He gave me a long explanation for his reasoning, but all I remember him saying was, “Covers are for cover bands. That shit is corny.” He was in a very hip hardcore band, and to his credit, they don’t really do covers in that world. But despite his advice usually being sound, I knew he was wrong about that one.

The first cover I ever heard was “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston, originally written and performed by the legendary Dolly Parton. My dad must’ve played The Bodyguard soundtrack 500 times that year, so I got very familiar with Whitney’s iconic rendition. Eventually, I heard the original version on the radio, and I had a visceral reaction. My six-year-old ears had yet to develop a taste for country music, and I couldn’t sink my teeth into Dolly’s more subdued delivery after growing accustomed to Whitney’s powerhouse of a voice.

Then there was Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower,” which I loved, as my first guitar was a white Stratocaster because of Jimi. I read somewhere that he was obsessed with Bob Dylan and carried around a book of his lyrics, and I eventually stumbled upon Dylan’s original rendition of the song, but had a similar experience to the Whitney and Dolly dilemma. Dylan’s voice would grow to become one of my favorites of all time, but in my teenage years, it sounded absolutely ridiculous.

In time, my tastes matured, and I began to appreciate both the cover and the original. I cried watching the music video for Johnny Cash’s rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt.” I’d go back to back, cueing up Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” right after hearing the Fugees version. I found Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards’ cover of “To Have and To Have Not” and subsequently became a Billy Bragg fan.

As far as covering songs myself, it’s a beautiful meditation. It’s like taking something apart and then putting it back together, except you’ve lost half the parts, and now you have to rebuild it with whatever’s lying around your house. You’ll never replicate it, but that’s the point. That’s the fun.

I used to cover songs on tour all the time, often choosing them based on things I wanted to say but hadn’t found the words for. Someone else had said it already, and it was cathartic to borrow their words each night. I launched into an impromptu version of Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” at my old band’s farewell show at Irving Plaza. We were a mess—barely talking to each other—and I was filled with anger and bitterness. I didn’t have the words, so I borrowed them.

Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
How does it feel to be on your own?
To be without a home?
Like a complete unknown?

Covering songs forces me out of my own melodic inclinations and vocabulary. It rewires my brain and takes me down new roads. And more often than not, covers remind me that the most beautiful songs are simple, but brilliant. The easiest stuff is the hardest to make.

I did a few shows with a band called Eisley many years ago. They were oddballs within our music scene, just like my band. I kept up with them, and one day stumbled upon Stacy Dupree covering Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs,” with some help from her husband, Darren King from the band Mutemath. I became obsessed with their rendition and love it just as much as the original.

I think my cover borrows from both Stacy’s version and the original, as I’ve been playing this song for so many years to an audience of my dogs on the couch that I’ve lost sight of which parts I took from each.

You can listen below. I hope you enjoy.

Silver Springs (Fleetwood Mac cover)

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I appreciate the extra light in the evenings. I had one brief chapter as a teenager when I was a night owl, but outside of that period, I’ve always preferred the day to the night. The problem with daylight saving time is that you don’t really gain anything. It’s just borrowing light from the other side of the day, which is unf…

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Last weekend, I happened to stumble upon an old Google Drive folder that contained all the best-laid plans for the project.

In that folder, I found iPhone screens…

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There are songs that arrive in fifteen minutes and songs that take five years. There are songs that feel as though they were written by some other presence that infiltrated your room, and others you have to wrestle into submission before they escape through the crack in the window. Some songs feel like paintings—layer upon layer of color and texture—and others feel like sculptures, asking you to chip away until they reveal themselves.

Equally varied is the emotional connection you have to them. Some songs have an agenda, something to prove or say; others are more like collages of feeling rather than a single thesis. Some are deeply personal. Others just feel like an assembly of words that happened to feel right in the moment.

The most frustrating part is that none of this—the process, the connection, the intent—has much to do with whether a song is good or bad, or whether people love it or don’t. Sometimes the spark in your gut is right; other times it’s just your own attachment muddying up your objectivity.

