Recently I was asked for an artist bio explaining where I came from musically/artistically and when/ how I started writing songs. I wrote up a long bio this morning and I figured I might as well share it here on my blog here as well! It basically outlines my path in music up through the release of The Queen of Time.
I grew up in and around Northeast Ohio, and I’ve lived in Wooster for most of my life. I’m a painter at heart, and I studied Studio Art in college at Miami University, but I've been making and writing music daily since I was about 15 or 16. I’ve always loved art, science, and music, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to continue to explore and develop my passions throughout my life. A lot of my studio art is about creating and inspiring experiences for/ with a viewer, but my music tends to be where I express, discover, and interrogate my own feelings on a more personal level. Writing music, for me, is a process of refining the raw substance of a specific, weird, lumpy feeling into something tangible and coherent that helps me process whatever I’m going through.
The first band I really fell in love with at a young age was The Beatles. I listened to that red “Number One Hits” cd dozens of times, and my parents were always hugely supportive of my interests, too. When I was 7 or 8, there was a waiter named David at a restaurant my dad and I went to, and we chatted about the Beatles sometimes. Occasionally he would burn copies of some of his rare/uncommon Beatles outtakes/extras CD for me, which, in hindsight, was a very cool thing for him to do.
And when I got a little older I got the Beatles 2009 Remaster box set, and listened to it so much I could probably still recite a good chunk of their discography from memory. As I got older I was introduced to The Shins and MIA from my friend’s sister who *blasted* it on the way to school every morning, and I started to listen to more indie rock and alternative bands.
Through family friends, I got to hang out with a fantastic drummer. He was a bit older than me, and I really looked up to him. When band classes started in elementary school, naturally I chose percussion. I stayed with it all the way through high school and into the beginning of college. I was never a particularly great drummer, but through playing bells and xylophone I discovered I had a pretty good ear for pitch. Most of the other percussionists had no interest in playing mallet parts, so I started naturally gravitating towards those instruments, where I knew I could be the best at something.
In high school I did a lot of theater and competed in Speech and Debate. Through that, I met a friend named Shelby Denton who went to Stow. She is also an incredibly talented musician and songwriter, and I got to see her play at a talent show. Her performance there inspired me like crazy- It made it clear that songwriting wasn’t some impossible ineffable thing- but it’s something that *people do.* I’d always been creative and artistically inclined, and this moment was a wake up call for me; music was something *I* could *make!*
Soon after that, I started teaching myself guitar and trying to write songs. I challenged myself to find time to play/try to write every day… and I’ve managed to keep that up for almost 10 years.
My interest in composition and theory grew from there, and I started to teach myself piano around the same time. By junior and senior year, I remember taking my lunchbox to the practice rooms to play piano and work on songs instead of eating in the cafeteria almost everyday, and I was constantly finding time to sneak into the percussion closet to mess around with the marimba and vibraphone after school.
Through jazz band auditions I met a friend named Jacob Norris who was a *much* more experienced guitarist than me. We started hanging out and making music together for a few years. We would jam with him on guitar and me on drums, and record it into Garage Band on my iPhone, and then I would mess around with editing and tweaking them later, often on the bus to cross country meets. This was my first experience with a DAW of any kind.
Music was becoming more and more of a factor in my life, and when I started looking at colleges I seriously considered majoring in music composition… but I didn’t really have the background necessary to get into a conservatory, so I opted to stick with painting and focus on art and science.
I kept up a daily habit of playing, practicing, and writing my own music throughout college. Right next door to the art building was a music building with 24 hour access to the basement practice rooms. Often I would stop there for 20 minutes or so on my way home from painting late at night. During this chapter, I was (for the first time) totally outside of a band or musical organization of any kind, and I really started to develop and grow as a songwriter- making more practical decisions and discovering new ways to think about songs and sounds.
Junior year of college I got my first synthesizer, the Moog Grandmother, and this opened up a vast world of sound and mixing options for me. The fact that the keyboard was monophonic inspired a totally new way to think about writing and composition. I took an intro to electronic music class as an elective. My professor assigned weekly listening for us, and that’s where I was first introduced to Kraftwork, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, Major Lazer, Bon Iver and so many more incredible, foundational electronic music artists.
