Click here to go back.
Funnily enough, my goal in high school was to go to DigiPen. As my scores in both math and 'Introduction to C' were around the level of a war crime, that wasn't happening. In a hurry I decided I would learn to play guitar so I could get drunk and sleep with a myriad of women. At least that panned out.
Nothing of note was recorded from 1998-2002, and any FruityLoops crap was thankfully lost in a hard drive crash. In 2002, the hep thing my friends and I all did was get a Zoom digital 4-track, and it was off to the races. Or it would have been, had I not been a prima donna perfectionist. I had it in my head that everything I made had to be as lush as a Garbage record, despite owning no synthesizers or real studio gear. Great, good luck with that.
Something about David Sylvian's Blemish and Manafon allowed me to get my head out of my ass and realize things didn't have to be perfect as long as the song was good and came across well enough. By this point I'd moved to York and found myself being "The asshole who brought a drum machine to a banjo party", a phrase I'd repeat whenever telling these stores with a frequency at LEAST in the triple digits. The good news is survival meant open mics and having good enough songs and a good enough voice to get by. I played shows of my own on and off, and before long... found myself in the same problem as before, only this time I was a perfectionist with a pile of expensive crap in my studio. Thankfully, I was hired for live bass duties here and there, and when it dawned on me that I was being too precious with my own material I figured maybe I'd be best off recording and releasing my friends' stuff. That was the start of Radio Zelda, whose .com I successfully poached from the Big N, lmao.
I was funding everything out of my own pocket, which meant a minor car crash I got into a week or two after the launch of the label extremely delayed the release of the debut EP of Like a Mountain, Like a Tiger (something I still feel horribly guilty about). I'm really happy with how that recording sounded, though! Things got more stable by 2016, and EPs by The Shake Up and Lexi Spino followed. Then I got all impulsive and moved to Pittsburgh, effectively ruining everything. A few shows under the name Girlchild followed, but I was burnt out completely, declared bankruptcy and was really grateful that Covid offered an excuse for no longer playing shows. When I decided I was done for good, this enormous weight lifted off of me.
BANDS:
The Returners - 2002-2008
Basically everything
To say this band went nowhere is an understatement. Best it got was an EP called 'A Word of Warning' that was produced and recorded with Dendy Crew in 2005 but never sufficiently finished enough for release.
Dempwolf and the Damage Done - Dec 2012-May 2014
Bass, Backing Vocals
The ride of my life. I'll never forget when Chris asked me if I wanted to be in a band with him and I immediately figured the best way to get my bass chops up was to play along to The Faint's "The Conductor" at nightmare volume. Played every show like we were about to get killed, and one night at the Depot, the roof was leaky enough that it could've happened. Sweet memories.
Ronn Benway and the Train to Salvation - Oct 2013
Bass, Backing Vocals
I got to play 'Road to Nowhere' in a baseball stadium! Always an honor to play with Ronn.
Ronn Benway and the Funk Monorail to Hades - Nov 2014
Juno-6, Backing Vocals
A one off - and so was Keith Barnett. I'm lucky we all got to play together.
The Shake Up - Mar 2015-Jun 2015
Bass, Backing Vocals
For the record, I was never officially in the band, I would just fill in since I knew the stuff and their first bass player was a travelling dancer.
Chozo Youth - 2015
Synths, Samples, etc
The closest I got to a sort of ambient/noise/music concrete thing. One 6 song record that no one bought (especially not me).
Power Creep - Aug 2018-Oct 2019
Lead Guitar, Occasional Lead Vocals
Started as a Placebo cover band, ended as a Garbage cover band. I got exhausted and left and the band fell apart as a result... which ultimately wouldn't have mattered as the Spring of 2020 was right around the corner.
Girlchild - 2015ish - 2021ish
Everything
I guess its sort of funny how whatever album I was working on would slowly change names once I Ship-of-Theseused it into something else song by song. I played a bunch of shows in York under my last name - some alone, several with Tara Stark on drums, a couple with Ian Carroll on violin, one or two with Chris Dempwolf on bass. Technically it's all the same 'band', but at the end it was me, a guitar and an SP-404. The end result is a live album that functions as a de facto Greatest Hits, a pair of weirdass singles and an EP of bed music for YouTube videos. The show I played in February 2019 was a real 'you had to be there' moment, though. That was nuts. Rest in piss.
PRODUCTION:
Film:
Hangar - Int - Night (Directed by Brian Roy) -
Various soundtrack cues (2010)
The Healing 2 (Directed by Freddie Graves)
Additional sound design and drones (2016)
Recordings:
Like A Mountain, Like A Tiger - EP/1 - Production (2016)
The Shake Up - "Boondoggle" unreleased single - Production/Engineering/Mixing/Mastering (2015)
Jasper The Tourist - "Vinyl Years", "Ghost Ships" and "Flying Straight Into The Sun" from A Visitor's Guide To Jasper The Tourist - Production/Engineering/Mixing (2016)
Lexi Spino - Suicidal Since Birth - Instrumentation/Co-writing/Co-Production/Engineering/Mixing/Mastering (2016)
Chozo Youth - self-titled LP - All Production/Writing/Performance/Engineering (2016)
Girlchild - Pumpkin Field single - All Production/Writing/Performance/Engineering (2019)
Girlchild - Enemy Logic single - All Production/Writing/Performance/Engineering (2021)
Girlchild - Live at Stim City LP - All Production/Writing/Performance/Engineering (2021)
Girlchild - Themes Vol. 1 - All Production/Writing/Performance/Engineering (2021)
BROADCAST:
Lastly, I had a streaming internet radio show thing for about a year and a half but the more time goes by the less I care about including it on something like this.
Click here to go back.