“Counting Blessings” is a rare one for me. It feels like it happened in fifteen minutes, though I can’t recall exactly, because it didn’t feel like I wrote it at all. It wasn’t that some apparition took over, but rather that whatever that ghost was, it reached deep into my guts and pulled out everything I’d been trying to play and say for a whole year. When it was finished, I struggled not to weigh the rest of my catalog against it—it managed to do everything I’d been attempting, but with far less effort and excess.

The song was written in the first week of September 2018, and there was a loose release plan slated for May of 2020. The subject matter wasn’t about anything that happened that year, obviously, but its themes felt a little too on-the-nose for the moment. And there was also a sensitivity around white guys making themselves the center of the story in 2020… so we shelved it.

Since then, it’s just sat. I’ve played it for friends, but honestly, their reactions never seemed to match my own connection to it. There are songs that mean far less to me that have traveled much further and resonated more deeply—but that’s how it goes.

That’s what’s fun about writing here: I can say that. If this were part of a marketing plan for a new single, there’d be nothing dumber than saying, “Hey, this is one of my favorite things I’ve ever made, but my friends didn’t seem to give a shit.”

So now it’s yours to judge. You can be honest with yourself. This one will stay special to me, just as it has for the last six years.

Counting Blessings

Pieces of a woman
left right on the concrete
pieces of a woman
left, right on the concrete
oak tag, magic marker
yelling "f*** the police"

pieces of a woman
left, right on the concrete
pieces of a woman
line of chalk at your feet
oak tag, magic marker
yelling “f*** the police”

he's still yelling louder
he’s still yelling louder
he’s still yelling louder
holding on to his receipt
he’s still yelling louder

he’s still yelling louder
holding on to his receipt
but you can't take it back.

is it all for show?
and should we feel better now?

pieces of a woman
left right on the concrete
remember him from high school?
does he still radiate heat?
oak tag, magic marker
yelling “f*** the police”

he’s still yelling louder
he’s still yelling louder
we're still yelling louder
he's holding on to his receipt
but we’re still yelling louder
he’s holding on to his receipt
but we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder
we’re still yelling louder

Counting Blessings (unreleased violent joy)

(Paid subscribers can listen to the song below)

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Coming back, I felt like words alone weren’t enough, so I dug into the unreleased folder to…

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But this isn’t about me. It’s about Brad.

Back then, Brad was at Defend Music, a publishing company known for repping the Daptone Records and Stones Throw catalogs, among others. He’d heard one of the noisy records I’d made and reached out about a publishing deal. Unfortunately, I’d just signed with a different company.

Despite the stars not quite aligning for us, Brad was still excited for me. When he came to New York for CMJ that fall, he suggested we meet.

We had breakfast somewhere near Webster Hall and lamented not connecting a few months earlier, when working together might’ve still been on the table. Although it might’ve been for the best, as four months later, Brad left Defend and joined another publishing company.

By then, I was neck deep in a hole I couldn’t dig out of. Writing music for people I didn’t like. Struggling to find my tribe, to fill my cup, to feel some semblance of the spark I’d since lost. I abandoned my initial plan and pivoted to focus on my own records again. “Move to LA. I’ll help you,” Brad said.

It’s kind of surreal to think about how much music I ingested immediately upon landing in LA. Back in NY, the venues were closing left and right. Here, it was the Virgil, the Bootleg, the Satellite, the Echo, the Troubadour, the rooftop at the Ace Hotel. Brad introduced me to Nate, who brought me to the Blue Whale, and that venue that wasn’t really a venue but was below that venue in North Hollywood, where the literal best musicians in the game got together every Thursday night just to play. Nothing planned or rehearsed.

Many of those shows led to a 2am meal at a diner called Fred 62, where I’d find myself surrounded by Brad’s friends. Everyone he introduced me to came with this undertone of: these are my people, and now they’re yours too.

Over the course of my tenure in this city, I’d meet transplants who critiqued the city, hurling all the usual insults. I’d rush to LA’s defense — feeling a little guilty, because secretly, I knew I had a cheat code. I never even had the opportunity to feel alone in this city. Brad never allowed for it.

Eventually, Brad left that other publishing company and helped start Nice Life Recording Company. I still remember when he asked me to “check out this artist Lizzo we might sign.” He was one of three people at that label when they discovered her.