After college I took a gap year and ended up making a lot more music. I recorded and mixed many songs I had been written in college, and I wrote a lot of new songs, too, but I was still pretty inexperienced as a producer, and I realized I had a lot to learn if I wanted to make anything that might be worth listening to.
Then, in 2020, I was still writing lots of music and working on learning more about production when the pandemic came and delayed my plans for Graduate School a bit longer. My gap year quickly grew into two… then three… and on. During that time, I decided to buckle down and focus on learning everything I could about mixing and production. I already had a basic understanding of the tools, so a few YouTube videos and tips from some actual, professional mix engineers went a long way. During lockdown I was able to produce my first set of decent mixes, and really started understanding my process and discovering my sound.
I think my electronica pallet stems from a “modern folk” instinct. Folk music, at its core, is about making the song work with whatever tools you have. Traditionally, circumstances favored an acoustic guitar and/or some improvised percussion and whatever else people could easily make or buy. But the music making tool everyone owns by default in the 2020’s is a computer and/or whatever other instruments you played in elementary school.
I think my sound/ musical style is naturally eclectic and reflects a wide range of influences. I’m one of the first generations to grow up saturated in a completely whim-driven instant-access-music landscape. In 30 seconds I could be listening to any song by James Brown, Nirvanna, or Motzart with almost equal effort. It’s been like that for almost as long as I can remember. The barriers between genera and access to different types of sound are quickly dissolving.
I write songs primarily on live instruments, then I rework re-interpret them several times in different digital formats till I develop a better understanding of where/ how the energy should flow and drive the song. Ultimately the final product is a mix that intends to capture the energy of something organic and alive, while featuring interesting electronic characters and samples. I think of the recorded mix as just one continuing iteration of a song; one that utilizes the tools and capabilities of a DAW and gets to be playful and expressive in a language that works uniquely well in that format. I spend a lot of time re organizing and revising parts well after the initial recording. I think of the final mix as something I get to discover and explore while I’m making it, rather than just a captured execution of an existing song.
I feel propelled to make creative work when there’s a feeling that I need to get out of my head. This project really started as a place to process my feelings around the end of a relationship that happened as my partner and were moving in different directions at the end of pandemic lockdown. It felt like the sun was rising all over the world, but I knew this massive morning/sun would bring a difficult change, and mean an end to the comfortable life I had found in the darkness/moon. Dealing with that feeling was what prompted me to start writing some of the early songs. As a human, I’m always looking for ways to process my feelings constructively and make something meaningful out of my lived experiences. I feel like the project outgrew the typical ‘heartbreak album’ fairly early on. Somewhere along the way, I realized there was a reason all of these specific metaphors were resonating with me; most of them actually had little to do with my partner/relationship, and a lot more to do with me, and my relationship with myself, my ambition, and my frustration with the overall situation of my life at that moment.
It’s weird to be in your mid 20’s and suddenly realize you have all this *time* you’ve never had before, and all this pressure to do something important with it! The Queen of Time is an album about the way I envision myself, my future, and my relationship with artistic ambition. Its a reminder to myself that life is long, and a promise that I am (and will be) in control of it.
The decision to commit to this project came sometime in 2021 when I realized I had enough material to make a cohesive album. At first I wanted to try to produce the tracks myself, but I decided that the project would be better served if I got help/advice from a professional mix engineer. So I started reaching out to producers online and interviewing/ doing sample mixes with a few of them. I eventually settled on working remotely with John Caviness out of Denver. Over the next year we messaged back and forth and I sent stems/ notes for him to work with. He made some important balancing and mix adjustments that really helped the songs fell more polished and professional. The process of working with him also introduced deadlines and a certain amount of pressure for me to actually finish the last remaining details that needed to come together to make the album into something I could be confident in.
Working with John, I was so glad to have those years of experience mixing on my own music, because it allowed us to have much more productive and direct conversations as we tweaked things.
