This is the last song I wrote for the winter/spring round of the 2026 songwriting group. It was written during an extremely emotional time. I was mourning the sudden death of a dear friend – Stephen Reed – and I had returned to the LA area, the place where I spent the first 20 years of my life and a few more on and off after that.
I took two trips down and spent nearly a month there consecutively – more time than I’d spent down there in seven or eight years, including flying home for a weekend in between. I was returning to people and places I hadn’t returned to in far too long. I knew that I had to. In this time, I had to reconnect.
The relationships and conversations that came out of that month were long overdue. Some of my oldest and dearest friends – people I’ve known for half my life, people we were brought together by music. We played in bands together, played countless gigs together. There was a period for me from about 18 to 21 where my life revolved mostly around this community. We were studying music, working whatever jobs we had, but most of our free time revolved around each other. We played cover gigs, corporate events, fundraisers, weddings, country clubs, bars and restaurants. Beyond all that, we all had original projects going, playing bars, clubs, house parties, pizza spots and more. When we weren’t playing we were together – piling into cars to go on all sorts of adventures day and night.
We were young, idealistic, naive, lucky. Life felt simpler then. I’m not sure we knew quite who or what we were. I know I didn’t. But somehow none of us have changed all that much. We’ve aged into our 30s and 40s now – still young, but no longer living wildly and freely and recklessly. The gigs and hangouts no longer feel endless and playful in the same way.
I drove by Rad Stop – the first building a group of my friends began renting, which turned into many things over the years. First a rehearsal studio, then a bike shop, eventually a warehouse with many rooms used as artist studios and residences. It was one of my main home bases when I was visiting and spending time down there between 2014-2016. I stayed in several different rooms throughout the years. It was eventually condemned and demolished. Rad Pro, the successor to that space and the place where many of my early recordings were made – where I lived, kept space, and ran live sound for bands – has since moved and the original location is all boarded up. But Rad Stop is simply gone. When I drove by it was the first time I’d been in that area in eight or nine years. Where it once stood there is now an empty lot surrounded by a fence. In between the cement cracks there are weeds reaching up to the sky.
I had a conversation with my old friend Ivan that I keep coming back to. He told me he’d been quite sad thinking about the people we came up with. He wanted to put on a concert in his parents’ backyard like he used to, invite bands from back in the day – but he quickly realized that three of the bands he thought of have all had members who passed away at tragically young ages. Stephen is just the latest in that string of three. Ivan said that they used to feel like we had so much promise, so much potential, all of us reaching for our dreams. But we’ve lived long enough to see the end of some of those dreams, the end of some of those stories. To him it appeared that those were golden days, when we were becoming. But those days are gone and now we are what has been.
I replied: that’s bleak, bro.
I told him I don’t feel that way. For me the growth has not stopped. I’m still learning, still crossing boundaries and finding myself on the other side of good things. I still believe in our potential – individually and collectively. We are still here and our stories are not done yet. And even in the case of Stephen, the actions of his lifetime are still ringing out in ways that are truly powerful and surprising. His work and influence on earth is not done. His story is not done.
But still I was definitely feeling Ivan’s sentiments. It seemed like many people I visited with were struggling – with their work, their living situations, their relationships and the grief of losing our friend.
Friends told me they wished I hadn’t left. They asked if I was coming back to stay. I told them no. Leaving one gathering, a friend asked if I was heading back to Oregon. I said yes. He asked when he would see me again. I said I don’t know.
I’m writing this at home. I just stepped out the front door and into the forest. I feel no worry for tomorrow, little stress from the day. I’ve managed to find myself in a place I genuinely love, living a relatively simple, but fulfilling, interesting and peaceful life in a small town by the sea.
But I carry complicated emotions around it. Deep gratitude for this life sits right alongside shame and guilt when I return to that place and those friends. In order to find this life for myself, I had to the old life behind.
This song became a meditation on these feelings, these thoughts. Giving into some of the bleak and fatalistic feelings of the time and all that comes with the idea that our golden days may have passed.
“Our Golden Days Have Passed”
I left pieces of my heart in chunks down below
Hit the road to save my soul
To build new life I let the old one go
I didn’t mean to abandon you
I didn’t mean to abandon you
Is it too late to say I love you too
Is it too late to show my face in this place
Where we once built a home now it’s an empty lot
Gone without a trace fenced up and blocked off
Now there’s just a few weeds reaching up J
ust a few weeds reaching for us
Our tribe was broken up spread out and beaten down
And I feel like an alien when I come around
Until we’re face-to-face and we start digging in
We’re all struggling
What started with a dream ended in death
The best of us is gone we are what’s left
Becoming has past now we are what has been
Stuck in the present
Our golden days have passed
Our golden days have passed
ericprincessdragon 