Mystique

I’ve been told many times that i come off mysterious. I think I’ve gotten better at shaking that vibe, but I do understand why that might be. When I was younger it was because I was legitimately a mystery at all times even to myself. I had an insane life and was basically off the grid and involved in drugs/crime and just general passed out and came to in many different places. I tell my stories to people now and they look at me in disbelief which is really nice because that obviously means I’ve grown enough to where people that didn’t know me then can’t even picture me like that.

Somehow the mysterious thing has lasted long into me being clean with the exception of very recently I really haven’t heard it much, but I’d like to debunk whatever amount of mystery that still persists. I don’t live a secret life or anything, but i do lead a double or even triple life and two parts of that are things that I’m not too publically loud about. On one hand yeah I’m very loud and transparent about the fact that I’m a recovering drug addict. I love making my posts about having seven years clean and all that and sharing some Hope here and there and blogging about the growth stuff of what it was and what it is now, but on the other hand i preserve the anonymity of the place where I recover and most of my activity with it, which happens to be the things that I spend most of my time doing. Im part of a program and I maintain that program in my life and have a lot of involvement with that program. I work with three homies from that program and we go to meetings after work a lot and try our best to help ourselves get better and help the next person trying to get clean to be able to stay long enough to get it. So that’s one panel or maybe two if you count work. Then another one is some service stuff I do outside of that program that’s just for me to feel like I participate in my community. It’s for me so I don’t talk about it much and it’s just a quiet thing. I go back and forth in my mind over whether it’s better to silently serve and try to be humble about it or if those things should be shared so that people have examples of things to do to feel better about their lives. One could argue either way but for now it’s just one of my things. The other thing is hanging with musicians. A lot of that stuff I don’t talk about much because I feel like it takes away from certain experiences. Like I watch musicians treat every single cool thing we do like an opportunity to promote ourselves and I know I’ve been getting a better attitude about the fact that looking cool is important and shit but just simply hangin and not having the goddamn phones out constantly is just important and I know that my closest friends and I share that value and I appreciate them for it too. 

So the mystery is gone. I’m living the dream, you’re probably living the dream. Goodnight

Delicate Lines

A huge underlying concept that we’re constantly mindful of when writing our new album is trusting the listener to understand and comprehend things without a bunch of explanation. If we want to “trim the fat” with the music and especially the lyrics then there needs to be some trust in the listener to be able to fill in the space between the lines. I typically start out writing a part and have about two paragraphs worth of ideas to cram into two to four lines with 8-16 syllables per line. Less words hit harder and i just have to trust you to fill in the details for yourself.


Aside from the trust thing there’s also the delicate balance between artsy and bold with the overall picture we’re creating. Most artists like ourselves who have a diverse catalog of influences want to bring in a little bit of everything and just make one huge pile of everything we love about music. The problem with that is that it can be become too “artsy” or cumbersome and can actually work against the articulation of an idea. The process of layering up then trimming fat is tedious and sucks the life out of me a lot. It’s much like the lyrics where I want to say eighty thousand things but I only have a few short lines to say it in. So we shave off a layer here and shave some notes out of a guitar part there. Then we make the rhythm guitar less choppy and push it down in the mix to make it more subtle and bring a string/synth/pad more to the front to smooth out that middle section, and the bass tone is perfected to be the massive slab of body that holds it all up. More important than anything the drums. Less is always more with all of these layers, but especially the drums. Percussion is the most important part of any music and is the one thing that can make or break the BEST musical arrangements on earth. Not only does a drummer have to be the overall balanced and strong and subtle and dynamic and particular, but a lot of the “trimming the fat” stuff in this area makes the biggest differences on the overall sound. Simply put, less hits equals bigger sound. More hits equals more articulate but less size typically, though there are exceptions sometimes.


So it all just comes down to balancing boldness and articulation for us, and on this new album we’ve been working overtime to make sure we can create the picture we’ve always known we were capable of creating. This LP will be what we consider to be our first and is the recognition of our full potential. We’re excited about this and hope you are too.