Alfreda Perspective on Died to Myself
It’s in my blood. I come from a long line of musicians and creatives — my mother is a Grammy-nominated songwriter, my father (Fred Jr.) was not just a brilliant MD but an accomplished trombone player, and my grandfather, Fred Waring, helped shape American music itself. He’s got three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for a reason.
But legacy alone isn’t enough. I write because I need to. Because the only way I make sense of what I’m living through — the joy, the heartbreak, the contradictions — is through song. Writing music is how I translate the world into something I can feel clearly, and hopefully help someone else feel a little less alone in the process.
I don’t chase trends. I chase truth. And when a song hits that nerve — when someone writes me to say, “this got me through something” — that’s the reason I keep going. That’s the reward. That’s what I inherited — not just the talent, but the responsibility to say something real.
So yeah, the drive runs deep. I’m proud of where I come from. But more importantly, I’m trying to build something worth passing down.
Died to Myself was written during a moment where I realized ego had taken me as far as it could — and any further growth would require surrender. Not just to a higher power, but to humility, forgiveness, and truth.
I’ve had success in business, music, and life — but this song wasn’t born from any of that. It came from failure. From pain. From the kind of personal reckoning that makes you question everything. It’s about what happens when you hit the wall emotionally or spiritually, and realize the only way forward is to let go of who you thought you had to be.
The lyrics came quickly, but the meaning behind them had been building for years. When Alfreda delivered the vocal, I knew immediately the song had become bigger than me. She didn’t just sing it — she testified. That’s when I realized: this was no longer just my story. It was something universal.
The woman in the story is coming to an awakening - the lyrics are deliberately ambivalent - a lot of people who have heard my song say it resonated with them on a religious or spiritual level and I admit I was thinking about that when I wrote it. Its basically - "I'm done living like this, my life is a mess, it's empty - I need to die to that way of living in order to actually fullly live.". I think most people can relate to that.
I wanted to reach people who want more out of music than just "ear candy". Yes, musically it has ALL of that, it's lush and harmonic and beautiful, but lyrically it says a LOT, and I wanted to create a song which people can listen to and think about and apply to themselves, or at least see parts of their own life reflected in the song. If they do, and then say, "oh yeah, I feel that" then I did my job.
Probably the jazz greats. I love Sinatra and his selection of material is insanely good. Amy Winehouse was an unreal songwriter and artist, she inspired a lot of material I wrote for this album. Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Dave Frishberg, Billy Joel, on and on.
Easy. My wife Sinead.
I went through a very bloody divorce and break up a few years ago. I wrote a song called Your Home Now, we haven't recorded it yet but we will - looking for the right artist. Its a very emotional, very sparse ballad. Mostly just piano and voice. One of the lines, I cried when I wrote it, and still get choked up thinking about it. It's about a guy who is passing by his old house which his ex-wife and kids still live, and he's straining to look through a hole in the fence to see if he can catch a glimpse of his kids. "That little hole in the fence/The tiny one I could not mend/With straining eyes I look alone/to the place I once called home" --- and the little hole in the fence was a metaphor for the little problems in the relationship that he couldn't fix. It hits hard.
Depends on the Genre. For the Alfreda album, all the old motown greats, Aretha, Tina - that's the vibe of this album. Other genres, probably Chicago, Steely Dan, etc. OLD SCHOOL!
Hands down Dave Frishberg and Billy Joel. Great story tellers and wordcraft masters!
Very old school - I give the charts and demo to my musical director/producer Chris Blackwell (not the island records guy!). We get into the studio (Auburn AL or Nashville depending) and lay down the tracks in the old school way. Lots of hard work and sweat and grit and a hell of a lot of fun.
