The Modified Wheel: Torn, Falls and Thunder

Singer-songwriter Sean Michael Sullivan pours his heart out achieving new heights as part of his personal mental wellness journey

The grand finale of this season’s Live from the Gilded Palace was extra special on Thursday, April 10th, 2025. Not only was the roots music resonating with delight on this gorgeous spring night in Southeast Dallas County, but it featured singer-songwriter Sean Michael Sullivan’s original music with his dad, Sean T. Sullivan, on mandolin and mandola right beside him picking away and harmonizing.

I’ve come to know both Seans in the last year through the music. A passion we all share in life. Immediately after the show, I told Sean Michael I’d like to feature his story and songs for my next column as part of the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative. He kindly and astutely asked if I’d wait to publish until May so that it could coincide with Mental Health Awareness Month because his personal journey to mental wellness is at the absolute core of his songs and story.

To best understand Sean’s music and story, I recommend first listening to his podcast, The Modified Wheel, that chronicles his bipolar diagnosis and the creative process of his latest album, Torn, Falls and Thunder, as the proper order of operations. It’s a little over 22 minutes long but previews the songs on his album and is an insightful and well-produced companion to exploring and connecting with his art.

Sean released The Modified Wheel podcast on November 1, 2024. It succinctly tells the backstory of the nadir in his life from substance abuse and mental breakdowns with Sean Michael serving as the narrator. It’s moving, honest and clearly created with the altruistic intent to heal. The album and the podcast are available on Spotify and Apple Music.

As a singer-songwriter, I enjoy learning more about the creative process of others and other insights into their work, so I asked Sean Michael some questions about his recent work.

How has songwriting helped you as a person?

“Songwriting has always been a source of comfort, joy and wonder for me. It’s a magical thing writing a song. It has always been there as a steady force guiding me through emotional highs and lows, struggles with alcohol and mental health, relationships; a friend you know you can count on and one that provides you with immediate feedback.”

Where do you think songs come from?

“I think a lot of my music prior to getting sober in 2020 was very abstract. More melody driven – without much focus on the lyrics and overall meaning. Song lyrics would derive from whatever noises my voice was making at the time of the song’s inception. Over the last four years or so my songs have been much more autobiographical with deeper meaning. It usually starts with a fleeting thought or melody that gets captured on my phone’s notepad or voice memos. That is the most critical thing for me – is documenting the idea immediately. I am continually amazed every time I listen back to a final mix and hear the evolution from idea to song.”

What is some particular lyrical content you can curate for us?

“I wrote the song Night Medication in the fall of 2022. This was right around the time I started taking medication for my then-recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder. It was the first song I wrote on my new medication, and the lyrics do a really good job of documenting how I was feeling at the time.

No, you won’t regret it, but you won’t feel nothing at all.

This line is in response to the benefits and the drawbacks to taking medication. I can’t thank my psychiatrist enough for diagnosing me properly and providing me with the correct medication – however, it did change me. I am a much, much more subdued and ‘low-key’ individual after being on this medication for years now. And while I do not regret taking the medication – you lose specific senses/feelings that you had before.

Night medication, count your blessings as you sleep. In the morning there’s a stranger, there to take what’s left of me.

I take my medication at night. It does its thing while I sleep – and especially early on in the process of adjusting to the medication, it would feel as if each morning someone had taken a piece of me. I wrote the lyrics ‘count your blessings as you sleep’ as a way to remind myself that while the mornings may be difficult at times, while I sleep – I need to be grateful of the fact that I was diagnosed properly after years and years of struggle.

In the evening, I conceal it, hide away in my bedroom.

The more I got accustomed to the medication the more comfortable I felt. Mornings got easier. However, there were days where it felt like the momentum/excitement for the new meds was overwhelmed by the fear that it would stop working and somehow, I would revert back.”

Please tell us more about your personal mental wellness journey that might enlighten and inspire others on similar paths.

“Through my podcast, for the first time I really analyzed the year of 2021, the year I ‘crashed’. The year I was in bed for an entire month during the summer. I had been sober since June of 2020 and was riding what’s known as a ‘pink cloud.’ Long story short, while my body was adjusting to being sober, riding the high of the pink cloud – I was also experiencing a manic-episode. This confluence of feelings, as you can imagine, made me feel invincible. However, as the ‘pink cloud’ faded and the manic episode turned to a depressive state, things got dark quick, and I stayed in bed for an entire month. The song ‘A Modified Wheel’ documents this pretty well:

31 days spent chained to a bed, who do you call when you’re left for dead? Mama picked up at 3 a.m. and brought me back home on time.

Thank goodness for family, parents – mom and dad. During that month I would reach out to my mom every morning at 3 a.m. and just cry. It was brutal. I don’t wish that feeling on anyone. I didn’t have the energy to do anything. My brain wasn’t functioning. I came home to Iowa and got the help I needed.”

Here is the song, The Rodeo, recorded Live from the Gilded Palace where Sean Micheal Sullivan was joined with fellow musicians, Sean T. Sullivan (mandolin/mandola/vocals), Joe Muller (bass/vocals) and Paul Perkins (banjo/vocals).

Sean’s songs are powerful and melodically built on a firm foundation from his Americana roots music upbringing in Cumming, Iowa. He grew up surrounded by the sounds of bluegrass and folk music literally since the day he was born that no doubt continues to course through his veins. His vocals soulful, the melodies hooky, and the lyrical content important. And to complete the gravelly dust of the Americana patina, he anchors this sound and feel with his trusty 1965 Gibson 3/4 acoustic guitar. It is meaningful art created independently and right in our Midwestern background. I do hope you give Torn, Falls, and Thunder some spins and shares.

I recently watched a documentary on the iconic and rightfully celebrated American hero, Abraham Lincoln. His childhood was full of tragedy, and it was well-known among many in his inner circles that he often suffered from depression and mental anguish. Historians were documenting numerous incidents and tragic events that should have been enough to topple the Prairie Lawyer over well before his political greatness. However, they surmised that it was his innate and unignorable human ambition to leave a lasting and meaningful legacy in this world that always kept him moving forward even in the direst of situations. He always believed in his role of making the world a better place.

It’s an innate power we all possess as humans. It’s just sometimes nearly impossible to see and feel with all the other worldly distractions but it’s always right inside our core waiting to be mined. The power to help, to heal and to achieve.

If you struggle, please learn from Sean Michael’s story and that of Abraham Lincoln. You have the power to overcome, to achieve new heights and tap into personal happiness no matter what your situation might be in the moment. We are all living chemistry experiments. Be kind to yourself. Be open to help. Believe in yourself. We are all full of beauty that has the ability to make the world a better place.

To find more stories and insights across the state of Iowa, please consider following and supporting the many talented journalists and storytellers of the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative.

You can stream my original music on all platforms and at www.chipalbrightmusic.com. My next show is at the groovy HiFi Brew Lounge in West Des Moines on Thursday, May 8 at 8pm. Hope to see you there!

Also, here is the Zoom link for this month’s Office Lounge for paid subscribers to the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. It’s a lively conversation always held on the last Friday of the month at noon, except for November and December, and hosted by Robert Leonard.