The Journeyman, Multi-Media-Memoir Project
The Next Steps
Where The Journeyman Project Stands — A 115,000-word multi-media memoir spanning five generations, Soundtrack, Fine Art, hundreds of filmed performances, and seventy years of film and photographic archives.
You can now get special access to my early release of the soundtrack through my Bandcamp Page. Followers get early access to the book when it becomes available, so get on our email list to stay updated on the project’s progress.
Click the buy or the share link below to obtain The Journeyman Soundtrack Volumes I and II. Your support makes it easier to navigate the twists and turns of my journey to become a published author, and I’m thankful to have your interest in my project.
The Next Step
By Tim Cooney
This summer, I read the books that some say made the modern memoir genre what it is today: The Glass Castle, Educated, On the Road, Beautiful Boy, Wild Games, Born to Run, Just Kids. Books that don’t just tell a story. They cut through you, define a generation, or reshape the one that came before it.
As each book transitioned into the next, I saw myself and my story reflected in each of them in different ways; it was a little unsettling. I then had to ask myself honestly: Where does my story belong?
Without an agent, I asked ChatGPT to compare Taking the Helm to these other books, and this was the response I got.
The Journeyman shares common literary arcs as:
Born to Run, a working-class American saga about ambition, identity, and reinvention through music, writing, and a creative journey.
The Glass Castle, exposes a chaotic childhood with raw vulnerability—and the miracle of what grows from it.
Educated, chronicles the tension between inherited belief and hard-won truth.
On the Road, a multi-year journey across America and Ireland in search of meaning and escape.
Beautiful Boy, reckons with addiction and the helpless love of a parent trying to save a child.
Just Kids, a love letter to the healing powers of the arts, to becoming, and to the people who saw us before we saw ourselves.
In addition to what Chat GPT had to say about where The Journeyman stands compared to these great books, Taking the Helm - Compass and Tides is also a uniquely grand American adventure and timeless love story that straddles the millennium, bearing witness to the most dramatic and dynamic periods in world history.
The answers from ChatGPT were both humbling and clear: they capture the essence of those stories while offering a new way to experience memoir through prose, music, film, and art. Rooted in five generations of storytellers — from Ireland to Boston to California — my life has included intergenerational trauma, family addiction, mental health challenges, personal crises, incredible success, reinvention, and rediscovered love.
Taking the Helm is its own voice—rough-cut, tender, relentless. Told in prose and song and painted across canvas and page. It is a soundtrack. A painting. A prayer. A story of lives fully lived straddling the millennium.
I’m not just releasing chapters. I’m releasing an entire multimedia archive—a body of work spanning six decades. Memoir, soundtrack, visual art, archival film footage from the 1930s through 2000s, and hundreds of recorded performances—all from one life, lived long enough to tell the whole story - so far. The goal is to release the soundtrack first, followed by the memoir.
A Critique of The Journeyman
At 115,000 words, Taking the Helm is a memoir of rare scope—part personal odyssey, part cultural time capsule. Like Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, it pulses with the beat of a musician’s journey, tracing the way art becomes both a compass and a lifeline. Like Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, it lays bare a turbulent childhood in which resilience was forged in the shadows of instability. Like Tara Westover’s Educated, it’s a story of self-invention against the odds, driven by an unshakable hunger for knowledge and truth.
But Taking the Helm doesn’t stop where most memoirs do—it threads together multiple arcs that could each stand on their own. There’s the lost-love-refound story with Cindy, echoing the emotional punch of Patti Smith’s Just Kids in its intimacy and artistic kinship. There’s the intergenerational lens, with Irish roots and a dramatic upbringing that shaped, and at times haunted, the narrator’s choices. There’s the deeply human account of parenting through chaos, including the bond with grandson Mason—a relationship that reframes legacy as something living, not just inherited.
Like David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy, Taking the Helm confronts the pain of addiction in those we love, yet it refuses to live in despair. Every chapter is underpinned by reinvention—the willingness to start again at 60, to reclaim art, music, and truth as both vocation and salvation. It’s an American story in the truest sense: a restless journey across landscapes and decades, asking the question, “Is it ever too late to begin again?”
