We're back with a Brand New Song and a Brand New Reason!

Kai Huyno photos by Scott Tj R. Bandoquillo

After a very long hiatus, we are finally back to releasing new songs.... with a new direction! In my bid to resurrect the band, things just took a hard turn when the logistics of making it happen seems to make that plan a very difficult one to achieve. After all, the Philippines is an archipelago, and the band members live in different islands away from each other.  So I opted for a different approach. A bit different but defnitely back to the simpler times when we started our songwriting journey. As chronicled in my past entry, I've decided to go back to the roots of how Thoughts And Notions came to be. Wilbert, Thrina, and Me and our songs. This keeps things simpler in such a way that we'll just have to focus on writing songs and put them on Digital Music platforms for the moment. So Live engagements will have to take a backseat. Though I hope one day we'll be back on stage to perform to a live audience again. And yes, while this set up would work in the meantime, Thrina had to beg off in recording new songs for the moment. Because Mother duties beckons. And there's no more important thing for us than our families. So that left me and Wilbert to soldier on, with the dilemma that none of us are natural born singers. So we have to improvise.

Check out Kuya Bryan's Spotify Page

Fortunately, I've come to know Kuya Bryan, the founder of OBM Music, which stands for Original Bisaya Music. He's a prolific songwriter (not to mention that he's also a huge supporter of songwriters from Visayas and Mindanao islands) from the Queen City of the South (Cebu City) who is close to writing 100 songs in the native Visayan dialect and other languages commonly used in the Philippines. And his story and how he writes his songs inspired me in such a way that I decided to adopt his way of thinking. That is to continue writing songs and worry about the song interpreter later. (check out his songs on his Youtube Channel in this link by the way). From this thought, it opened my horizons to scout for up and coming singers that deserves a shot at having their voices heard. And just use Thoughts And Notions as a platform or a springboard for them to be heard and discovered to the multitudes of listeners in the global digital music platform. Of course this is by no means as a move to replace Thrina. Because whether she would sing again or not, she's still a vital part of Thoughts And Notions, and I personally would love to see her reclaim the vocal duties in the near future. But opening up the idea to feature new singers and artists as collaborative partners of Thoughts And Notions is something that sounds so in tune with the times when Music consumption is so much free and easier to access compared to the old times. One only needs an internet connection and you are set!

Meet Kai Huyno, the featured artist for this track

That said, the first artist that we'll be featuring with this new kind of set up is Kai Huyno. She's the daughter of Jessie Huyno, another artist that we used to do live gigs with back in the day. I've helped produce one of his songs, and I just realized now that I haven't posted it here yet😅. So a post about it should be in order soon. Apologies. But back to Kai, I discovered her doing a cover of Olivia Rodrigo's Driver's License on her defunct Youtube channel. And I kind of notice her potential. So I asked Jessie if I could launch Kai as the featured artist for our next song. Fortunately, Kai was open to doing it. That, considering that currently she has too much on her plate. And singing kinda took a backseat for her. Aside from singing as her past time, things are looking up for her in her budding Modeling career. Not to mention that she's one of the deadly spikers and blockers of her school's Volleyball Varsity Team. So getting her to sing our new song was an honor.

As for the new song, Brand New Reason. The lyrics was something I actually wrote years back. Sometime around 2007 If I am not mistaken. While there were recent new lyrics that I wrote which was intended for the band's reformation, I decided to use an old lyrics for this endeavor. I rewrote the whole lyrics of the song and transformed it to something better. Of course, finishing touches from Wilbert also was a big help. And since this will be the first song that Thrina won't be singing, I decided to change the song direction and make it sound different. Not a traditional Thoughts And Notions song that hovers mostly on the Pop/Rock genre. This is a straight up Pop song. A bit lo-fi with sparse instruments. I guess we just wanted to highlight Kai's unique vocal quality in contrast to Thrina's power vocals. It also does not help that as we grew older, our peers started to veer away from Rock Music. And this is partly an acquiesce to their comments. Not my regular cup of tea, but definitely loving the different vibe it brings. Oh I guess, what a way to relaunch Thoughts And Notions with a new song like this. Something that you've never heard of from our past catalogue. Would definitely love to work with Kai in the future. I'll just have to start writing new lyrics again.  

So without much further adieu, let me share to you our Brand New Song. Our Brand New Reason!

Stream the song on the following links:

https://bfan.link/brand-new-reason

We've got a Brand New Reason to keep this thing going! Hoping that you'll join us for this rebirth of some sort😇