So I'm 33 (jk)
(so I'm 34)
Today I am putting out a song called “33”. Stream it here or on Bandcamp. You may like it if you enjoy the works of Brian Wilson or Scritti Politti or me. Stream it on repeat. Send it to your friends.
I wrote this song one year ago, on the eve of and into the day of my 33rd birthday. I started recording it soon after. It was mainly tracked at Bubudzuki Studios with my friend Bryan Lovett and with special guidance from Nicole, then in San Jose for backing vocals from Katie (Pacing) and in LA for violin by Brookelen and aux percussion from Echo (Cheekface). I was trying to cut down the time between writing and putting out a song. It didn’t work. I’m turning 34 today. As a good friend of mine likes to say “it’s not a self-description, more like an aspiration”.
And in a way that’s what it’s about: as I reach my hand into the 3rd decade of my life, what I want more than anything is to let go of the chips on my shoulder. I regret the amount of time I’ve spent comparing myself to others and projecting my self-hatred outward (they’re not trying to crucify you, I promise). I regret spending so much time thinking about my mistakes so hard that the good times get harder to access. I regret not celebrating the times I walked on water to focus on the times when I fell through…
But those are the regrets. I think what I was finding that night, and well into my Jesus birthday, was that I WANT to enjoy life. I WANT love, I want friendship, I want happiness. And it’s not something I always thought I would want. I spent so much of my life as many do, wanting Success, wanting something better than what I have. Trying to live in someone else’s imagined life. It really does make it impossible to be in the moment. It created so much writer’s block and anxiety, and made it hard to put out music for a really long time. And it in fact did take a full year to embody this thought process and release the song. I’m hoping I can cut that down by a couple months next time.
Other things:
We will in fact be playing this song live at our upcoming shows. The first is with songwriter and great musician Adam Spry at the Escondite in DTLA on July 26:
And then we have a very exciting gig with my friends Pacing and Suzie True at Scribble on August 30th. It’s Katie’s album release day! I did some production and bass and some ambiguous moral support type help on this album and I’m so proud of her and it :). Buy presale tickets (and prove we are worthy of playing shows) here.
I have been deep in remixing world. I did a sort-of-Daft-Punk remix to one of my favorite songs by my buddy Justin (Planet 81). The stems were already so rich and warm but I couldn’t help but add my own live bass guitar, backing vocals, and for special attention to theme of ‘things that were available in 1981’, a lil line on the Minimoog. I also recently did a remix baton-pass with my buddy Styles Munson for my friend Molly’s blog I Enjoy Music, for which she wrote an incredible writeup. You should read the whole thing, but my favorite part is this word association prompt she had for the originals and the remixes:
ok happy 34th birthday to me i hope everyone can realize it’s not ‘you win or you die’ it’s ‘you win because you are alive’. btw FUCK ICE and FUCK LAPD <3