Real Talk

Hi friends.
I know this site is normally all music all of the time, but I gotta get a bit real. Over the holidays I lost my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. The last two months of 2014 saw me and my partner lose four close family members, and the last two immediate family members were within six days of each other. In the last four years we've also lost her father, one of my most formative elders, and my grandmother - all of whom I was very very close with. So it's been a rough road in these parts. What keeps me going and keeps me sane is the music.

As you can tell from the shows page - I've had a new musical project named Feral for about the last year. What began as me doing a side solo EP grew into forming a whole new band with some of my collaborators. We're in the final stages now of mixing our album and can't wait to share it with you. It's full of the rawness, pain, and heartbreak of losing people, but also the joy of finding connection. Which is the story of the band too. We're all kinda broken from loss of people - whether it be romantic, friend, or family. And we put that energy into music that helped us survive the losses. Sometimes through rants, sometimes with humor, but always with heart on our sleeve rawness and guts out on the stage for you. It's some of the most honest music I've been a part of writing and a super inspiring 'everyone into the boat' sort of songwriting process. Even the songs that came to practice fully formed from one of our brains took on a new and improved life of their own when exposed to our process. And it's work I'm just so proud of.

Also Vagabondage is still trucking along and getting ready for our next EP release party on Feb 27. We've been playing less in the past year while we finished recording and mixing Slow Room Bar, plus our lead singer John has been acting in a bunch of shows around San Francisco, getting nominated for fancy awards, and blowing all of our socks off (yes - we go see his shows as a band. yes - we are those rowdy people that probably annoyed you). While we released our EP online in the fall - we're just now about to have the big, in person, buy a copy of the record party at the Stork Club. We even got buttons made for it! These songs I think are some of the best we've ever written. Primarily inspired by events that happened on our tour to the Pacific Northwest a few years ago... we've been woodshedding these on stages and at practice for a while and... it's just... pretty emotional and exciting for me to see them in real and actual physical CD format and ready for the world.

So - that's what it is. Music is trucking along as my lifeline to sanity. I hope you enjoy these little tunes I make. They're the beauty I have to offer the world.