Happy 2021! It’s time once again for my annual year-end review, and well . . . I’m not going to mince words: 2020 sucked. Every week, I’d hear a sad story about a beloved venue or festival closing its doors and saw colleagues and friends lose their livelihoods as too many of our elected leaders showed no regard for the people they claimed to represent.

Some days, I was fine, while on other days, I’d alternate between feeling beaten down by the constant onslaught of bad news or enraged by the injustices happening around me. Then, there were times where I felt like I was in an absurdist play. When I look back at the words that I wrote on January 1 last year, that The Aaron Clift Experiment planned to “take a few months off from live performing in order to work on new songs,” I can’t help but laugh at the irony of how those few months turned into a whole year that’s still going.

But, you know what? – we made it to this moment and have to help each other carry on. I think back to songs I’ve written over the years like “Eye of the Storm” and “If All Goes Wrong” to remind myself that even in the worst of times, there’s always hope in tragedy; light in darkness.