I made a record. Now what?

Thirty years in and I still don't know what comes next.

I’ve been making albums for almost 30 years now and every album cycle brings along the same ups and downs. The thrill of the seed of an idea… the trance-like state of fleshing it out… the suffering over lyrics… the self-doubt after demoing the track… the inflating sense of confidence… the excitement and focus of recording with the band… the hours upon hours of refining… the thrill of completing the album… and then the emptiness of realizing you’re done.

Now what?

Now, it’s all the stuff I put off while making the album. What’s the story? What does each song mean? You don’t realize a theme until you have some distance.

I’ve heard someone say that a songwriter’s job is to be an empath. I look around and try to feel what others feel. The world is a pretty dark place right now… so it only made sense that this album would touch on sadness… but there’s also hope.

I lost my dear friend Christian Dorey at the beginning of writing this album. And I lost my mother, Asha, at the end. The album is named after her. Asha means hope in Sanskrit. I didn’t plan it that way. It just became what it was.

Each album is a time capsule. This one more than most.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the music is only part of it. There’s the making of it, which is its own world. There’s the living that happens around it... and then there’s the part where you send it out into the world.

That last part is why I’m here.

I’m going to write about all of it : the thirty years, tales from the road, the new album, what it actually looks like to run an independent band in 2026, the stories behind the songs, the people I’ve made music with along the way. Honest, unfiltered, probably a bit meandering. I’ll also throw in demos and outtakes.

If any of that sounds worth your time, stick around.

— Rishi