So when Brad called again — this time to tell me he was moving on once more, starting his own thing this time — I was, of course, thrilled for him. And when he said he was going to kick that journey off by sending around a Tascam Portastudio and having artists record songs straight to tape, I was honored that he chose me to be part of it.

“On The Line” was the first thing I’d written and recorded in months. I probably would’ve gone a few more without writing anything if Brad hadn’t knocked on my door with the Tascam. But I’m glad he showed up when he did — it led to this hyper-focused reflection on the beginning of a new chapter of my life in LA.

And who better to nudge me into grabbing a snapshot of that?

Thanks, Brad.

On the Line

Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify

If you can stay awake
The certainties will bend and break
And life will finally start

The goldmine markings on your map
Will all turn out to be a trap
The prize is coming out alive

You’ll find everything will taste like honey
And it’s all about the money
But you’ll cut it down to size

And you’ll see a rest stop
And remember
Who you were and
It’ll linger
so did you put it all on the line

And you’ll see an old friend
Who remembers
Nothing cause he’s still in it
and did he put it all on the line

I tried to strike the match
But it was dampened from the crash
And I could mourn the fire

But it was good or maybe great
And that’s more than most can say
To feel it once in their lives

And I learned everything that tastes of honey
Is paid for with blood money
 it might be worth the price

My somewhat slow output is not rooted in self-importance or perfectionism. It’s not the result of me attempting to craft a masterpiece. In fact, often times I’ll steer closer to the demo the further I get down the line.

I once heard one of my favorite songwriters, Aldous Harding, describe the process in one word — balance. When the interviewer asked how she knew something was done, she lifted both hands up to mimic the image of a scale and described how every decision made was in the effort of balance, and when the scales were finally even, she knew it was done. I understood that. I don’t know if Lil Wayne is doing that, but God bless him if he is, considering he has 1,500 plus releases to his name.

It’s a delicate dance — working on music until you’re satisfied with it or sitting on it for too long. I’ve been guilty of the latter but have also seen songs blossom over the course of years, feeling as if I eventually gained the skills or clarity to crack the code on something that had been off with an arrangement or a production. I’m sitting on one now. I played it at some shows last year, and I enjoyed sharing it, but the production isn’t right. The scales are uneven.

The song I share with you today is another one from the unreleased violent joy LP, and I realized as I uploaded the audio file that I’d initially shared the demo for this song a little over a year ago. So, now you get to be the judge. You get to determine if I should’ve just pulled a Lil Wayne and called it done the first go, or if the years where it sat and mutated into something far more layered were worth it.

Ultimately, neither of these versions actually saw an official release. So, when Sean reads this, he’s going to tell me he’s right regardless. He probably is.

I’ll include both versions below for easy comparison, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Waiting On What’s In Front Of You (unreleased violent joy)

(Paid subscribers can listen below)

Written/produced by violent joy in studios in NY and CA
Mixed/mastered by Warren Trunz

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Before getting into the good stuff, I recently appeared on the Producer Points podcast, which is hosted by my friend Justin Gammella, a very talented producer/songwriter and wonderful guy.

I was honored when he asked me to be on the show and really delighted to receive so many messages saying how much folks enjoyed the conversation. So, if you want to hear us talk about my creative approach, producing music, scoring films, etc., give it a listen.

Now, for regularly scheduled programming…

A song is just a hiding place. Or it can be, at least.

It’s the top shelf of the unfinished room in the back corner of the basement. Stuffed inside a small box inside a bigger box wrapped in an old t-shirt. You can’t throw it away, but you don’t want to look at it. Don’t want to carry it.

This record was filled with those songs. Secrets I had with myself. Whenever you come out the other side, you look back on the bad times with a sense of “How did I not see that?” Or maybe “How did I survive that?” Sometimes a song exists in the purgatory in between those places — the bad place and the good place.

This song was a rotten thought. It was a worst-case scenario, flooding into my brain in a flash but refusing to leave. I remember shaking my head, physically, trying to loosen the image from my subconscious, but it stayed. So, I had no choice. Carry it or put it in a song.

