Clayton Scott is me.

My name is Justin Franks. I grew up in Fort Collins and spent nearly two decades writing and producing records for other people. That work carried somebody else's name on the front, which is the job, and I was glad to do it.

Clayton Scott is the one I kept for myself. Even the name is family. Clayton is my brother's middle name, Scott is mine.

Then I stopped making music for five years.

I lost my best friend. I lost my mom. And I made a long run of bad decisions, some of them bad enough that I should not have made it home. I went looking for something that would fill the hole and nothing did. God was waiting at the bottom, which is not where I expected to find Him.

I am not a preacher. I am a guy who came back with something to say, and who finally started saying it in his own name.

I did not start this to sell shirts. The hoodie that says FEAR NO EVIL says it because that is Psalm 23, and some mornings I need those words where I will see them before I see my phone.

That is the whole idea. The words come first, and they are aimed at the person wearing them before they are aimed at anybody else. Washed and frayed, made to be worn until it looks like yours.

If you need the reminder too, it will do the same job for you that it does for me.

I write every lyric and every melody myself, the same way I always have. New AI tools give that voice a body. I credited that the moment the platforms gave me a place to put it, and I am adding it to the older songs now.

The voice gets help from new tools. The life behind it does not.