Let me create a couple of pictures in your mind.
First, picture a small blue couch in a room where three of the four walls are made of windows, stretching from floor to ceiling. Outside, the weather is a massive gray mixture of rain and fog. Inside, the heating system is made up of water radiators that rattle in time with the lorries driving past. Across the floor sits an orange-and-gray striped IKEA rug, its corners curled up because it’s too big for a European-sized living room. My guitar leans against the small blue couch where I sit, writing in my music notebook.
Hopefully, you can now picture me during my time living in my flat in Cardiff, Wales.
My wife and I lived in Cardiff for two years, from 2017 to 2019, while I was studying for my Master’s in Music Composition at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. After long days of composing at the college and studying in local libraries, I would come home and have to mentally—and physically—wring myself dry (pun intended). After taking off my raincoat and sitting down, I kept finding that my hands and heart were drawn to my guitar. There was something inside of me that needed to work itself out.
It was a different kind of songwriting—connected to what I was learning at college, but strikingly different from what I had been studying over the previous six years. I found lyrics forming alongside the chords I was picking on my Gibson, and melodies rising to meet them.
Now let’s picture another season.
The sun is shining on the dancing leaves of the tall oak trees surrounding my parents’ back porch in Jackson, Mississippi. It’s quiet outside. Because of the lockdown, there are few to no airplanes flying overhead. Instead, you hear robins and mockingbirds sharing their musical talents as they sway with the branches of the trees. The only other sound is me workshopping those musical ideas from a few years earlier on my guitar.
By 2020, these songs—like myself—had grown a little older. They had begun to take shape into something that inspired me to finally record them.
My experience during lockdown was different from many others’. I wasn’t in isolation. Instead, I was surrounded by family, and I needed a creative place to escape. I recorded all of Yesterday’s Normal during that season in 2020, either at home or in my studio at Collage.
There is a warehouse in downtown Jackson—formally called Collage—that became a space for artists to continue working during the lockdown. During that time, I built my studio using scraps left behind by the previous owner. (By “built,” I mean that quite literally: I put up walls myself and made a makeshift roof out of coffee sacks for insulation.)
By this point in my life, I had been writing songs for a couple of years. Before that, I had spent several years writing compositions that were never professionally recorded. I developed a deep need to create something lasting—something that could become, in its own way, immortal through recording.
Yesterday’s Normal is a small time capsule of my life, my talents, and the stories I wanted to share from those two seasons in Cardiff and Jackson.
In Cardiff, I needed the songs from Yesterday’s Normal to explore a new side of my art.
In Jackson, I needed to record and share a completed project.
– Trailand
PS.
During lockdown my family all lived in one house; eleven people, eight adults and three under three years old.
My escape was to write and play my songs outside of the house somewhere. “Yesterday’s Normal” is my musical journal of what I personally was experiencing while hearing the cries for social justice and the quietness of the world without any airplanes flying overhead. It was also a time for me to reminisce about my two years in Wales, specifically day dreaming about being back in Llantwit Major (please google it, because it’s gorgeous).“Yesterday’s Normal” unlocked the rest of the songs on the EP.
Yesterday’s Normal | Lyrics
The roaring planes have stopped overhead,
And I can hear my own thoughts,
Coming at me,
Once again
The hopes and dreams I longed for,
So long ago,
Appear before me now,
And they’re coming up short
And they’re coming up short
I saw two boys getting ready for a fight,
When a soft voice broke the silence,
But unheard,
Or so it seems
It belonged to a Jewish man,
With a great wound in his side
Reaching out towards them,
He had made the distance short
He made the distance short
I’ve been looking for that one thing,
All my life
To fight against my self-doubt,
And the war inside
I’ve been looking for that one thing,
All my life
Didn’t know that I was missing out,
On you and I
Yesterday’s normal,
Just passed me by
I heard a woman sing to her mother,
I will change what has been done,
By selfish men
They look at who she is,
But the color of her skin,
Separates somehow
She’s always coming up short
Always coming up short
I’ve read that those unborn,
Are spared of all,
The world and sin would have,
To thrown on them
But if they never grew up,
To understand,
Life’s held in Your hands
Where love’s not coming up short
Love’s not coming up short
I’ve been looking for this one thing,
All my life
To fight against my self doubt,
And the war inside
I’ve been looking for this one thing,
All my life
Didn’t know that I was missing out,
On you and I
Yesterday’s normal,
Just past me by
I thought that when I’m old enough,
I would be able,
To face all the trouble and truth,
The world would have,
To throw at me
There’s somethings I’ll never,
Be old enough,
To understand,
I’ll just be coming up short
Just be coming up short
Then I saw you in your flora dress,
While you waded past the craggy shoreline,
Of Llantwit,
Once again
The rising tide held us close,
And with your hand in mine,
I pulled us in
Breath was coming up short
Breath was coming up…
I’ve been looking for that one thing,
All my life
To fight against my self-doubt,
And the war inside
I’ve been looking for that one thing,
All my life
Didn’t know that I was missing out,
On you and I
Yesterday’s normal, Yesterday’s normal,
Yesterday’s normal, Yesterday’s normal,
Yesterday’s normal,
Just passed me by
37 Days of Christmas 