I chose the latter.

Antelope

Talk to me
Let the words say what they mean
Don’t run from this
I wanna be your levee breach
Give me grace and let the blood that flows in you
Belong to me

They’ll tell you that it won’t be long
You’ll hang on through the weekend
Seethe and flow
Too late to pull the alarm
Race you to the undertow
Crush all of my soulless pride
Before you let go, let go

I wish you learned to sip before they bottled you
You showed me I could slam a door and end a scene
Give me patience let the blood that flows in you
Belong to me

I wanna see you in the light,
wide open diamond in the sun.
crush one right into the clouds
with all the weight of your love.

Antelope (unreleased violent joy)

(Paid subscribers can listen below)

Written/produced by violent joy in studios in NY and CA
Mixed/mastered by Warren Trunz

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I knew he would understand this. Carson has the duality of being able to discern what to be absolutely unapologetic and unrelenting on in life and what should never, ever be taken seriously. He navigates that line expertly. We often reserve high praise for those that approach everything with reverence and aim to reach the upper echelons of their craft. I’ve often found myself more interested in the artist who can expertly seesaw between beautiful catharsis and taking the piss out of everyone.

There’s a through line in everything Carson touches. Whether it’s the arrangement of the bridge to a song or the composition of the graphics on a t-shirt he designs. He keeps his hands in everything because I think he’s one of those people who just has to. Even if there were others around he could trust to help carry the torch.

When someone with that singular vision asks you to sing on their record within’ the first hour of meeting each other, there’s a sense of responsibility there. “Send me stuff,” is what I said, because I usually hope for a batch of ideas rather than one, in order to up the chances of me finding my way into one of the songs.

Carson sent one idea.

It was already daunting to think about how I was going to find my way back into heavy music, as it’d been a while since I’d done anything like that. Maybe he knew, as he sent me the slow jam on the record.

I tracked and sent him an idea back fairly quickly. He told me that lyrically, I was echoing back the same sentiment that permeated the record, and he loved it.

Carson and the Callous Daoboys are keeping alive many of the aspects that made me fall in love with making music. He’s obsessed with the record as an experience, in a way that’s infectious and inspiring.

I’m honored to be a part of this record, and if you like heavy music, you should carve out time to give it a listen.

Find me on track 7 - “Body Horror for Birds”

Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen/purchase on Bandcamp

No, literally. I went looking for the lyrics, and I found multiple text edit documents, but all the lines were just slightly off. Early drafts.

They read like a breadcrumb trail. In the end, I'd changed some of the lines to convey the exact opposite of their initial sentiment. Replacing “agree” with “disagree” in “we disagree on the meaning of cold blood.” Like the initial drafts were me trying to speak salvation into existence, and the final draft was the sound of me giving in and coming to terms with the truth.

The eeriest part when listening back was hearing, “If we’re not in love, it’s okay,” and having to play it back multiple times to discern if that’s what I’m actually saying. I’m still not sure. But I do know that it’s not what I had written down in the earlier draft.

The earlier draft read, “We’re not in love; we are love.” A very New Age-y sentiment. One that refuses to recognize the cracks in the foundation. Thank God I got rid of it.

The line itself is the only vocal in the song recorded differently from the rest. The majority of the song’s vocals were recorded to feel inches away. I’m right up on the microphone. I remember pushing my nose into the face of the mic, as it caused me to enunciate differently, like I could barely get the words out. And that felt right.

But that one line. For whatever reason, I recorded that line with the microphone in the bathroom and me in the other room. So you’re hearing the sound of my voice hitting the walls rather than the intimate delivery of the rest of the song.

I don’t remember having an agenda for doing it that way. I don’t recall having any particular reason for the sonic journey of the song. I just felt that’s how it should be done, and that’s how I did it.

And now I sit here, reading back on this one line where I changed it to mean the exact opposite of what I’d initially written down, realizing that the entire song is me discovering what needed to die, as it was doomed for a very long time, and I’m slowly — in a tight-lipped and cautious delivery — admitting it. But when it came time to say it, I still couldn’t do it. So, I did it from the next room over.

