March [2024]

March is a collection of songs and videos self-produced between February and April 2024, beginning at home in Oregon and continuing as I traveled between Oregon, Hawaii, mainland Australia, and Tasmania.

These tracks cover a span of six years and a distance of 8,000 miles. Some took months of creative teeth-pulling to put together. Others were written and recorded in a few hours — one in the moment of creation. Recorded across states and continents, across different moods and seasons and lifetimes. Edited, mixed and arranged on buses, planes, in forests, cliff sides, spare bedrooms, a van, a dome, and probably more odd spaces that escape me now. They are united in that they were completed in the month of March.

Everything you hear and see was self-produced. The audio was mastered and videos re-cut for final release in April 2024, shortly after joining a recording session with some crazy hippies at MONA Museum’s Frying Pan Studios in Tasmania.

1. Acaso

Built around “Temple City Theme,” a piece of music written on the road in 2014 and dedicated to the San Gabriel Valley suburb where I grew up. The song became a reflection on returning home after years of travel to help my family through the sale of my childhood home and my parents’ separation – and the ongoing search for new homes that followed. Written during the first song-a-week challenge, fall 2023. Full entry and lyrics →

2. Scroll Hole

A short song about a recurring experience: reaching for the phone to open the tuner app and emerging twenty minutes later from an Instagram spiral with nothing to show for it. Written in March 2024, recorded and filmed in the guest room of my friend Alex’s family home in Adelaide, South Australia – an all-nighter with my face buried in a camera lens. Full entry and lyrics →

3. Sweet Sleep

An instrumental piece from a series of horn-driven compositions I call Dokie Okie. Cut together with video from a rare snow day at home in Port Orford – the snowfall lasted about twenty minutes, but I grabbed the camera and ran through every room shooting until it stopped. Full entry →

4. Gutter Baby

A character study drawn from people I met traveling around Montreal, Humboldt, and Mendocino counties, with roots in a dusty notebook from 2014-2015 when I was hitchhiking the states heavy. An amalgamation of stories heard on the street, some of my own experiences, and a hard-won happy ending. First demo completed January 2024 during a song-a-week challenge. Full entry and lyrics →

5. Cloudsurf

A beat made with the Jamstik MIDI guitar, cut to a rainy night drive into Old Town Bandon, OR.

6. Somewhere New

Written five years before the March release, this one captures the feeling of marching into the unknown. Shot in the Canary Islands — La Palma and Tenerife, the home island of my great-grandfather.

7. Miles Away

Written on a drive home along the southern Oregon coast, coming around the bend at Humbug Mountain when the ocean suddenly snapped me back into the present. A song about autopilot — all the time that passes while you’re somewhere else. Recorded at sunset on the cliffs at Sister’s Rock, playing until it got dark and cold. Full entry and lyrics →

8. Real Life

Written and recorded on a day of hitchhiking outside of Swansea, Tasmania. A sketch that became a song about sitting with uncertainty and staying open to what it brings.

9. Oahu Noodles

Two improvisations recorded on the porch of a hostel on the north shore of Oahu, the morning of my last day on the island. Recorded guitar and synth into a handheld recorder through headphones until the batteries died- caught a flight to Sydney that afternoon. Full entry →

10. Beaten Track

The tale of a relationship going from a joy ride to a runaway hell ride. The wavy keys are a Jamstik running through a borrowed Nord Stage 3.

11. Can’t Abide

A song about choosing time over money, work that means something over work that pays. Written in a couple of hours, finished before I even knew it. Full entry, video and lyrics →

12. Been Missin

he sister song to Dust. Written after a two-hour phone call with an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in years, walking the dogs on the beach in the sun. About the moment the reconnection finally happens and you discover that though much has changed, much is the same. Full entry and lyrics →

That’s all folks! March wasn’t necessarily planned as an ‘album’ – I simply set out to release everything I finished within the span of a month (or two) and these were the songs and videos I managed to finish in that time. I’m certain some of these songs will find new life in future arrangements, recordings and releases. Stay tuned!