The Bookends — Why STAY Opens and Closes With Me, Not With Wes

The first track of STAY isn't a song. The last track isn't either. They're spoken. They're me — Elias — talking. Not the character at the centre of the album. Me.

I want to tell you why.

The problem with a concept album about faith doubt

When I started writing STAY, I knew it was going to be a story about a worship songwriter named Wes Bennett, walking through one year of slowly losing his grip on the words he was singing on stage. I also knew that the moment I released it, people were going to assume it was about me. That's how concept albums work — listeners look for the autobiography even when the artist has explicitly written it as fiction.

If the album were a comedy or a road movie, that wouldn't matter. But this album walks through a faith crisis. It has a 3 AM song where the character can't pray. It has a track where his wife stops going to church. It has a chapter where he skips church for the first Sunday in twenty years.

If a listener thought any of that was me — currently, today, right now — it would change everything they heard. They'd come to my shows looking for signs of strain. They'd email my pastor. They'd worry about my marriage. They'd miss the actual record because they'd be too busy projecting it back onto me.

So I needed a way to say, before the music starts: this is fiction. The man in the songs is not the man at the microphone. Come listen on those terms.

That's the first bookend.

Track one — the radio interview

The album opens with a two-minute fake radio interview. Tom Mercer, the host, asks me about the new record. I tell him, on tape, that STAY is a story album. That the character at the centre is named Wes Bennett. That Wes is a fictional worship songwriter. That I've never been Wes for a year, but I've been Wes for a Tuesday.

It's not subtle. It's not artful. It's not poetic. It's a radio bumper. I designed it to be the first thing you hear so that nobody — not the listener, not the journalist, not the well-meaning church friend — can mistake what they're about to listen to.

It works the way a content warning at the start of a film works. You know going in. You watch differently.

Track fourteen — the benediction

The closing track is three minutes long. It's me again, this time alone with an acoustic guitar on what sounds like a porch (it is). I'm not singing. I'm speaking.

I tell the listener what I hope they take away. I name Wes one more time — to make sure they remember he's a character. And I bless them. Not in a churchy way. In the actual way. A few sentences. A long held silence at the end. A bird in the background, because I recorded it outside.

I needed the bookend at the end as much as the one at the beginning. Because by the time you've walked through twelve tracks of someone's slow-motion year, you need someone to come back into the room and remind you that this is a story and you are not alone and the rest of life is still happening. The benediction does that.

Every Elias Reign album has one

If you've listened to my earlier records, you know I always end with a spoken meditation. The Prodigal Road closed with "Dusty Highway Benediction." Stand in the Fire closed with "Outro." Heaven Touches Earth closed with the long Gloria.

The closing meditation is part of my voice. STAY just makes it explicit by also opening with one.

What I want listeners to walk away with

I don't need listeners to come away from STAY thinking I had a faith crisis. I didn't. I had a Tuesday. I had a Sunday morning. I had a friend who said something true. I gathered the pieces a lot of us walk through and gave them to a character named Wes, and I let him walk through them in order so other people could see the shape.

What I want listeners to walk away with is permission. Permission to have a Tuesday. Permission to have a 3 AM. Permission to be in their own quiet year without it meaning everything has fallen apart. Permission to stay close to the small things until the big things find them again.

The bookends are how I make sure the album earns that permission instead of stealing it.

A word to the listener who needs this

If you're reading this and you've been Wes for longer than a Tuesday — if you've been him for a season, for a year, for longer — I want you to know: this album was made with you in mind. The bookends aren't there to keep you out. They're there to make sure you know you're being seen.

Press play. Listen front to back. Let the first track tell you it's a story. Let the last track tell you you're not alone.

And then, when the bird stops singing at the end of the benediction, sit in the silence for a minute. The small things are still there. They've been waiting.

STAY is out now on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube. Fourteen tracks. Two of them are me. Twelve of them are Wes. All of them are for you.