“5 Coyote” is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written and recorded, as it often feels like my life’s journey — and my creative journey — is to get out of my own goddamn way. It’s rare that there is such tangible evidence that I succeeded. I wish the song had seen a proper release, but I'm glad we're doing this now.

I hope you enjoy.

5 Coyote

How’d we never learn 
to take flight?
We've been practicing all of our lives.

Sit pretty we did
we had a fire
Something always seemed to smother the light.

5 coyotes in a cemetery
I make believe I don’t know what it means
maybe we’re here for the very same thing
death underneath the palm trees.

We left the one bedroom 
to get sane
the slow drip of suburban landscape.

They want a couple mil to view the lake
think of all the space we could fill with this pain.

5 coyotes in the cemetery
might be a sign, might be bad poetry
we’re all here for the very same thing
death underneath the palm trees.

She’s doesn’t like the phrase “in love”
we disagree on the meaning of cold blood
hung from the ledge and knew we’d be fine
knowing that we spent all of our lives.

That’s the courage it takes to stay here
speak it into the air to quell fear
all the details a mess to stow away
If we’re not in love, it’s okay.

5 coyotes in the cemetery
The dust settles as they’re looking at me
tear me to shreds, bring me to my knees.

5 Coyote (unreleased violent joy)

(Paid subscribers can listen below)

Written/recorded/produced at my home studio
Mixed/mastered by Warren Trunz

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My deepest apologies. I’ve been consumed by various projects and snuck in a last-minute flight to New York to visit family. My nephews have begun walking, and I didn’t want to miss that chapter.

My intention was to let everyone know I may be off the grid for a few weeks and miss a newsletter or two, but then days moved like hours, and here we are.

I want to live up to my promise of sharing songs from the unreleased violent joy LP. I say this with the least amount of melodrama, but it’s been difficult to unearth it for many reasons, the most poignant being my realization that holy shit this a very sad record.

It didn’t feel sad when I made it. The song I share today was largely recorded at home, but for the majority of the record I’d fly to New York to work on it in 2-week spurts over the course of a few years, and those little windows of hibernation in that windowless studio were the only moments of peace and respite from an otherwise tumultuous and draining chapter of life. It is strange to listen back now, because I have a lot of empathy for the distraught person who worked on those songs, but also thankful that the record exists because picturing the alternative reality of having gone through those years without an outlet to put all those feelings is nothing short of frightening.

I’m grateful I made this record and hope I never have to make another record like it again.

I’m going to do my best to honor each of these songs by providing lyrics and maybe some context for those interested. I tend to avoid doing that, but it may be helpful here. It’s a delicate tightrope. I will tread lightly…

“Hallowed Be” was written at the height of 2020. It was the culmination of chaos of many kinds. The song is about going home, something I was not able to do that year. I’d always felt the scars and skeletons underneath the surface of the place that birthed me, but that year placed a spotlight on them. The song is a kaleidoscope of long-distance phone calls, headlines, protests, and love lost.

Enjoy.

Hallowed Be

You say I have no seasons
and I lose track of days
But there’s fires in November
and it rained twice in May

Now I lose 10 or 12 years
landing at JFK.
I turn into an idea
repenting mistakes

See me to the front lines
see me lose shape
vanish into small talk
taking up space
see me to the terminal
to the runway
to the plane
see me
losing my faith.

I heard they’re marching on the parkway
both east and west bound
Could you hear them from the basement
or was the TV too loud?

When I come for Christmas
will the church bells resound?
Tell me who is it that they ring for
is it the lost or the found?

When we clear the overpass, I always take my name in vein

Hallowed Be (unreleased violent joy)

Written/Produced/Recorded at my home studio
Mixed & mastered by Warren Trunz

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As adults, I don’t believe we’re any different. I stood in line at the post office yesterday, observing the man in front of me in his gigantic sunglasses and tracksuit as he loudly grumbled into his phone in Armenian. I stared at his Balenciaga t-shirt. It had a little logo near the left breast that almost looked like a politician’s campaign logo. It looked cheap and silly to me. And because of that, I had to know what the shirt cost.

