Don’t Travel Alone

Hey everyone, happy Monday! I met someone this morning who is a rapper; we were talking about music and positive rap, and our conversation reminded me of some work by an awesome rapper from our sister congregation in San Diego, Rayshon Roberts (see rayshonmusic.com –please follow his music he has some great stuff). He contributed to a song of mine I’ll share today, called “Don’t Travel Alone.” I wrote this song back in 2013, around an infectious synth riff and some thoughts about friendship in the church, and some who had decided to leave our circle of fellowship, cutting off some of those that loved them the most (or at least it felt that way to me). Sin can separate us. So can tribalism and ideology, loyalty to movements of men rather than the kingdom of God. It’s frustrating to me that lately some have allowed their party politics or social ideas to come between them and their brothers and sisters in Christ. We need each other. We need community. We need spiritual friendships. No other way to make it on the journey. Here is the somewhat cheesy rap that I wrote for this song (no longer on the recording, it was replaced by Rayshon’s lyrics):

The best of us is a mess, but trust 
that on the road long
You need someone to hold on for the journey
I think its tragic
when losing friends is symptomatic 
Recovering addicts need a sponsor
–think its time you had it
Life instead, marrow deep and red
Gotta re-tread, and be led
back to where your warm and well-fed
Rewind
Travel back to our time
Draw a clean line and you’ll find
We’ll be waiting

VIDEO: DON’T TRAVEL ALONE (by Ties to the Light)

This is outside the norm for this space where I mostly share congregational worship songs. But this song is fun and I especially love how the music video turned out — The amazing Joshua Strauther let me use his fun skating videos to make this. (Joshua is himself an amazing musician and worship leader for the Westside Church congregation here in LA and we used to do music for conferences and camps together years ago.) “Wherever you’re going… don’t travel, don’t travel alone!”

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