TECHNICALLY HOMELESS
In a nutshell: After the last album (Music For Smart People)’s completion, my bandmate (girlfriend) and I went on the road and across the pond. I figured since it worked well for me the first go-around solo, as all cities are closer together, it could work well again! We aimed to harness and train a ‘pickup band’ overseas, but we never got it together. Instead, we broke up, and I got denied re-entry into England after a show in Metz, France, leaving me stuck in Paris. English is the only language I know. I had nothing but my clothes, electric guitar, and barely-known friends who, thank God, took me in. All the songs speak for themselves, and were written post denial-of-entry.
I discovered for myself in this time that the only things we humans really NEED are: food, shelter, and the feeling of being loved. Food includes water, shelter accounts for warmth, and love coming one’s way depends upon them putting it out there in the first place. I played guitar and sang in the street (still do) to earn what money I could (enough for food, my mobile bills, and the occasional social outing at a happy hour), and all in all probably produced ‘Technically Homeless’ for less than $100. I already had the laptop (though the screen is broken), and most friends lent their musical services with an understanding from me that if I ‘hit big’, they’d get an offer of generous back-compensation of some sort.
Producing this EP during a very hard relationship fallout/rebound process, without ANY steady home, in Paris, FR, Los Angeles, CA, Seattle, WA, was VERY difficult to do, and took the better part of a year. I certainly couldn’t have done it alone. I got soo much help making this EP, the special thanks includes a lot of names that helped sew the first batch of MOOP pouches (“seb’s sweat shop,” as it’s been jovially recalled, ha ha).
The album was soft-released directly from my new bedroom in Seattle, WA, on what was likely the day my sister Ophelia Grace died outside of Tampa, FL, August 29th. It was determined she had last been seen the day prior. It was her I was en route to visit in NYC on the fateful trip my van exploded those years ago, where I then returned to CA where I then met the girlfriend that became my bandmate and partner in crime behind the last album, leading to the tour that got me stranded over in Paris.
The last new song of mine I played for my sister was when I visited her in FL over new years, and wrote ‘The Next Chapter’, which I’m happy to say got stuck in her head. She was the first person to seriously encourage my musical writing. Her body was found the day after my birthday, and I haven’t really felt the drive to actively self-promote or do the “me-me” hustle since. I’m tired. It’s been a really long, exhausting year of letting go.
For the future, I’m looking to get a bus to turn into a sustainable mobile concert venue, so as to live as responsible a life as possible, still connected to music, and yet with an ability to go ‘off the grid’. I plan to name the bus ‘Grace’.
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