On Making Music Again
How I found my way back to new songs after years of excuses
The summer after I graduated from college, I poured myself into making an album called Places, learning to record and produce my own music much in the same way a pilot would learn to fly a plane while it’s already in the air. Every morning, I’d covertly slide into an empty classroom in the campus’ brand new art building and hack away with a USB microphone until it got dark, then I’d walk home in a daze. Clumsily, six songs came together: rough and rudimentary but full of feeling. The work of a young man trying to digest the end of one phase of his life, attempting to prepare for the next.
After the relative success of my first entry into the music world and fed by a naïve ambition, I announced (via Instagram) a new album, Creek Songs, which would supposedly come out in the Spring of 2018. I even went so far as to speculate that the project would be “eight or nine songs” in length. At the time of this fateful post, I had maybe one or two of these songs written. The album never came out. I wanted my follow-up to sound bigger, warmer, and more professional than the last. I feared jumping the gun and coming off as an amateur. Looking back, I think I just wanted to announce something more than I wanted to make it.
In May 2019, a few months before I would pack up and move to New York, I released a song called “San Tomas,” my first new release in over a year at that point. I was starting to feel myself falter creatively and desperate to prove that I still had it The song felt like a flop. It didn’t sound right: too muddy and not loud enough. I failed to get the song distributed on streaming services, due to trusting a shady online “PR agency” which seemed to no longer exist when I emailed them my .wav file.
I hoped that New York would be the page-turn that I desperately wanted, and in so many ways it was. In those first few months, I did find myself thinking up and sketching some melodies. In my first visit to my parents’ house after the move, I began recording what felt like a new type of song. Short, punchy, more rhythmic. It started with a repeated line, “oblong indie rock superstar,” a bit of snark to build around. It didn’t feel forced, the song seemed to spring up and fit together naturally. This was due in large part to the workspace: when I was a kid, my dad set about building out a “music room” in our guest house. It’s a calm and open space with foam pads fitted to the walls that dampen the echo. Along with a drum kit, several guitars, and a bass, the room houses my dad’s CD collection. The soundproofing allows you to listen to Bruce Springsteen or The Kinks at a truly worrisome volume without disturbing the neighbors. It’s a room that always unlocks something for me, where I’m safe enough to play the drums badly, to sing loudly, to try things that might not work.
The pandemic all but killed my drive to make music. I don’t thrive in isolation, and my writing process has always been informed by experiences out in the world with other people. There’s also an aspect to making music that is inescapably practical: you need space, gear, and the time to learn how to use it. As of March 2020 I did not have much of the first two, and despite the ample time on my hands, the claustrophobia of that time did not inspire me to make songs. The priorities of the world seemed out of whack, and it was hard to pin down where my own were.
In more recent years, I have kept up the habit of making excuses when it comes to writing and recording music. I don’t have the space, the gear, the time, the inspiration, etc. I’m lucky enough to have people in my life who ask after it. People who remember my music and have said that they miss it. When asked directly about whether I was working on anything new, I’d often skirt around the question: dubiously claiming to be busy while working from home. In my lower moments, I would sometimes just reply with a resigned “no” and a quiet panic inside, wondering if I’d ever be able to answer differently.
I found a small sliver of hope in writing this newsletter. A window to climb back in toward creativity. Writing songs had been a way for me to explore my ideas and opinions, to find some sort of artistic honesty. Mushmouth offered a similar outlet with a smaller footprint, and receiving thoughtful engagement and criticism from people who read it has been deeply gratifying in the same way an emotional response to my music is. For this reason, I owe it to my many supporters to explain where I’ve been the past few months.
In December of 2023, I returned to the music room. This time, I’d lit a small but intentional fire under my own ass: to work with the same freedom I’ve always enjoyed in that room, and then figure out how I could achieve the same back home in Brooklyn. This meant getting over my frustration with things not “sounding right” immediately. It meant actually learning how to use a Scarlett 2i2 audio interface (a box that converts electricity from instruments and microphones into legible data for your computer to read.) It meant accepting the most simple and helpful suggestion I’ve gotten in years - my girlfriend Becca proposing I devote one day a week entirely to music and nothing else.
This is how I found my way back to making music. Each Sunday since January I’ve sat at my dining table, without any particular goal or expectation other than to see what I can come up with. After a few weeks of this, feeling more hopeful about my music than I have in a long time, I began revisiting some old songs. Even when I had a hard time sustaining a work ethic in making new music, I have always been good about recording little moments of inspiration. Between my computer, the voice memos on my phone, and a Tascam audio recorder I probably have over a hundred snippets that I thought might turn into something, someday. I was mulling over the GarageBand file of “Oblong Indie Rock Superstar” on a dreary Sunday in February when an idea started to take shape. Maybe these songs didn’t resonate with the kind of music I want to make now, but that doesn’t mean I have to keep them hidden away forever.
These songs are flawed. They were recorded by a guy who didn’t really know what he was doing. I took the opportunity to have a conversation with my past self: to use these raw files as a way to learn how to mix and master audio, to make them sound better and louder and warmer. It was like opening an old diary - some things feel truer than ever, others leave me wondering what the hell I was on about. But I’m embracing it all despite the roughness around the edges, the clumsiness of the execution. To avoid making music is to deny myself the joy of something clicking into place and just sounding right.
On Friday, March 15th, I released “Oblong Indie Rock Superstar.” My first “new” song in almost five years. It feels so good to be doing this again, especially knowing that people have been waiting patiently and not giving up on me.
I’m excited to announce, here on Mushmouth, that I’ll be releasing a collection of songs originally recorded between 2018 and 2020 that have been remixed, tinkered with, and Frankenstein-ed back to life.
The album is called Songs From The Creek
It’ll be out on April 12th, 2024
For real this time.
we are so back