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Iām just out here doing my best. I moved to New York a little over a year ago on a one way ticket for a record deal. I was previously out in LA, living and recording under the independent label Deathproof Inc. for over a year. Nascar Aloe brought my attention to Deathproof when I still lived in Olympia, after a friend sent me a video of one of his shows. Iād never heard of him, but I thought it was the coolest thing that Iāve seen happening right now, and I wanted to be a part of it. I had no idea how to contact him, so I google searched āhow to get ahold of a celebrityā and google told me to message someone that theyāre in a lot of pictures with who doesnāt have as big a following. So I messaged this guy Myagi that was tagged in a lot of Nascarās posts. I sent some pictures of these clothes I was painting to see if they would wear them on the tour they were on at the time. Myagi got back to me immediately and said yes. He was really sincere and kind to me, which I wasnāt necessarily expecting. Iād been having a rough couple years scrambling to be a full time artist. Just kinda classic story of every attempt made being a dead end, and feeling completely disposable. Iām not a religious person, but I was praying a lot in that time for something, anything to happen. It was hard enduring the constant disappointment, and working so hard blindly with everything based on a feeling. But I got into this āfuck itā mindset. Not self deprecation, but more of a ānothing to loseā philosophy.Ā It can be motivating to have people not believe in you, when youāre showing no sign of success. Helps you focus. Makes you hungry. After a few days we lost touch. They were busy on tour, and I eventually gave up after a week. They were on the road and itās not like Iād have an address to ship the shirts anyway. A few days later I woke up in the late afternoon, and saw an instagram ad for a Nascar Aloe show in Seattle, which was an hour south from me. The show started in a few hours so I bought a ticket, grabbed the shirts, and drove to the show. I recognized Myagi at the show and waited for a moment to speak with him. I was like āhey Iām the shirt guy.ā Again, he was very supportive and kind. Turned out, he put the whole tour on and he was Nascarās manager. I had the t shirts under my arm for Nascar. He took me backstage and I met Nascar and all the members of Deathproof. Nobody, not even me at the time, knew that we were about to start living and making music together over the next year and a half. When the show was over I hung around a bit and talked with Myagi. I was doing my best to give the impression that I wasnāt just a fan. I realized when we were talking that I was selling myself short. I realized I wanted more than to just have someone wear my shirts. I wanted to be up there too. When I went home I started recording an EP.Ā I was expressing parts of my self with my music I didnāt know I could express. It was amazing. I felt so self assured and free. I finished a collection of songs, and sent them to Myagi asking if I could join Deathproof. Then I turned off my phone for 3 days. The potential rejection was too much for me. I played out the scenario of yes and no until it didnāt bother me as much. I turned on my phone and he said āYupā. Flew out to LA, they picked me up at the airport, and started recording my first project Harm or Heck immediately after we got to the house. Made some music videos, started performing, building fans, getting attention, getting recognized. Living like a rock star every day. We moved houses several times. Moved into houses with issues, and they would exercise their renters rights by withholding rent until the issues were fixed. The landlords would eventually give up and say we didnāt owe anything as long as weād leave. Every house was left trashed with holes in the wall, graffiti, ripped off doors, and burn marks. I never had to pay rent. Myagi housed me for free because I didnāt have a room. I slept on piles of clothes, or mats, and the couch sometimes if it wasnāt already occupied. Everyone that had a room shared it with someone else, except for Myagi. He was the boss. At all times of the night thereād be people coming in and out. Slipping under the garage or just walking in. Always drugs, always groupies. Always making music, or playing music. Iād find a blank radio station that was just static, and turn my headphones to the fullest volume to sleep. I loved it though. And I loved my new fucked up family. I got to see the world under the arms of guys that nobody in their right mind would dream of fucking with.Ā We got to do whatever we wanted. It felt like mad max. The whole thing was just so interesting cause I never saw my music resonating with the people I was surrounded by. It taught me a lot about humanity. If you just be true to yourself, itās like this universal language. I had these guys come up to me in blue and ask āhey are you malice?ā āyeahā I say. āI fuck with you. Your shit goes hard, on crip. For real bro on east.ā and then I looked up and saw his other friends nodding and throwing up signs. People were showing their parents and telling me they liked it. My parents and my family liked it too. The reach I was developing was amazing to see. I felt so honored and lucky. After awhile some mutual friends of Deathproof offered me a deal on a room in their house. There was an empty room in the house, and they wanted to help support me. I was tired of sleeping on the floor so I accepted. After 2 months I decided to fly back home to Olympia and drive my car I had back to LA. While I was home my roomates decided to take back the deal and start charging me regular price for the room. With only 6 days until the end of the month, I had no feasible way to pay that amount.Ā We got off the phone and I just stood there, I didnāt want to go back to the floor, I didnāt have the money, I didnāt know what to do. I just took some time to accept that I had to start over. It sucked. 15 minutes later I get a phone call from a record label based in NYC that offered to fly me out. I had done a performance at the Roxy theater in LA a month earlier. I went home and cried after because I thought the music thing wasnāt going anywhere. I felt super beat up and tired. Turns out the live stream of the show had a lot of label people watching, and over the next two months I was being looked at by several major labels without my knowing. The people that called me were the first to the draw, but after I arrived in New York I found out I had a lot of eyes on me, and options. I didnāt end up signing with the label that flew me out initially, but I ended up finding and going with someone else, and Iāve been here ever since. Everything after that up until now is itās own story.