Luckily, googling “Balenciaga t-shirt” was all it took to reveal the $675 price tag on this very basic black t-shirt. The details were there too—100% cotton, made in Bangladesh. In other words, this is the adult equivalent to a stuffed animal. It has no actual value, but we give it value and price it accordingly.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this concept and how it pertains to music. You can listen to whatever you want for one monthly fee, or buy songs or albums which are all priced the same. The Stones, SZA, your neighbor’s pop punk band that just put out an EP that you have to hear about every time you run into him. They’re all priced equally. We don’t have monetary differentiation in value the way you would with designer clothes. It’s part of the artist’s job to create that value around what they do. To fuel each single release with as much perceived value as possible. To make every album a religious event.

I think about all of this because I have this album that I spent more time, sweat, and tears on than any body of work I ever have in my life. It was shelved because the project imploded, so now it lives on a hard drive. I shared a song from it last week, and I’m sharing another today. And it’s funny to think that I may be devaluing it by only sharing it here, among a small group of people, with no fanfare and no hype.

At the same time, it feels good. There are people here, aware of this record’s existence, who’ve asked for it at various times, and I appreciate that very much. The value to those people is more real than anything I could manufacture.

Throughout this year, I’m going to continue to share songs from this album until there are none left to give. “Layers of the Years” would’ve been the album opener.

enjoy.

violent joy - Layers of the Years

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But I found an escape hatch. Or rather, it found me. And thank God, because it’d been so long since I’d been saved by a record. I thought it may never happen again. I’d even resorted to trying to elevate the listening experience by romanticizing it—walking through the rain while listening to new finds, but nothing was hitting. I was numb, which is the worst of all the non-feelings.

The problem is that I’m algorithm-proof. Those things do not work on me. There’s too much intangibility to the stuff that I like. I say that with zero arrogance. I just don’t want anything else that sounds like Erykah Badu. She’s one of a kind. And I don’t need any other bands that sound like Turnstile. I’m good. The way my brain works…there’s more in common between Turnstile and Badu than any sound-alikes an algorithm will feed me. Anyway, I digress.

As I mentioned, it found me, rather than the other way around. I rediscovered Waxahatchee in a YouTube sidebar. She did a song with MJ Lenderman, which was a name I saw everywhere and never acquainted myself with. Maybe it’s time, I thought. His Tiny Desk popped up the next day. A sign.

I would share with you how I’ve been feeling, but I’ve committed this post to shining light on the positive. Daisy Cashin wrote a really beautiful post about gratitude, and I felt myself needing to live there for this one. So here I am. I’m bathing in it. Even if the whole reason I connected with MJ Lenderman is due to some nondescript loneliness, we’re not focusing on that. We’re here to celebrate the existence of the record and the smile that forms on my face every time he sings about a wristwatch. We’re here to celebrate that I’m not old yet. I’m not old yet, says the middle aged man with his new indie record obsession.

I got a beach home up in Buffalo

and a wristwatch that's a compass and a cell phone

and a wristwatch that tells me you're all alone.

And for the ride or die folks on here, an unreleased song from that violent joy LP that never came out and maybe/probably never will (my apologies, don’t kill the messenger) due to reasons I’m not at liberty to share. But I loved this song. So, now you can have it…

violent joy - Disintegrate

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I can stop at any time, and my lungs will continue to fill with air. Unlike the shark, I don’t have to keep moving to force water over my gills to extract oxygen. I don’t have gills because I am not a shark. I will not suffocate and die if I stop moving. This is something I must remind myself of from time to time, or else I risk a reckoning.

My most recent reckoning came last December, when I spent a weekend filming a music video out in Joshua Tree, a place where sharks have never swum. When I booked the trip months prior, I was inspired and invigorated. I had all these ideas for using the desert landscape as a backdrop. I truly don’t love the desert, but it was the right call for the video’s aesthetic. By the time the weekend approached, long days had turned to long weeks, eventually forgetting what month they belonged to, and the blur had me bathing in some kind of apathy. While these video trips have become part vacation, part film project for me, I was wishing it was more of the latter.

