Singer-songwriter Sean Thomas Gerard discusses fatherhood in our inaugural Parental Advisory interview, while also debuting his new album ‘Stay In Your Light.’
All music is personal to the person who wrote it, but artists like Sean Thomas Gerard have a more specific personal touch that really connects with their audience. It has been a long road back to music for Gerard, and he has chronicled it with his brand new album Stay In Your Light. Over the last five years, Gerard has spent a lot of time growing and expanding his life, and he has tried to pour that back into his songwriting. This has been an era of his life where he has started a family and taken on new roles and responsibilities. It’s no wonder that Stay In Your Light features a family-focused theme throughout its eight tracks. Much of it was recorded in a corner of his family garage, which is also a playroom for his two daughters. A lot of that family-centered atmosphere seeped into the recording process, which you can hear in the warmth of the songs and the lyrics.
As a whole, Stay In Your Light is an intimate look into Gerard’s current psyche and the love he has for his family. When writing the record, he thought a lot about how, when he’s gone, his music will live on for his daughters. The album comes at an interesting time. It is an era of great angst, uncertainty, and cold-heartedness. To release such a moving, heartfelt set of songs at a time like this is truly significant. We need artists now more than ever who can remind us of the good times and what’s valuable. Life’s tender moments are worth cherishing, and that’s just a small part of what Gerard would like you to take from his record.
To accompany the premiere of Stay In Your Light, Sean Thomas Gerard joins us for our inaugural Parental Advisory interview. Considering the subject matter and tone of the record, what better topic to discuss with Gerard than being a dad?
Has becoming a parent impacted the themes or direction of your creative work?
Sean Thomas Gerard: “Absolutely. I started writing songs when I was about 12 years old, before I could play an instrument. The early songs were pretty surface-level, songs about my life and experiences. As I got into high school, I went pretty deep into the world of emo. I detuned my guitar and got into the angsty things and topics a high schooler would.
“Following high school, I hit my classic rock phase. I loved Pink Floyd, and that style really started to shift how I was writing songs. I started thinking of writing songs in terms of a whole album, a whole piece of art. After that, I wrote songs that I thought sounded cool, but had very little substance. Then came the love songs… I fell deep into that hole, I’d say right up until I became a parent. Since my first child was born (Jovie), I started thinking about my legacy. What I could leave behind for my kids. That’s when I started writing songs that felt like I was telling my life story. Songs about meeting their mom, songs about my life before and after their birth, songs about our lives together and our future.
“I feel like now I’m writing our family story, our autobiography. It feels a lot heavier now, because I feel like these are the songs that will stay with them forever, but it also feels a lot more effortless. Like, I don’t need to try so hard anymore to write songs. I’m just waiting for them to manifest. I write a lot less these days, but it’s mostly because I’m busier than ever and I’m not trying to force it anymore.”
What’s your kid’s favourite song of yours (or the creative work you do)?
“This is an easy one. I have two girls, and they each have their own song. ‘Jovie’ came first. She’s my six-year-old. I started writing her song a couple of months before she was born. This sounds made up, but it’s completely true. The night before my wife gave birth, I finished the last verse of the song. We sat on the bed, and I played it for her. When we brought Jovie home from the hospital a few days later, it was the first song I played for her. She looked up at me like she knew exactly what that song was about.
“When my wife got pregnant for the second time, I knew I had to attempt to recreate that process. I was ahead of schedule on that one and actually finished the recording right before Juniper was born. It took a minute, but it’s her favourite song now. Here we are, almost three years later, and her song (‘Juniper’) is coming out on this new record.”
Do parents lose their cool points once they have kids?
“I would say, depending on how a parent is affected by having kids, they gain cool points. I think there are really two groups of parents. The ones who are constantly stressed out about their kid(s) are usually the single child parents, and then there’s the group that’s totally unfazed by the chaos of raising children. Those folks, to me, are the coolest. If you can go through life on little sleep, wake up multiple times a night for years on end, be ok with being constantly needed by your children, constantly followed around, rarely if ever have free time, asked a million questions a day, spend hours in the car driving them around, give every ounce of your energy to them, cook, clean, wipe butts, all that. If you can do all of that and still be fairly chill, you’re a god damn superhero in my opinion.
“I think I fall somewhere between the two, but I think that shifts as time goes on. As we’re moving out of the terrible twos, I can feel the weight lifting, I see the light at the end of the tunnel, there’s blue skies ahead. Or whatever…”
What’s your stance on kids attending concerts or live shows?
“I am 100 percent on board, as long as a. they have headphones on, b. they don’t mess with the band on stage, and c. they aren’t a distraction to other folks.
“I’ll share my first experience bringing my child to a concert. Spoon was playing in Wilmington at Greenfield Lake Amphitheater. They are one of my all-time favourite bands, and they never come through town. In my head, I thought, ‘How cool is it going to be that my kid’s first concert is going to be one of my favourite bands?’ Granted, her first concert was going to see me, but I’m not going to count that…
“So Jovie is almost three years old. We get to the venue, and it is, by all means, one of the most picturesque venues in the country. Small, intimate and right on the lake. There are live oak trees, Spanish moss and usually quite a sunset over the stage. However, there used to be a huge hill on the left side of the seating area, before they added more seating. I never really paid attention to it before, but that night all the kids were running up and down the hill, as kids do. Jovie decides she wants nothing to do with the show and joins in immediately as the show is beginning.
