How Do You Feel

OFFICIAL ARTIST’S COMMENTARY

May 20, 2024

-the album title-

People had a limited set of questions for me as I was preparing to graduate from college, the likes of which included, “What are you gonna do?” and “How do you feel?” I was finishing the production of some original songs that I had been keeping to myself for a while, and it felt like maybe these songs could answer those questions better than I could with regular speech. I was very unsure of anything that was about to ensue pertaining to my future; I probably asked myself 10 times the amount of questions everyone was asking me. Things were starting to turn inward at an alarming rate. My music – which was not something I felt I could really say that I had, music of my own – was just one method of coping with so much change. Somehow I came to an understanding that I could release that music when I felt ready, and all of a sudden I was going around telling people I was making an EP. The question “How do you feel?” felt most appropriate as an umbrella theme over these songs, so I stuck with it and shipped it out for distribution.

While the lyrics and themes of each song are based on a collection of inner dialogues, How Do You Feel inadvertently became a tribute to some of my most beloved educators and mentors. They continue to be major influences over my day-to-day, though I’m sure they haven’t the slightest inkling so. I spent as much time as I could sharing with them, learning from them, being inspired by them. Early on, it was a strong desire to immortalize them via my own perspective, so I employed these tracks in an effort to pay homage to a couple of them (the ones whose voices I had recordings of).

-the cover art-

I’d bought these huge shades and I loved being seen in them, I loved carrying them everywhere, they had become signature on me by my friends real fast. In conjunction, I was just learning how to operate a digital camera and I was exploring subjects and composition. There was a cloudless spring day where I took on the challenge to throw my shades into the air and photograph them floating against the clear blue sky before they fell out of the shot. To my amazement, and as you can see for yourself, I succeeded.

01 “walkabout” (featuring Equinox the Ubiquitous)

The intro to this song comes from a conversation I was having with Kelly Rossum, a stellar trumpeter and groovy guy who is never not excited by being an artist and making stuff. In this recording he is heard reassuring me that I need not try to confine my experiences to one kind of future, not in so many words. I asked a former classmate if he wouldn’t mind writing me some verses based on the subject of the conversation. He was very generous to help boost my track with his skills while I was figuring out my sound. Shoutout to my talented friend Kambria Cook who lent me her vocals for my hook, and to David Lomax who laid down a tasty bassline that I was never going to come up with on my own. This track would not have been half of what it is without the help of these folks.

02 “musta”

My most favorite of the four, it was the simplest and quickest to create. One morning I was experimenting with some MIDI instruments, and when I pieced the parts together my jaw dropped and I couldn’t stop laughing. Later that day, I played it for a good keyboardist friend of mine, Ethan Wills. His jaw dropped just as wide and it was official I was going to let other people hear it. This might’ve been the only track of the four explicitly created with the intention to add it to an album for public distribution.

03 “all at once” (featuring Equinox the Ubiquitous)

Arguably the most rewarding song to produce on this EP. This was the culmination of what I was actively learning about music and living in general, combined with a library of sounds I had been collecting just because they triggered fond memories. With every new addition to the song, so grew the smile on my face and my confidence in what it could be. The first speaking part comes from my film professor in undergrad, on a tangent about the human perception of time. Following that passage into my trombone solo is a clip of my school jazz ensemble peers cheering for me which truly made me feel special. And to round out the song, master of the mic Equinox the Ubiquitous makes his return to Stygio Music Publishing. The song title may or may not – and I mean that sincerely – have had something to do with the release of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (2022) dir. DANIELS. I don’t remember which came first (the conception of the song or my seeing the film) but between the two, the phrase “all at once” wasn’t going anywhere.

04 “i can feel it on my face”

This was the earliest piece to be conceived of all my public releases. The first draft is dated January 4th, 2022, but of course it endured several minor revisions thereafter. I have a great pal affectionately known to me as “P-Dawg” who works in meteorology, and I asked to use his voice for some soundbites in an experimental track I was working on. The dialogue is made up of a pattern of these corny weather jokes from his own head. I added a standard spacey synth pad and began imagining him broadcasting a weather report from outer space. The more I listened to it, the more thoroughly entertained I was by the idea of him standing on some middle-of-nowhere planet, just cracking jokes about being cool to an unknown party. The track means a whole lot to me as a commemorative work dedicated to the time I would spend with him. “I can feel it on my face” capped off the notion that I was bracing for impending change and unexpected experiences; I could feel winds beginning to pick up. I could feel a strong atmosphere shift.