Oct 2, 2023
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Throughout my whole life, I had awful music teachers. I had a piano teacher that made me sit on my hands because he was frustrated with the way I played scales and a music teacher in primary/middle school that gave me so many anxiety attacks that my doctor finally gave me a note so I didnāt have to go anymore.
I was told so many times throughout my life that I had no music talent, discouraged from going further than scales but all of those people (teachers!!!!) were wrong. They just couldnt fathom that I had a different musical brain than them.
When I was 23, I ended up having to move back home from LA after my job rescinded their promise to sponsor me for a visa. I was depressed and heartbroken and lonely. I went to school for writing but didnāt want to write anymore so I ended up opening GarageBand on my iPad.
I was inspired by all the things I could do on it. I suddenly felt like I was entering a new world. After making a couple beats, I started moving everything over to the laptop version of GarageBand. I bought big headphones, a cheap usb mic and a keyboard off of a guy from Craigslist and continued to tinker. One of my favorite things to do at the time was to download karaoke midi tracks of popular songs I loved, import them into GarageBand and change the instrument until I felt like I was making something new. I would then use my shitty mic to wail on top of it.
I used GarageBand for years after that to make tons of songs that I just uploaded to SoundCloud without thinking about it much. Eventually I got a controller/sampler and access to Ableton and thats when the fun really started.
My love for music making snowballed after that, I amassed more gear and skill and eventually made an album after a couple years. I was obsessed with making it and while I feel really whatever about it now, I donāt feel whatever about the experience.
Music has allowed me space to express parts of me that there are no words for. The best thing I can impart is to take advantage of this. There are some things that you can only explain with a kick drum or a sine wave or a really hard bassline.
Music is still a huge part of me! I made another album after that first and now Iām working on my next project. I recently reincarnated myself (everyone in the ~industry~ advised against this but Iām a different person now) and Iām excited to see whatās in store for me. I donāt expect to make money or become famous but music feeds my soul in a way nothing else can.
Have fun!!
May 4, 2024
I've been writing/playing/recording/releasing my own music since around 2016. Music's been one of my passions in life since I was 10, all I wanted to do was write songs and play them. I had this purple notebook throughout middle school that I would write song ideas down in, mostly lyrics that I had a tune in mind for. But as with a lot of things in my life, I felt insecure and lacked confidence in my abilities and that led me to pursue the visual arts, which is a passion I'd had since I can remember and I got a lot of praise in growing up.
I've been trying to make music for the sake of making it and not for the pipe dream of making a living off of it. To me, doing things like art and music for money is a will killer; it strips all the passion and creativity from the work and it becomes solely about money. It would be nice if some day I luck into making enough money to support myself via my art, but I don't think that's going to happen and I'm not going to play the systems available to me and sell my soul in the process. Going to art school was a bad idea. Anyway, I have been daydreaming here and there about making some instrumental work and making a portfolio, try to get composer work maybe. Don't think my style lends itself to that but you never know. It's less personal that way too, with no words.
The words are the hardest part. I don't know what to say, don't know what I should put my voice behind. I want to be honest about myself, my life, my experience since that's the only thing I would call myself an expert on. And I've been trying to build that up like a muscle, trying to get myself comfortable with writing and singing what I've written. Singing in general. Trying to improve my playing too. I'm not sure if I'll ever get to a point where I'd be playing in front of an audience night after night, that's not really something I want. I believe in the power of performance, something I've been wanting production wise is to keep it simple. Vocals and me playing whatever instrument at the same time, a live recording. I think having to perform the same song every day kills that.
I've been listening to a lot of different music to learn from it, appreciate it. This started with the blues and folk, and where the name Sam the Wayfarer comes from. A lot of folk and blues musicians have names like that- First name the something. Rambling first name, Blind first name, etc. I'm going to switch to a different name, more of a band name than my first name being involved. Not willing to do my first and last name. Not sure if I should make it its own project or just put it over top the wayfarer stuff. But it'll be more of the same.
I don't have a big sound and I like to experiment, play around, do what comes naturally. I'd love to make louder music, but I don't have the space to scream and yell and thrash just yet. I just want to be me.
Jul 10, 2024
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started in middle school wanting to be skrillex and made some heinous dubstep, got way too heady about music theory and wanted to be machinedrum for a bit to flex that I knew other time signatures than just 4/4, then i went to college to study music and realized music theory is actually dumb and 4/4 is sick and I wanted to be kaytranada and make the simplest lil house tunes to dance to, then a friend from college and I shared our love for 80s new wave music and John Hughes movies and we made some fun synthpop to play at an 80s prom night as our senior capstone project, then that friend and I graduated in the pandemic together and made depressed synthpop that we were way too heady about because we needed to prove that our music degrees were valuable and that we didnāt waste our time in undergrad and that we werenāt failures as artists, then I moved away because having a music degree in NYC in the pandemic got you no jobs and shelved music for a while because I felt like a failure, got into early digital production from the 80s and got sick of working with plug ins and switched to synths and drum machines instead, figured out what post-music degree life looked like for me and moved again for grad school to get an MBA so I could actually get jobs on the business side of music, then I covered a Todd Rundgren song with a friend that I met at grad school to represent establishing a healthier relationship to my music now that it wasnāt tied to my self worth/career and just generally being on a better path in life. now I just make weird synthy stuff for fun and only release music when I care enough about a song to finish it
TLDR I listened to skrillex once and now iām studying finance because Iāll never live out my fantasy of actually being him
May 4, 2024