Adriana was there with me. The deal is the same every trip—I spend day one casually plotting out shots while spending time with Adriana and our dogs. That evening we’ll make dinner and spend time together. On day two, she takes care of the dogs while I shoot all day. That first night of our arrival, we sat in the hot tub drinking spiked eggnog and admiring the orange glow of the desert, and I felt my body asking for rest. It begged to sleep in that water—to simply stay in one place long enough to make an imprint.

The next day, I fumbled through my shot list. I chased the light and adjusted my aperture accordingly. Adriana cared for the dogs, and I occasionally called on her to help me frame a shot. I got it done, though I wish I’d spent more time simply being horizontal out there. I squeezed whatever juice I had left in 2024 into a little cup and sealed it up and drove back to LA.

And now I’m here. It’s Friday, but I released the video yesterday. I did not get this letter out in time to coincide with the release because I have COVID and my head feels like it’s in a vice. My limbs feel like glass, and my cough is deep and guttural. But I’m finally horizontal, lying here trying to remind myself…

I am not a shark.

I started this on January 1st of 2023, on my 37th birthday. I’d been feeling like I spe…

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I just finished Lady in the Lake, a new show on Apple TV from one of my favorite directors, Alma Har’el. But I’m not here to write about that show. Instead, I’m going to write about rap music.

In the show’s finale, Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman” is used prominently and extensively during the climax of the plot. I first heard that song in 2010, forty-five years after it was released, and seven years after a young up and coming producer from Chicago, named Kanye West, sampled it to make Talib Kweli’s most successful solo hit, “Get By.” That song is the reason I fell in love with sampling, it is the reason I bought an MPC1000, it is how I discovered Nina Simone, and it set off a chain reaction that changed my entire musical world. 

Toward the end of my tenure as a touring musician in the rock music world — or emo or post hardcore world, or whatever the hell I was a part of — I became very bored. Everything started to sound the same to me, and the stuff that was supposed to be “heavy” just sounded silly. The whole landscape felt void of any innovation.

I asked a friend who was in a prominent, influential heavy band at that time, “Where do you find good heavy music?” He said, “I don’t listen to heavy music. I listened to Anthrax in high school. That’s why I play heavy music. But I don’t listen to any of the shit that bands are doing now for inspiration.” He then proceeded to hand me a copy of Bilal’s Love For Sale and said, “Listen to this instead.”

And I fell in love. Not just with that record, but everything that it led me to. I spent about three years on a crash course through the history of rap and R&B — everything I completely missed out on while I was off screaming into a microphone. I became obsessed. I discovered that there was a line drawn through this very rich musical and cultural history, and if you were paying attention, you could connect the dots. I found Dilla and DJ Premier. Badu and The Beastie Boys. Voodoo and Illmatic.

Our country is a melting pot. We have a hard time taking credit for anything (though we certainly try) since we’re really just an amalgamation of other cultures. But this thing… this art form that took hold of the Bronx and Brooklyn in the 70s, born people living in the projects who had nothing but their father’s record collection — this thing that every music executive dubbed a fad that would surely fade —  was the most incredible cultural contribution I’d discovered in my own lifetime. It was absolutely beautiful. 

To take pieces of something that was created decades before you were born and then chop it up and collage it into something new, and then to be given this massive canvas —16 or 32 bars to say whatever you want? Rock music didn’t have that. Rock music was one color. There was no spectrum. Rock music cosplayed its elders rather than build upon it or invent something new. There was a limited vocabulary. Rap music was a whole new planet to me, and I spent years living there. 

When I heard those first few notes of “Sinnerman” come through my television speakers the other night, it brought me back to that moment of discovery that I had back in 2010. Suddenly, I was on my couch falling in love with it all over again, likely looking like a cornball to my wife as she witnessed my flashback, enthusiastically singing along with eyes closed as I heard the Kweli song and the sample flip in my head. I recalled all the jazz and soul records I found through Nas, Wu-Tang, Outcast, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, and every other rap icon that I’d studied.

It’s a shame that the industry never figured out how to handle sampling in a way that kept the art form alive. You can now subscribe to all sorts of websites and services to grab royalty-free samples for your music, and they replicate the experience, but it’s not the same. It’s always going to be missing the story and the cultural thread that connected the past to the present. The scavenger hunt experience that I fell in love with. Regardless of its near extinction, I’m thankful for that moment in musical history, as well as my late discovery of it. 

