One year ago, John “Philly” Fletcher launched The Common Ground Podcast with the goal of bringing people together through conversation– in other words, finding common ground.
Now, the podcast has launched its 54th episode. It was almost exactly one year to the day since Philly and co-host Sydney Nicole recorded the fourth episode, featuring guest D.K. Lyons.
Lyons is a musician who describes himself as a “fun-loving, feet-moving, tear-jerking pop artist”, drawing influence from performers such as Tom Petty, the 1975, and Jason Isbell. Since recording the fourth episode of The Common Ground Podcast, Lyons says he has evolved not just as a musician, but as a human being, especially since working on his latest EP. The difference is, Lyons was all on his own for this one– no producers, no managers
“You are, like, the one who is managing every last note that gets played,” he says.
Lyons describes that kind of work as a lot of late nights and early mornings, which took a real toll on his physical and mental health. After months of cancelled shows, cancelled promotions, and seeing multiple doctors, it wasn’t until the winter when Lyons was able to recover physically and get back to work on the EP. This time, the work felt natural, as it coincided with his healing. “The overall feeling of it is… a lot more organic and authentic sounding, because it’s kind of me going through that rebirth at the same time as I was making it.”
Lyons’ new EP, titled Long Overdue May Lilies, focuses on themes of love. It was written shortly after a new relationship started for Lyons, one which he describes as finding “the perfect yin to [his] yang.” The title is a play on the anagram “LOML”, or “Love of My Life.” He describes it as “the opposite side of the coin” to his first EP, which was an exploration of feelings and questions related to societal disconnect, modern relationships, and telling the stories of other people rather than his own. As fate would have it, Lyons met his partner just a month after completing the project. Lyons says each song on Long Overdue May Lilies matches up with a track on Darling, Kiss Louder, furthering his notion that he had found and lived the other side of that coin.
“And so when I was going through that 180 and having all of these questions answered and, you know, seeing a kind of new side of life, um, that’s kinda when I knew. I was like, ‘Okay, I have, I have to document this, and I’m feeling all these incredibly powerful things that I need to put out through music.’ And so, um, the seeds were kind of sown in the middle of finishing up that last EP, that I was gonna put something else out pretty, pretty immediately…”
Such is life. Different stages bring up different feelings, and different feelings bring up different challenges for how to deal with them– how best to channel those emotions into something constructive– whether it be starting a podcast, or writing and producing music. Things change– people change– but sometimes the art you put out in one stage of life still needs to be performed in the next. But, Lyons says, that doesn’t make those older songs harder to perform.
“I don’t think those things necessarily completely die. Like, you still feel things that you felt when you were seven years old, even though it was a long time ago, and I think that was kinda just the approach that I took when performing those songs from the first EP.”
The lead single from Lyons’ new EP, titled “Merry Go Round”, is out now on Spotify and Apple Music. It acts as the perfect transition to Lyons’ new state of mind. It focuses on the story of a man who goes to see a clairvoyant, where he receives a fortune of incoming fulfillment– pretty comforting for someone coming out of a sense of disconnection. It also alludes to T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, with similar themes of feeling lost in a changing world. Part of the process of changing as a person and accepting love, Lyons notes, is healing enough from your past to a point where you can continue that healing with the strength of love:
“I think if you wait till you’re fully healed from everything to try and fall in love, you’re probably closing yourself off to a lot of healing that could happen if you meet the right person who is going to come in with a perspective that’s outside of your own.”
This is what The Common Ground Podcast is all about. When we are able to have conversations with others from a place of love, from a desire to understand them, that’s when progress is made. That’s when people are heard and when things begin to click. That’s when perspectives are considered that have never been considered before. That’s when a place of shared experience is discovered, and the work in those relationships can begin to be constructed and then maintained. In order to maintain these relationships, however, we must see both sides of the coin. There is work to be done on ourselves. Emotions must be expressed and channeled into something constructive to work off of, whether it be a song or a conversation or a joke or a story.
For Lyons, love, in any sense, is not about waiting for someone to change your life. It’s about having your lives change together, specifically after realizing you can accept the love you deserve.
“So it wasn’t just me falling in love with someone else, it was also… It happened at a time when I had started to, like, really fall back in love with myself too.”
What has been your favorite episode of The Common Ground Podcast so far? How have you changed in the last year? Do you have different values than you did a year ago?
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