Dustpan Failures

Q: Okay, explain the name “Dustpan Failures”

A: It goes back to when we were living in Corpus Christi.  My youngest daughter, Sheridan, keeps a running list of what we jokingly call ‘Band Names/ Album Titles’—it’s a catch all for funny phrases we hear and think would be good (or bad) names for those things. We hear a phrase, and call it ‘my high school band name.’ One day, I was sweeping the hardwood floors in our little house, and got frustrated at the fact that the dustpan never got all of the dirt up when I was cleaning. There’s always a little line of crud left on the floor, no matter how many times you sweep, right? So I texted ‘Dustpan failure’ to Sher and complained to my wife, Angelia that if everything did its job as poorly as a dustpan, civilization would cease to exist, because nothing would get done.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked it—the idea that no matter how much we try to clean ourselves up, we can’t do it completely. Angie hated it as a band name, and thought it was silly, which it is. But after I shot the original photo of our dustpan on the cracked asphalt on the street in front of our house that I use on the website, I got the idea of using it different places as album covers for the different projects I was formulating in my head.

Once we sold the house and started traveling, I kept writing and recording within the confines of the RV, and basically wrote two more albums worth of material, in addition to the one I’d done in Corpus.

Q: So, how many other Dustpan Failures projects are there?

A: (Non music nerds, feel free to skip this paragraph.) This one, Hymns From the Gravel, was my ‘test balloon,’ like a fart you let out at a party to see if anyone notices. I just wanted to see how difficult it was to put out a record. I chose DistroKid as distributor, since they made it pretty easy to release stuff in multiple places, and got me a discount in using Bandzoogle for a website, which I knew nothing about making until I started this. So the record is on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, and a whole bunch of places I’ve never heard of.

There are three full albums of material written, and partially recorded over the past five years or so. I’ll put them out as I get them mixed and completed, even if nobody buys them. This whole thing started as wanting to carve my initials in a tree, saying ‘I was here, and this is what I have to say.’ 

Q: So explain the title “Hymns From the Gravel” in ten words or less.

A: I can’t explain anything in ten words or less. Hymns From the Gravel was a play on a couple of different things. ‘Hymns’ just for irony, since I’m a worship leader who doesn't love a lot of hymns. ‘Gravel’ was kind of a double play on words—the gravel roads in our RV park where I wrote and recorded the record, and the fact that my voice has developed a certain amount of grit that never goes away over the past few years.

Q: So is Dustpan Failures a band?

A: The name implies that it is, right?

Q: That really doesn’t answer the question.

A: There are shadows of four people on the website. 

Q: That also doesn’t answer the question.

A: …

Q: Okay, can you explain the inspiration for the songs?

Q: All five of these were written this year (2025.) They basically just reflect some of the things that run through my mind. 

Popsicle Firecracker was a phrase I had written in my Notes app that turned into song lyrics one morning sitting at the dinette in our RV while Angie did schoolwork across from me. I guess I saw a box in the ‘frozen confections’ case at the grocery store. I hope they don’t sue me.

Some Bridges and Tragically Suburban came out of lines in the same app. I think Some Bridges came from John Pavlovitz’s blog, where he said ‘it’s okay to let some bridges burn.’ And Tragically Suburban is not about anyone in particular, by the way, just sort of a composite of different people I know of, taken to extremes.

I Am Not Okay, is sort of a Non Biblical lamentation, expressing how I felt at a particular moment in time. Looking back, I call that group of songs my ‘Depressed January Series.’

Lost Man is just me saying ‘I’m tired of arguing, I’m tired of a lot of things that are going on, and I’m fed up.’ You can take that however you want.

Q: What does that mean, exactly?

A: Just what it says.

Q: You were a worship leader at a church, but these aren’t ‘church songs’ or ‘praise and worship songs.’ Why is that?

‘Cause I’m not very good at writing those. I’ve tried. Would it be great to string a bunch of Christanese phrases together with an inspiring melody and have churches all over the world sing it, collect the royalties, and build a house on the coast? Sure, but I just can’t do it. 

I can write what I feel. Mark Heard said something like ‘if you’re an artist who’s a Christian, you’d better throw a ‘praise Jesus’ or ‘Hallelujah’ in your songs, or people are going to question your spirituality behind your back.’ I’m actually okay with that. If I were building furniture instead of writing songs, would people want me to stamp a little fish symbol on the corner of everything I built, just to display my faith? That replaces craft with signaling. Doing the work well is the worship—doing the best I can with the gifts that God has given me, in the confines of the space I’m working in.

Is it perfect? No. I’m sure if you isolate my vocal tracks and shut off the software I use to clean off the background noise and my lip smacks, you can hear truck engines outside and airplanes flying overhead, or Angie watching videos on climate change from the other room. Perfection and Christian platitudes are not the end goal. Real is.

Even Jesus got frustrated with the religious machine of his day. If he showed up at a label pitch meeting today, they’d probably ask him to rewrite the Beatitudes for better crowd engagement.

It always bugged me growing up when Christian songs felt they had to wrap everything up like a sitcom before the fade out. It just felt really inauthentic, and frankly, insulting, when they’d ‘explain the metaphor’ like we couldn’t figure them out on our own. (I’m looking at you Touch of the Master’s Hand.)

I write how I feel, and sometimes they’re ‘tone shifts without resolutions.’ I think that describes a huge chunk of our lives. So, I don’t write ‘worship music,’ I try to write ‘pilgrimage music.’