It’s been a tough spring.
It started when Sly decided to sell his house, closing down Green Grove Studio. Shortly after, my step mother-in-law became ill and, while recovering, decided it was time to move into a retirement home. Needless to say, life’s interventions had taken the focus away from SixFootStilts’ latest project, WooWoo & VooDoo. Progress was still being made, albeit more slowly than on our previous projects, and by mid-May we had only three or four songs left to complete.
One day Sly sent out a demo of one of my songs, Voodoo Bound. I was impressed with the music, but noticed that the lyrics had changed from what I had originally written. So I responded with a simple question:
“Why did you guys change my lyrics?”
At the time, I thought we were discussing a song. We weren’t.
What followed was a series of emails that started with lyrics, moved into songwriting, and eventually became a much broader conversation about creativity, collaboration, and how we wanted to work together moving forward. As it turned out, the lyrics weren’t really the issue. They were simply the trigger.
Looking back, that ghost had been haunting the room for quite some time. We just didn’t realize it.
Like most long-running creative partnerships, SixFootStilts had developed a lot of unspoken assumptions over the years. We each approached music from different angles. We had different influences, different strengths, different tastes, and different ways of working. Most of the time that diversity became one of our greatest assets.
Over the years we disagreed about arrangements, instrumentation, song selection, mixes, song sequencing, and countless other creative decisions. But somehow we usually found our way to common ground. Sometimes one person felt more strongly about an idea and the others let their position rest. Nobody got everything they wanted, but somehow the songs usually did.
Looking back, that may have been one of the greatest strengths of SixFootStilts. We were never trying to win arguments. We were trying to make better music.
This time felt different.
The deeper the conversation went, the clearer it became that we weren’t really discussing a lyric change anymore. We were discussing the creative process itself and what each of us valued most about making music. Not because anyone was being unreasonable, but because we had arrived at different conclusions about something that mattered deeply to all of us.
If I’m being honest, I spent part of the conversation defending my position and explaining my perspective. I suspect everyone involved did. That’s what happens when people care deeply about something.
As the dust settled, however, I found myself reflecting on what made SixFootStilts work in the first place. It wasn’t technology. It wasn’t process. It wasn’t even agreement. It was three people bringing different ideas into a room and finding a way to build something together.
From RTZ through SixFootStilts, there is a lot of shared history here. Years of songs, albums, reviews, debates, roadblocks, breakthroughs, car rides and laughter. The fingerprints of all three of us are all over this catalog, and that’s what makes the music special. Not any one person. Not any one song. Not any one idea. The collaboration itself.
In many ways, the events of the past few weeks have caused us to revisit something simple: our roots.
The conversations continue. The music continues. And while there are still details to work through, I remain optimistic. After all these years, we’ve overcome creative challenges before, and I believe we’ll find our way through this one too. Perhaps moving forward simply means returning to the approach that brought us together in the first place: three people contributing what they each do best, respecting each other’s strengths, and creating the music that made SixFootStilts what it is.
As for the future, it is still being written. For now, we’ll finish what remains outstanding on WooWoo & VooDoo and keep doing what we’ve always done: making music together.
Ultimately, that’s what the ghost was really trying to tell us.
It was never about a lyric.
It was never about a song.
It was about remembering what mattered most.
The friendships matter.
The music matters.
The journey matters.
And after all these years, I still believe the best chapters of the SixFootStilts story may be the ones we haven’t written yet.
–JawnyB
June 2026
