“Lately” was originally entitled “Holocene”  and is very much a new-year’s-resolution-turned-campfire-confessional type of tune. I wrote it very quickly after reading an article published in the January 2013 issue of Smithsonian magazine—a publication to which my father-in-law had bought me a subscription for Christmas. 

In print, the piece bears the headline "The Era of Our Ways,” and it explores the scientific debate as to whether humans have had sufficient enough impact on the earth so as to necessitate a newly named period of history. According to the article, “we are officially in the Holocene epoch, which began 11,700 years ago after the last major ice age.” 

Holocene is defined here as “entirely recently.” That phrase and the “Era of Our Ways” title got me going, and the stream-of-conscious lyrics came very quickly. It was my New Year’s resolution to write a song a month; and, especially with this first one, I didn’t want to labor over lyrics as much as I usually do...