Songfacts®:

• Shawn Brown, an Oregon-based singer-songwriter who has a following in the Pacific Northwest, told Songfacts the story behind his song "Hold Fast":
  
  "I started thinking a lot about the redemptive quality of taking big challenges head on, no swerving or avoiding, just moving straight into them - purposely sailing INTO the storm. For me, the intention to be bold is what the song really ended up being about. Ironically, the sound of the song itself is also a real departure for me too. There's a real urgency to it - especially in the repeating outro coda. I really wanted that part to feel ambivalent. There's almost a pleading in the emotion of it. It's not obviously positive or negative in tone, it's far more aimed at the fear associated with the sheer unknown and holding on no matter what.
  
  I'd written a few new songs that I'd taken to my band here in Portland to see if any could be worked up for shows. 'Hold Fast' was an obvious fit for the band, so much so that it occurred to me that we should actually make the record here in town and use the band on that song specifically. Now that may sound like the most obvious idea of all time, but it wasn't. This is the first song I've actually recorded here in town and not in LA. Thankfully Grecco Buratto agreed to fly to Portland to produce the sessions and we went from there. All the previous work that he and I have done together was recorded in Los Angeles, with me hopping on a plane to work down there.
  
  It was a thrill to introduce the guys in the band to Grecco and vice versa, it was a real clashing of separate worlds for me, that's for sure. Cutting the basic tracks for 'Hold Fast' was far and away some of the most fun I've ever had in the studio making records. There was a real open, free flowing vibe to that session. Ideas were hatched, parts were shifted and written on the spot, it was an absolute f-in blast. I think you can hear it in the track."
• "Hold Fast" is part of Brown's EP Into The Furious Light. The cover art is a photo by the San Francisco-based Joshua Sing, who shoots with real film, not digital.