For those of you guys that aren't familiar with the HW story, I found out shortly before the release of our 2nd album "Building The Towers" that I had Lymphoma, which is a cancer of the blood. Needless to say, I went straight into some serious treatment and our touring plans came to a screeching halt for a while. As part of the treatments, I was not able to leave my home, except to go to the doctor, for about 5 months. During that time, I spent countless hours writing music in my studio. Out of those sessions came most of the material for the new Halcyon Way album, but also several side projects.

"Home" was one of the first tracks I wrote for Conquer. It started out with the main riff and the keyboard part, and went from there. The lyrics are really about finding your center of gravity personally, and about knowing where you came from and what makes you who you are. It's easy to become disconnected from your roots, especially when going through something like what I was dealing with. So, musically and lyrically that's what it was kind of about.

Now, here's where it gets pretty interesting. My parents, prior to them passing away recently, had retired to the country in Louisiana. They'd bought 75 acres and built a farmhouse. This house was a replica of a nearby house that had been in our family for over 100 years, but was in too much disrepair for them to renovate and live in.

The last time I went to that house before my parents sold the property, it was during my treatment but prior to the time I was confined to my house. I had my guitar with me, and spent some of that trip writing material that ended up on Conquer, including what would become the main riff in the title track. I did that writing in a particular bedroom on the top floor of the house.

Now, fast forward about 18 months. The album is recorded, and we're working on the artwork with our good friend Travis Smith. We had asked him to come up with pieces of art for various songs, and we kinda gave him general ideas that could work, but ultimately left it to him to create something cool. We've worked with him for 3 albums now, and we know each other well, and we trust him.

So, I get a comp of the panel for "Home", and I freaked out when I saw it. Turns out that he did a picture of a creepy old house, and the door was opening with a light behind it. There was a tentacle coming out of the door (tentacles are a recurring design theme on our albums). The house he had used as a basis for the piece was almost EXACTLY like my parents' house. The angle of the shot was straight onto the bedroom where I had written the material.

To get how eerie this really was, you have to understand that first off, my parents' house was a replica of two houses that had actually been combined, so it wasn't a really common look; it was old-school Depression Era engineering, and they had faithfully recreated it to the inch. Secondly, I had sent Travis NO pictures or other direction on this....nothing at all. I emailed him and said "Dude, do you have any idea how crazy this is?" He said to me "I was looking for stock photography of different houses, and had a few to choose from, but I felt COMPELLED to use that one."

That was a very powerful thing to me - it was meant to be. One thing about being an artist is that sometimes you're reminded through things like this about how powerful music can be; not sure what the reader may or may not believe about the spiritual, but it's hard to explain away something like that as a coincidence.