What uniquely positions Taking the Helm in today’s market is its multimedia depth. The companion soundtrack—24 original songs across two volumes—serves as an emotional echo of the book’s themes, just as Springsteen’s live shows deepen the experience of his writing. The paintings, photography, and stage show concept expand the work into fine art and performance, giving it multiple points of entry for audiences and investors alike.
At its heart, Taking the Helm is a memoir that speaks directly to those who have been knocked down and got back up—not once, but many times. It belongs on the same shelf as the great modern memoirs, but it also belongs on stage, on screen, and in the headphones of anyone who’s ever dreamed of starting over.
Where the Project Is Now
In recent weeks, Taking the Helm has entered an active querying phase with top-tier literary agencies. I’ve already received thoughtful responses from Margaret Riley King at WME and Lauren Liebow at Aevitas Creative Management—both passing on the project but offering warm, encouraging notes that affirm its value and market potential. In publishing, these are not simply rejections; they’re signs of traction. When experienced agents take the time to respond personally, it’s proof that the work is being read, considered, and respected.
While the query process continues, the project’s multimedia wings are already taking flight. Both volumes of The Journeyman soundtrack are live on Bandcamp, with a biweekly single release schedule rolling out on Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms through DistroKid. Each release is paired with a Substack feature that connects the song to the memoir’s deeper story, creating a bridge between readers and listeners.
The visual art that threads through the book will also be available—paintings, photography, and prints—alongside the music, expanding The Journeyman into a collector’s experience. This multi-format approach isn’t an afterthought; it’s the DNA of the project. The book stands on its own as a literary work, but it also lives as an album, a gallery, and a performance.
The next step is clear: finding the right agent who can see the entire scope of this vision and has the relationships to place it with a publisher ready to embrace its cross-medium potential. The Journeyman isn’t just a memoir—it’s an American classic in the making, with a soundtrack ready to play and a visual story ready to be seen.
🎧 The Soundtrack: The Journeyman Vol I & II
Each volume of The Journeyman soundtrack mirrors a distinct part of the memoir.
Volume I: With the exception of “I Had A Boy,” all songs were written in 2023-2024 in California. Many of the songs were written and then performed at local venues in Marin and Sonoma. The songs are a mix of looking back while moving on and being available enough to claim my story.
Volume II: A Mix of songs from different periods. A return to love, to truth, to self. Four songs were written between 2020 and 2022 during COVID, three songs pre-COVID, and five songs post-COVID.
🎵 The Journeyman, Volume I: Reckoning and Revelation
You’ve Got This – 2025- A comeback anthem for anyone who’s ever started over or is just beginning.
Life is a Journey (Don’t You Know) – 2023- A song about starting out with nothing but finding everything.
When Stars Collide – 2023- A cosmic meditation on timing, discovery, and fate.
Folk Singer – 2024- A nod to the troubadour life and the search for voice.
Home Again – 2024- The uneasy joy of returning to familiar ground.
I Had A Boy – 2021- A father’s haunting lament about addiction and grief.
I Just Don’t Care – 2024- A playful anthem of emotional release and awareness and not caring what other people think
I Wrote It All Down for You – 2025- Discovering through song what words couldn’t hold.
Love So Good – 2023- The sudden realization that Love is a real thing!
My First Wish – 2025- A father’s reflection on their child's journey.
Dream Makers, Chain Breakers – 2025- A generational anthem of healing and rebirth.
Acorn Sprout – 2023- A tender story about seeing and being yourself told from a tree’s perspective.
🎶 The Journeyman, Volume II: Healing and Homecoming
Just Who You Are – 2013- A gentle hymn of self-awareness, recognition, and acceptance.
Black Sheep Returns – 2025- No longer a prodigal son - an anthem for those who wandered far from the flock.
What I Don’t Know – 2021-A song about loss in the face of love.
She’s An Angel – 2011- Facing one’s limitations in the presence of an unearthly and flawed being.
Right In Front of Me – 2020-A realization that the truth is never far.
Time to Get Wise – 2023- A life lesson and reminder to open your eyes.