“Now, I’m trying to watch the show, but I can’t because my kid is trying to commit suicide, racing down this huge hill, there are tree roots everywhere. Momentum is taking her to speeds she’s never experienced before. Then she’s hiding in the bushes. We lose her. She ends up by the lake, and some guy goes, ‘You better watch out, I saw a ten-foot alligator in there.’
Now we’re on song three, maybe. I look at my wife, she gives me that look, and I throw Jovie over my shoulder, and we do the walk of shame back to the parking lot. How’s that for a first concert?!”
What’s your favourite part of your child’s bedtime routine?
“There are a couple. The first is the pre-bed dance party we have every night. My kids are wild, as most are, and we need to wear them down all the way up until bedtime. Right now, our routine is to throw on some Danny Go! and dance our butts off for half an hour. They love it, but I have just as much fun, and I get some cardio in!
“My youngest, Juniper, does this thing before bed that will soon end, and it’s going to crush me when it does. She’s about to move into her big girl bed, but she’s in her last days in her crib. She likes to kiss us in between the bars, between each bar (there are 13), and then she gives us a hug, and we have to pat her back when she lies down. I do this at naptime and my wife before bed. It’s the cutest thing ever.”
Do you think your child will follow in your creative footsteps? Would you want them to?
“Hell no, I don’t! I’d love for my kids to grow up and get real jobs that they love. I want them to get a good education and have a career that gives them some stability. I would like music to be their hidden talent, but I don’t necessarily believe they should try and ‘follow their dreams’ if their dream is to drive around in a van, sleep on floors and eat fast food for every meal for a decade or more. Because that’s the reality of trying to make it as a musician.
“Unless you get lucky or are living off a trust fund. You can have all the talent in the world, but that doesn’t equate to success or financial stability. We play music all the time. I teach them piano, soon guitar. We have drums, bass, keys and all that in the garage studio. But by no means would I like them to try to make a career out of it.”
If your parenting style were a music genre, what genre would it be?
“I am starting to describe my music as a genre that I don’t think has been used yet. If it hasn’t, I’m calling dibs! ‘Girl dad rock.’”
Fast-forward 20 years: What’s one thing you hope your child remembers clearly about you as a parent?
“I hope, more than anything, they remember me always being there. That they remember how much time they got to spend with me. I’ve been an SAHD (stay-at-home-dad) for the last six years. I do work from home, on top of all the musical things I’m involved with, but I have been a constant presence in my children’s lives since the day they were born. I will never forget these days, and I will never regret anything I had to put aside to be able to spend this time with them, because I will never get these days back.”
What’s something parenting taught you about yourself that nothing else could?
“Parenting has taught me patience like nothing else ever could. I do not claim to be a patient person, but I am infinitely more patient now than I was before having kids. There is nothing more humbling than being a parent. You have to swallow your pride every day, lose the battles worth losing, and give in to the ridiculousness of it all. You have to be stoic in stressful times and be a shoulder to cry on all the time. All of that requires an incredible, almost unreasonable amount of patience.
“But, as some of you will learn, the only way to get through some of the craziness, the meltdowns and tantrums, is to be still, to be calm and to patiently work with your child until you’re through to the other side.”
What’s one parenting myth you’d like to debunk?
“Gentle parenting. Doesn’t work! Look, I am all for being reasonable with your kids. I’m all about resolving conflicts and allowing them to work through their emotions. But I will tell you this, I have never seen a child stop acting like a fool while their parent was using these ‘gentle parenting’ tactics. However, you throw on your ‘dad voice,’ and that kid is going to straighten up and get it together. Hell, maybe it works for some folks, but I’ve never seen it work out in the wild.”
What was your first “holy shit, I’m a parent” moment?
“There are two that come to mind. The first was the experience we had in the hospital when Jovie was born. My wife and I stayed up for two days straight, staring at this beautiful thing we created. We were in awe. It was pure love. Then we were shipped off, and getting home that night was one of the most sobering experiences ever. Knowing that you physically could not go another second without sleep, yet also knowing that you’d be up every couple of hours for the next six months or whatever, having to feed the baby. Knowing that you needed to be ‘on it’ 24 hours a day, every day moving forward. That was truly a ‘holy shit, I’m a parent’ moment.
“The other is the wonderful tale of our first Christmas as a family. Our firstborn had pretty terrible reflux, so she threw up… a lot… On Christmas day, we get all dressed up, Jovie, and I have a sort of matching outfit thing going on. We’re at my in-laws, and it’s bottle time. I take her into the other room, trying to be the good guy and let my wife have a moment. I’m feeding her the bottle, and she projectile vomits all over herself and me. We had a change of clothes for her, but I came to the realization that the only shirt I have is the one that’s now completely covered in puke.
“We get cleaned up, I walk out into the living room shirtless and say, ‘Well, I hope someone got me a shirt for Christmas.’ And you know what, they did. It was, as they say, a Christmas Miracle.”