I had a call with my production partner John last week, and we talked about what I wanted to work on next. I had sent him a few demos for singles, but as we talked, I started to realize I should maybe try to focus on the next album while I still have time and resources to do so, here in Ohio.
He was surprised to hear I had so many song! I guess I didn't realize that wasn't the norm? I write new stuff all time and I assumed that was the way most recording artists operate. He went on to tell me how many of clients from LA approach him to record and produce one very expensive single and then disappear off the face of the earth, lol. I knew my choice to pursue an album first was not conventional, but I didn't know just how uncommon it was to have so many songs in my backlog.
Making albums just makes the most sense to me. When I write songs, I typically write them in groups about a particular topic/feeling/set of experiences. I'm not really thinking about anything other than the usefulness of the song *to me* for expressing or moving through a particular emotion.
Because I write songs that look inward and try to satisfy *me* before anything else, I think of songwriting as a continuing journey and a tool for my mental health. To this end, I simply never stop working on new songs. I work on a song every day- whether that means writing something new, tweaking something old, or editing/ recording a mix.
Sometimes I worry that I write too much. Last night I realized I might have enough material for a 4th(?) album already... Honestly this concerns me. Being responsible for the upkeep and stewardship of another dozen connected songs is really not what I need on my plate right now... but I also know these periods of inspiration won't last forever, and it's important to give a new idea time and space to grow and develop when the feeling is fresh.
I feel like my music is starting to cheat on itself... like the constant development of new music might detrimental to the demos and songs that haven't reached their full potential yet... I recognize that it's important to give new songs attention, because the period of inspiration will not last forever. But honestly, if I never had a new idea for song for the rest of my life, I'd already have enough material to make and release music for many, many years... I have probably forgotten more songs than most people have ever written. (That not to say I don't take good notes about the songs I write, because I do recognize how important that is. I have literally thousands of voice memos and drafts (of admittedly varying quality) in my notepad...)
I guess I'm just reckoning with the reality that, for me, songwriting is not pursuant of an extrinsic end... but if I want to release more stuff, I can't let the constant pursuit of new stuff keep distracting me from the hard work of developing and refining existing material... And I *do* want to release more stuff. (because, as I've said before, I believe it is the obligation of a person who calls themselves an artist to actually contribute something back to the world they exist in.) I'm not quite sure what to do about this yet. I guess this is a good problem to have? But it's still a bit of a problem... different goals butting up against each other... I guess writing something new usually wins- because that's the thing that actually matters to me in the moment, and I keep telling myself that someday (years from now) this period of being able to dig deep and write songs that satisfy a real emotion will end, and I'll be glad I spent all this time generating the seeds while I was still able to do so. It's also probably true that the more I write new, the *better* I get at songwriting... If I had spent years refining and remixing the first songs I ever wrote when I was a teenager, I would probably be a lot less flexible and experienced as a songwriter today...
So, I guess, even though it's frustrating to admit that my goals are at odds- I need to make time for *both* developing the songs I have for release, *and* continuing to follow my ear and make new songs as they come to me... Which is a lot easier said than done 😅
This week I've spent some time looking at all my current ongoing projects and setting some goals and priorities for the next year. I feel like there's just SO MUCH to do- and I need to be more intentional about where I'm spending my time if I actually want to see these things happen!
I'm at a point in my life where I actually have tangible goals, and achieving them means understanding that some of my other projects need to take a backseat. I made a list of everything I want to work on and then ordered/ re-ordered it until it made some sense. next to each thing, I justified why each project should/should not be a focus for me in the coming year.
Seeing everything written out like that makes me really excited about all the cool stuff I want to make going forward! It feels really nice to have a roadmap, and set clear guidlines for myself about what is/is not supposed to be a priority right now.
Not that I expect it to mean much to anyone, but after my list felt about right, I made more fun looking version by collaging together some art from recent tarot cards, and turned that into my new desktop wallpaper (which I attached to this post) It's more for me than anything else, but I want to share it because the process really helped me clarify my intentions, and maybe someone will feel inspired to make their own. I turned it into a wallpaper because I want to be able to see this list regularly, and remember where I ranked things, so when I'm at a loss for what to work on next, I have some guidance.
