Year in Review

In January, I released a cover of Lana Del Rey’s “Ride,” the first in a series of covers. Nashville Scene called it “a rad little bit of Americana-stalgia, and to be perfectly honest, I vastly prefer Tutmarc’s version of “Ride” over Del Rey’s.” The series continued in March, with my take on Rilo Kiley’s “Portions for Foxes,” and concluded in May with my reworking of Nirvana’s “Aneurysm.”

This year I also did more co-writing than ever. Releases with co-writes from this year will continue to be released well into 2014, but what’s been released so far is Star Anna‘s incredible Go to Hell album, which features “Let Me Be,” which I co-wrote with Star, and “Mean Kind of Love” which I co-wrote with Nashville singer-songwriters Derek Hoke and Zach Broocke. I collaborated with my multi-talented buddy Ethan Luck on “The Drug Has a Voice,” the closing track to his debut EP. Last year I met Dan Koch, formally of Sherwood, who is now doing an interesting project called Pacific Gold, which takes ancient hymnal lyrics and sets new music to them. I’ve co-written about 7 or 8 songs with him over the last year, including their single, “Sweet Rivers of Redeeming Love“, which allowed me to dig into my love of Brian Wilson chord changes for one of the first times since my Dolour days.

There were also a couple things that happened this year that shined some light on some older tunes. In July, the feature film Assassins Tale prominently featured “Idle Hands” over the opening credits (and on the DVD menu). And in October, Kenny Rogers released a duet with Dolly Parton called You Can’t Make Old Friends… which has been bringing A LOT of new people to my old Dolour song, You Can’t Make New Old Friends.” Thanks Kenny 😉

As the calendar is about to turn another page, one thing I can promise is – more music in 2014!