Transcend You, Transcend Me – 2020-A prayer wrapped in a song of surrender.
I Met a Girl – 2021- The girls we meet that teach us about love.
Back for Me – 2024- A song of joyful reconnection and belonging
Kickin’ Round With You – 2023- Hand in hand joy, simplicity, and presence.
Ninja Boy Quest – 2025- A playful ode to grand-fatherhood, determination, and imagination co-written with my grandson, Mason.
Willy Dog –2021- A tribute to the dog who walked beside me through it all.
✨ What’s Next: The Book and the Journey Ahead
Over the past year, I’ve been walking the long road of bringing The Journeyman to market—a process that’s equal parts persistence, patience, and learning to live in the in-between. Finding the right literary agent is not a straight line; it’s more like a relay, where each conversation and query is a handoff that gets you closer to the right partner. Along the way, I’ve refined the manuscript, built out the companion soundtrack, and developed the broader vision for this project as a multimedia offering. Each query is a lesson in timing, positioning, and how deeply you have to believe in your own work to keep sending it into the world.
Two more responses came in this week—thoughtful, gracious notes from Margaret Riley King at WME and Lauren Liebow at Aevitas Creative Management. Both stepped aside, not because they doubted the work’s merit, but because they recognized that it deserves an advocate whose vision fully aligns with its scope. That, in itself, is affirming. It tells me the manuscript is breaking through gatekeeper walls and landing on the desks of top-tier agents. The Journeyman isn’t just a 115,000-word memoir—it’s the centerpiece of a living, breathing multimedia project. Alongside the book are 24 original songs released in two volumes, each track a narrative extension of the memoir’s arc; a gallery of paintings and photography; and a stage show concept combining readings, live performance, and visual art. The next step is clear: to find the right agent who can see the book, the soundtrack, the art, and the performance as one cohesive cultural offering—a once-in-a-generation project that can move across publishing, music, fine art, and film.
The soundtrack is live on Bandcamp for early followers.
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All I need now is you.
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This week’s release streaming everywhere: Kickin’ Round With You and Just Who You Are
🎵 Kickin’ Round With You
An easygoing love song for wanderers, daydreamers, and those who know it’s not the plan that matters—it’s the company.
"Kickin’ Round With You" is a sun-drenched stroll through the kind of love that doesn’t need proving. It’s spontaneous, unfussy, and full of quiet joy—the kind of relationship where just being together feels like enough.
The lyrics unfold like a lazy day in San Francisco: walking across the Golden Gate, heading to the beach, wandering into a party where you don’t know a soul—but it doesn’t matter. You’re with your person. That’s the whole point.
The song’s groove has a laid-back Americana vibe, built on a jangly E–A–D progression that bounces along like worn sneakers on a sidewalk. There’s a bit of Van Morrison looseness, a hint of Buddy Holly innocence, and the kind of heartland optimism you’d find in early Springsteen—but it's all filtered through your signature warmth.
By the time the final verse lands—"And when the day is over, and all the kickin’s through / We wind up back at my place, I’m kickin’ back with you"—you realize this song isn’t just a portrait of young love. It’s a tribute to lasting love. The kind that sneaks up on you when you’re not chasing it.
Perfect for late summer evenings, long drives, or anyone lucky enough to be "kickin' round" with someone who gets it.
