Tag: new music

I Released an EP!

This is actually old news. I released Love Songs EP in May of this year. It’s my fourth singer-songwriter EP, and I’m very proud of it. I had a CD release show at the Contented Cow in Northfield where I shared the stage with Bryn Battani and Mary Clare Stroh. It was an amazing night!

I’ve performed a lot over the years, and as I’m writing I’m constantly trying out songs in live settings. Some songs I play a few times, lose interest, and never play again. Some I like right away and they become a mainstay. These songs are constantly developing as I perform them, which is why I don’t record a song at first. I keep tweaking them over time until I’m done. Then I can record.

This latest EP is a collection of my best folk songs written during my college years (2018 – 2020). The title of Love Songs is meant to poke fun at the cliche of singer-songwriter types only writing sappy love songs, but it also refers to the songs themselves. Passersby is your typical love song about romantic love, Loaded Gun is about loving someone going through a hard time, Gratitude is about love of life, Football is about platonic love, and Moonshine is about self love.

I think it’s some of my best work and I would appreciate you checking it out! Love Songs EP is available everywhere.



Making a Lofi EP

This December I graduated college and I celebrated by releasing a lofi EP. I wanted something commemorative of the college experience, and what better way than by making chill beats to study / relax to? Not to mention, I love lofi. I dropped it during finals week in the hopes of attracting more student listeners.

I started the writing process in June. I know firsthand the annoyance of putting together an EP and not liking all of the songs. I usually handle this by releasing fewer songs or by writing more, but this time I tackled the problem upfront. I committed to writing 20 songs and only releasing the best. This helped me relax while writing since each song carried less weight. I wasn’t too hard about whether or not I liked what I had; my goal was to finish two demos a week, good or bad. This gave me more freedom to experiment.

After I had my 20 demos, I found several that I could eliminate instantly. They were good songs that didn’t fit the lofi aesthetic for varying reasons: too exciting, too high energy, too much dynamic range, and a few that I just wanted to develop into hip hop beats. Writing a lot of tracks made it easy to finish these ideas as they came along rather than scrapping them on the spot. Especially after I had a handful I liked, it was nice to write without any sense of needing it to be good or having it fit in a particular way.

I eliminated seven songs for genre reasons and one because it was a remix (Misty by Ella Fitzgerald). I wanted to have five to eight songs. There were some I planned to include from the start (Morning Dew, Breakfast Brew, Halloween Chillin), and for the others I relied on Instagram polls. I had eight songs selected, but as the deadline got closer I narrowed it down to five. I was on the fence about a couple and opted for quality over quantity. The project is only 9 minutes long, but I think I made the right choice.

I’m happy with the outcome and I hope you can enjoy these songs while studying, relaxing, drinking coffee, or watching the snow fall.

Finals Week Available Everywhere.