“Let Your Heart Hold Fast” by Fort Atlantic, Thursday, November 2, 2023

“Let Your Heart Hold Fast” is a song that I first heard on a NoiseTrade sampler and then I heard it in an episode of How I Met Your Mother. NoiseTrade included the song on their Summer Sampler 2012. By December of that year, the song had been included in the eighth season of one of the biggest sitcoms on television. The song comes from Birmingham, Alabama-formed band Fort Atlantic and was released on their debut self-titled record. There is some conflicting information between the band’s biography written on AllMusic profile and their Wikipedia page and BandCamp information.


SALT AND LIQUID BLEND IN THE CORNER OF MY EYES. According to AllMusic, the band is mainly composed of studio producer Jon Black who sings, writes the band’s songs, and plays most of the instruments on the albums; and drummer Josh Cannon who also adds programming loops into the music. The BandCamp photo shows four band members, and Wikipedia says that Cannon has left the band. Genius, on the other hand, says that Fort Atlantic is a Portland, Oregon-based band, which seems to be completely false. It seems like the band was formed around Black and then Cannon and other musicians were added to tour and record the band’s second studio record. That’s how many bands that form around one person often happen, but I haven’t dug for information to confirm that with Fort Atlantic. According to the band’s Instagram account, though, Fort Atlantic is on hiatus as a project but Black is continuing to work on music. 


ALL MY DAYS ARE SPENT. We started a month in which we focus on gratitude. “Let Your Heart Hold Fast” is a song about overcoming adversity. The hopeful tone of the song gives me energy to go on and that’s exactly what I need today. I’m in the middle of a season’s-change cold. The year is almost over and the amount of work to get to the end of the year feels insurmountable. And I’m feeling like I need to figure out what I want to focus on for next year, but I don’t have a lot of energy left to do that. Again, the subject comes up, what about my trivial “Song a Day” blog? What do I do with it? Do I let it die and move on to other projects? Do I keep it alive? How do I make it more valuable? I love learning about musicians, but I wonder if I should be broadening or narrowing my focus. I’m going to start enacting some changes in the next few weeks to experiment to see how I can keep this blog going and how it can keep giving me joy. Stay tuned. 

 

Live:
Scene from How I Met Your Mother:

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