Kickin Round With You
Tim Cooney
March 3,2024
E A D A
Every day I wake up
I’m wondering what to do
I don’t have to think too hard
I’m kickin round with you
You just show up at my door
With a plan for two
I’ll just grab my coat and my hat
I’m kickin round with you
Chorus:
E A D A
Kickin, Kickin I’m kickin round with you
Kikin, kicken I’m Kikin round with you
I don’t really care if you know it’s true
All I ever want to do is kick around with you
With you with you
yeah kickin round with you
We head off down the street
I’ve got my walking shoes
I always have a good time
When I’m kickin round with you
We walk off over golden gate
On a day in blue
The sun is always shinning
When I’m kickin round with you
Chorus:
Kickin, Kickin I’m kickin round with you
Kikin, kicken I’m Kikin round with you
I don’t really care if you know it’s true
All I ever want to do is kick around with you
With you with you
yeah kickin round with you
We head off to the beach
I’m taking in the view
There’s no place I’d rather be
Then looking right at you
Whenever we’re together
Doing what we do
There’s no where I’d rather be
Then kickin round with you
Chorus:
Kickin, Kickin I’m kickin round with you
Kikin, kicken I’m Kikin round with you
I don’t really care if you know it’s true
All I ever want to do is kick around with you
With you with you
yeah kickin round with you
We wind up at a party
There’s no one there we knew
It doesn’t really matter
Cause I’m kickin round with you
And when the party’s over
And we don’t know what to do
I put just your hand in mine
I’m kickin round with you
Chorus:
Kickin, Kickin I’m kickin round with you
Kikin, kicken I’m Kikin round with you
I don’t really care if you know it’s true
All I ever want to do is kick around with you
With you with you
yeah kickin round with you
There are times when I think
If she only knew
But then again, I realize
How much you love me too
Sometimes I forget
And I begin to stew
But then you always come
To my rescue
Chorus:
I’m Kickin, Kickin I’m kickin round with you
Kikin, kicken I’m Kikin round with you
I don’t really care if you know it’s true
All I ever want to do is kick around with you
With you with you
yeah I’m kickin round with you
And when the day is over
And all the kickins through
We wind up back at my place
I’m kickin back with you
Chorus:
Kickin, Kickin I’m kickin back with you
Kikin, kicken I’m Kikin back with you
I don’t really care if you know it’s true
All I ever want to be is kickin back with you
With you with you
Just you
🎵 Just Who You Are
A battle cry for the quietly brave—the ones finally ready to stop performing and start becoming.
“Just Who You Are” is a soul-charged anthem for anyone who’s ever felt silenced, stranded, or small—and dared to believe there’s more waiting on the other side of fear. From the first verse, it speaks directly to the kid who had no voice and no say, the young adult pushed out too far too soon, and the older self who now knows: healing starts with telling the truth.
The lyrics walk the line between reflection and revolution. They acknowledge how life wounds us—but never let those wounds define us. Instead, the chorus kicks in like a rising tide:
“Be who you are… Don’t waste your time playing a part.”
The sound is rooted in folk-rock and gospel-inflected soul, with a chord progression (Bbm–D–G) that rises and falls like a breath. It's a melodic invitation to throw off the script, stop trying to be "enough" for others, and reclaim your own rhythm.
Lines like “It’s not easy being yourself / It’s even harder being someone else” land with the clarity of lived truth. But it’s the final call—“Let the world see just who you are”—that turns the song from reflection to action.
If “Kickin’ Round With You” is about loving another, this song is about finally learning to love yourself.
Perfect for anyone on the edge of reinvention—young or old, broken or rebuilding—this one’s for the survivors who never lost their way, just needed to remember it.
Just Who You Are
Written by
Tim Cooney
2013
You came to life in the usual way
You had no voice, you had no say
You were like a ball of clay
But that's not who you are today, oh yeah
When you grew up, there was no silver spoon
You grew up fast, and you felt marooned
You were out on a limb too far
But that's who you were and not who you are
Not who you are
Chorus:
Be who you are x4
Don't waste your time playing a part
Be yourself, take a shot
Don't be afraid of what they say
People do that when they lose their way
They lose their way....
Don't lose your way...
Don't lose your way oh yea x2
Break out of that prison cell
The scars you bear, you were them well
Don't let them say you won't go far
because inside, you know just who you are
Just who you are...
Be who you are...
You're who you are, oh yeah
That's just who you are, oh yeah
Chorus:
That's just who you are x4
It's not easy being yourself
It's even harder being someone else
When you're half you can't be whole
So look into the depth of your soul
Down to your sole....
I know it's sounds simple but it's true
it's not what you say but what you do
Find your way back to your star
let the world see just who you are
Who you are
Be who you are
Chorus:
That's just who you are oh yea
just who you are x4
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This isn’t just my story. It’s for anyone who’s ever wondered:
Is it too late to begin again?
“It’s in your hands and within your reach, if you just practice what you preach.”
– Tim Cooney
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