09/17/2026
Good morning friends. I spent last night, right up until the wee hours of the morning (3 a.m.), sending songs I’ve written and perfected over the past few years to the distributor for professional mastering so they can be placed on my next album.
There’s something a little strange about hearing these songs go from lyrics and poems I wrote at home on the ranch to finished recordings with my voice singing over AI-created music, now headed toward release. Every word came from me, but I’m not always convinced every idea did.
Part of my process is probably a little unconventional. Ya see, every morning, the moment I wake up, I try to write down whatever I was thinking or dreaming about in as much detail as I can remember. If I wake up in the middle of the night to p*e, same deal. Then, while I’m having my coffee on the porch, I go back through what I jotted down and try to figure out what the hell my mind was working on while I was asleep. What was it trying to put into context? What part of my life was it reaching back for? Was there a lesson buried in there somewhere that life has taught me over these last 60 years but that I didn’t completely understand while I was living through it? Or maybe, after 60 years, I just look at things differently than I did back then.
That’s a big reason I’ve told people more than once that I sometimes feel like these songs, or at least the messages inside them, are gifted to me. Given to me by something or someone. What or who that is, I’ll let everybody else decide for themselves. It’s way above my pay grade.
The dreaming and the visits happen nearly every night now, sometimes more than once. It’s becoming rarer for them to be PTSD-induced nightmares where I wake up in a cold sweat, panicked that my life is somehow in danger, like the dreams I’ve had most of my life.
A few days before Dolly passed, she, or at least her likeness, visited me in a dream. I had seen the video she recorded, which was played at Dollywood, where she apologized for being absent that weekend. Then, just the other night, Willie freakin’ Nelson was sitting on a bench outside an elevator I kept coming out of every day. Eventually, I got up enough nerve to talk to him, so naturally, I sat down and struck up a conversation. Lol.
And those conversations weren’t about asking Dolly or Willie to sing one of my songs or trying to figure out how to get somebody famous attached to what I’m doing. That wasn’t the point at all.
I was asking them about the messages.
A lot of the songs I write have something tucked inside them about hope, surviving something, getting back up, forgiving somebody, accepting yourself, hanging on, being your most authentic self, or realizing that whatever you’re going through right now probably isn’t the end of your story. What I wanted to know from people like Dolly and Willie, whom I both admire, was how you get those kinds of messages into the ears of the people who actually need to hear them. How do you reach somebody who might be sitting somewhere thinking they’re the only person in the world who has ever felt the way they do right now?
That’s the only part I care about.
Sometimes it’s somebody from my own past. I’ll dream about somebody I haven’t thought about in years and later find out they’re gone. Somebody I thought I might see again someday at a reunion or somewhere down the road, only we never got that chance.
Other times, it’s somebody I met along the way who left something behind in me. Somebody interesting, important, kind, or sometimes not so kind. Maybe someone I admired, someone I loved, or someone who was the opposite of all those things. I’ve met a lot of people and lived a lot of different lives in 60 years, and some of them still show up in my dreams.
Sometimes there’s nothing in a dream worth keeping. Sometimes there’s a memory or a story. And every now and then, I wake up with the beginning of a song. I call it a seed, something to plant, nurture, and help grow into something beautiful.
Some of those songs came from good memories. Some came from things I probably carried around too long. Some made me laugh. A few still hit me hard every time I hear them.
I never really know what an album is going to become when I start writing. I just keep following the stories until, eventually, they start telling me what belongs together.
This one became Backroads Buildin’ Me.
And maybe that title explains more about where these songs come from than I realized when I chose it.
Anyway, enough of my long-winded story. I guess this is me finally making the announcement official.
My next album is Backroads Buildin’ Me.
Thirty-five songs. It’s got things that’ll make you cry, things that’ll make you smile, and probably something in there that’ll make your mom, or mine, blush. Sorry, Mom. I love you! 😉
There are stories about faith, love, loss, family, getting older, getting knocked down, getting back up, laughing at yourself, accepting who you are, and trying to make some sense out of this crazy life.
It’s the biggest album I’ve ever made, and probably the most personal.
I hope somewhere in those 35 songs there’s one that finds you exactly when you need it. Because more than anything else, that’s why I keep writing them.
The distributor is aiming for October 9, so that’s the date to watch for Backroads Buildin’ Me.
I’m just trying to keep up. 😂
The video here is just a little snippet from my studio while putting it all together. The song I’m singing is called I’m Still Blessed.
And yeah, it’s going to be a whopper of an album. One that would make even Morgan Wallen proud.
Lane Alan Dumser
Dixon Springs
