The Confession Killer on Netflix and My Concept Album

I’ll be the first to admit I have a slightly morbid (and possibly unnatural) fascination with serial killers. Throughout the years I’ve read countless books and watched scores of documentaries about various twisted and evil murderers, sometimes freaking out friends and family. But what can I say? The evil that men do just fascinates me.

Years and years ago I had the idea that I wanted to write a concept album about serial killers. The idea was sparked by Sufjan Stevens’ song John Wayne Gacy Jr., which is a beautiful ballad about one of the most infamous serial murderer of all time. I was really excited about the prospect of a whole album of those. Serial Murder Ballads might have been a good title. 😉

Well, I only wrote two ballads for that, and only one of them was any good. That one was about the one serial killer case that has captured my imagination more than anybody else: Henry Lee Lucas.

If you’re unfamiliar with his story, Henry Lee Lucas was arrested for murder, and soon started to confess to hundreds of murders all around the United States. He was believed to be the most prolific serial killer in history, and eventually confessed to at least 360 murders. There were a couple of films based on his confession, including the cult classic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. But it turned out that his confessions were largely false. It’s a weird and unbelievable case.

The song I wrote about Henry Lee Lucas is one of my favorites, and I always wanted to do something more with it. So a few years ago I dusted it off and started writing a concept album about Henry. It’s been a stop-and-start process, but I’d say I’m about 80% done with the songwriting for that.

So yeah, it’s a case that I’m slightly obsessed with.

So imagine my joy when I found out that there’s a new documentary series on Netflix about Henry Lee Lucas. I binged the whole thing and I absolutely loved it. Even though this is a case I’ve been obsessed with for years and years, there were lots of things in there I had never known, which really blew my mind. I can’t recommend it enough – you need to watch this show!

The series also reignited the spark for me. I now NEED to finish my Henry album. So that’s something I’ll definitely be attacking in 2020. In fact, after watching the series I immediately sat down and wrote a new song for it!

This, then, is the official announcement. I am going to finish that album next year. I’ll need to write a few more songs, and then the recording process will be a bit more involved than the last one, because this one will be quite different in many ways. So it’s going to require more planning than I usually do in the studio.

I’m super excited about this, and I’m going to try to cover this on my web site and social media as much as possible. I really hope you’ll go and watch that series and then come back and follow along as I make my album.

Until next time, my friends,
Folk on!