to happen didn’t.
And somehow, while all of that was falling apart, “Her Smile” started coming back together.
Whiskey Hollow Rush was back home working on a new musical movement and sending ideas back and forth with me. At one point I found myself in Charlotte working through the changes on a little pink kids’ guitar.
Definitely not how I pictured that week going.
But looking back now, there was something almost fitting about it.
I was writing a song for my daughter about staying true to who you are when the world around you gets loud, and suddenly life was forcing me to live that lesson myself.
Plans change. Things fall apart. Doors close. Flights get canceled. Sometimes you miss the thing you were absolutely convinced you were supposed to be at.
Sometimes you have to pivot.
But you don’t have to give up.
When I finally came home, I started looking at “Her Smile” differently. I knew there would eventually be a bigger, fully produced version of this song, but I also knew that wasn’t the version people needed to hear first.
The first version needed to sound like the room where this whole thing started.
Quiet. Calm. No distractions.
Just the song and the feeling behind it.
That’s where “Her Smile (Before the World)” came from.
“Before the World” represents Harper as I see her right now. Before expectations. Before outside voices. Before life gets complicated and starts trying to tell her what she should be.
And maybe there’s a little more of me in that title now too.
On July 31, I decided I didn’t want to simply announce the release and spend a month telling people to stream my new song. I wanted to tell the story. So for 31 days, I started at the beginning and shared a piece of the journey every day.
The writing. Harper hearing it. The recording sessions. The guitars. The setback. The decision to start over. Charlotte. The trip that never happened. And eventually finding the song again.
Now, after 31 days of telling you how we got here, there’s only one thing left to do.
Release it.
On August 30, “Her Smile (Before the World)” finally leaves that little room where it started and becomes yours.
No matter what happens with it after that, I’ll always know exactly where this song came from.
A quiet room, a guitar, and a little girl whose smile changed everything.
“Her Smile (Before the World)” August 30, 2026
