The timing of re-designing this site is kind of ironic.

It comes at a time when every area of my life–major and minor–is changing.  As I write this, I am surrouned by boxes.  My SOULKISS brothers and I are leaving the home we have inhabited together for the past year and a half and moving from Long Island to Queens.

This will put me in an area much more accessible to the city, which will give me the opportunity to really discover–or perhaps uncover–who Tim is becoming as a person.

Who Am I? is actually the question I asked myself when Rose and I began working on this site.  The two websites I had designed in my career both focused around album releases and then in 2008, I transferred to a blogspot which was mainly weekly or bi-weekly writings centered around what was happening in my life, but didn’t really represent my life–as a person or artist–in their totality.

The process of packing and re-organizing my things that had been in storage brought me face to face with exactly that.  I had never seen my life as a body of work.  I walked–or bulldozed–with a very narrow focus on whatever was in front of me in the moment, never really looking back to see the thread that ties everything together.

It was in finding a video of me on television when I was a child that I really realized that, despite the fact that my first solo album came out in 2004, I’ve had a 31 year career.  I started singing when I was 3…and have pretty much been ‘in school’ to do that since the first time I ever sang.  I love being a student…and I don’t think an artist ever really stops learning.   For me, finding your voice simply being able present your experiences in evolution in your own words.  Finding your voice never means settling and saying This is Me.  Period. At least I hope not.

I also recognized that I have a legacy of ministry from both my birth family and adopted family.  My path is my no means traditional and I certainly don’t desire to be any one’s pastor. I do, however, see art as my pulpit of sorts.  It is not to say that my way is the way, but it is the way for me and for those who resonate with it.   I have worked throughout my life to simply create it and present it.

My former manager and I had volatile exchanges about money.  I was always being asked to mute myself…or tone down to make myself more accessible to people.  Manipulating and essentially sitting the muse down, as churches do with what they consider to be ‘unruly’ members, has never worked for me.

What I have realized about myself is that the only time I have been at odds with my art is when I have put an expectatiaon on it to generate a living for me.  For as much as my solo career has depended upon internet marketing (How else does an indie artist get heard?), I have always borne a silent irritation with it.  I have watched peers in indie music go on to have mainstream careers and in the process watched them lose everything that ever made them original and authentic.  I have watched others become internet stars and create as a fascade of a particular lifestyle that I know is not how they really live.

I don’t know how to do that.  Perhaps that why I’m not further along.

A few weeks ago I got an Instant Message from one of my Nashville comrades.  We were discussing ‘making it’ and I shared with her that ‘making it’, for me, is now subjective.  ‘Making it’ is no longer defined by fame or by a label deal.  I told her that I had reconciled myself to the fact that my call is to do what I do…and that the people who weave in and out of my life will go on to do far ‘greater things’ (in the commercial sense) than I ever will.  My call is to be an artist’s artist and simply create because of my love for it…not to make music my job.  The call is to create community—not competition.

With all of that in mind, I understood what needed to happen with the new site.  It is hopefully a synopsis of my life in art thus far.  It is in process.  There will be an audio and print archive with interviews, articles and reviews, a photo and video album and a store.  I want this to be much more interactive than the prior sites have been, so I hope you will join me if you feel so inclined.

More writings will be coming.  Welcome to the new site

PS:  For those who have been asking, the SOULKISS album is 3 songs away from being finished.  The cursed gospel project is being shelves and I’m starting over from scratch (that’s a whole blog waiting to happen) and I’m heading to Chicago in August to work with Ascendant on an EP of six new compositions….I have no idea what it’s going to sound like, but I’m excited about it!