During the time that I fell in love with sampling and all this music that was new to me, my peers were still very much entrenched in the rock world. And so my experience existed on an island, literally and figuratively. I was living on Long Island, feverishly rushing to friends’ places to share with them my new discoveries, and was mostly met with blank stares. “What is this? Why aren’t you singing on it? Why are you stealing other people’s music?” I lacked community, and so I lacked confidence. I made a lot of music during that time, and I had the courage to take the art form of sampling and do my own thing with it, but I didn’t have the courage to stand behind it in any real way.

Below are five instrumentals I made during that time. They were all created with an MPC1000, which I bought off Craigslist from a guy in Staten Island. I remember thinking that was perfect because…well, Wu-Tang. What took me hours, days, and weeks to do on that little machine now takes me seconds in software. But the tactile experience was special. It connected me to the people who inspired me to dive into that world in the first place.

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There’s a place I sometimes go to, though never willingly, that is best described as the bottom. It’s strictly within my creative realm, as my life itself can be 100…

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That was the response I received over the phone when asking my friend how it’s going. He’s a fellow music producer, so he didn’t need to expand on that statement for me to know what he meant. But it’s likely that he would have had to explain it to anyone else, because if you peered into his social media or recent releases, you would think he’s thriving. But that’s how it goes, right?

Making music for a living means holing up in (oftentimes) windowless rooms and pouring everything into work that may or may not see the light of day. And if it does eventually see a release date, it’s often a year or two after the fact. That means a lot of Decembers looking back and saying, “What the fuck did I do this year?”

It was about 5 years ago, when that annual end-of-year accounting of my time spent began to really compound the heartbreak for me. The years were blurring together, and the life and career landmarks that I was running toward revealed themselves to be moving targets. This device I walk around with in my pocket - this jealousy generator with its portal into the lives of friends and strangers who are seemingly all on vacation or climbing literal and figurative mountains - that wasn’t helping either. 

I had to find a way to mark time.

I knew I couldn’t stick to traditional journaling. It would become a chore - tediously detailing my days. But what about the months?

I figured I could take 10 minutes on the last day of each month and take inventory. Just the bullet points. Nothing too in depth. I’d source the moments from my calendar, my camera roll, and text threads to paint an accurate picture. I only needed to do that 12 times, and I’d have a full snapshot. Then, in December, when I ask myself, “What the fuck did I do this year?” I would actually have an answer.

I keep everything short and sweet, as to not impart too much emotion on the events. For example:

- 2/1 - Lunch at Dune with Tom. We talk about songs he’s been writing.
- Second week of February - it rains & hails in LA
- 2/24 - I get a kidney stone
- 2/28 - Salim visits the studio for the first time
- Sessions in February - Sofia, Maris, scoring “Workday”

By not elaborating, I leave room for perspective. When I look back, the smaller moments add up and hold more weight in retrospect. I find myself recognizing what I take for granted and gaining a sense of what my life actually looks like rather than what I perceive it to be when I’m going a million miles an hour, as I tend to do.

There’s also mercy to be gained through this process. It’s difficult to realize what you’re up against while you’re battling it because in the moment, all you’re thinking about is surviving. But when you look back and see it listed out chronologically and notice the amount of challenges you faced in such a short time span, suddenly you can say to yourself, “Hey, you know what? You did pretty okay.” It’s like finally giving yourself your flowers.

It’s now been years of practicing this ritual. I missed a few months when I fell in love, as I think I may have liked the feeling of life blurring together at that time. But for the most part, I’ve stuck with it. I set aside 10 minutes at the close of the month and take inventory, detailing the bigger and smaller fragments of life from the weeks prior. From doing it for as long as I have, I’ve gotten just a little bit better at feeling it all when it’s happening rather than in retrospect. And that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

In honor of Kavinsky’s performance at the Olympics closing ceremony, I felt it was only appropriate to share my cover of “Nightcall,” which I recorded years ago. Enjoy.

“Nightcall” (cover)

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