by Trout.
I don’t like to think that my so-called story is any different from the majority of artists and people in general who spend their lives chasing bliss and contentment. To find the source of the small moments in life that seem to halt and engulf your spirit seems, to me at least, to be the drive of human existence.
Listen to the album while reading the text.
Those instances suspended in time are perpetuated by many different things. Music has just always been the most prominent form in my life. I can recall, before I started playing music, discovering artists and songs and melodies that brought on feelings and emotions that I had never encountered. I knew that I had to try and manipulate those sensations through my own music.
Connecting with my Father
My father taught me triads on the guitar when I was twelve. I was skeptical about sports and competition, which is, to say the least, strange for a young boy raised in Texas. My dad refused to hold it against me. Instead, he chose to connect with his youngest son through music.
We would hover over pages and pages of three-chord Texas country songs splayed out on the carpet of our apartment while we butchered timeless hits as well as our fingertips. After a while, I started picking out the notes of my favorite songs before writing a few of my own.
Being a good Son
From then on all I could think about was new ideas for chord progressions and bridges and choruses for original songs. I suppose I learned how to write songs based around evocation. I would analyze songs and find that perfect moment of pure feeling and try to emulate that through my own melodies.
From the earliest stages of writing music, I wrote with the intentions of pleasing my friends and family. I enjoyed the gratification I felt when composing a “good song” according to everyone else’s standards.
Becoming a true Artist
I had lost sight of my personal endeavor. Blinded by delusions of notoriety and wealth. I needed to take a step back, assess my priorities, find my rooted bearings and achieve self-gratification. I began to truly listen to myself and become more or less shameless when it came to what I enjoyed and connected with. I started to play the piano. I refrained from singing. I began to discover my own comfortability; what made me feel a sense of worthiness. That’s where it starts for me; from there I can hope to offer at least a fragment of peace or escape or epiphany.
I’ve done my best in keeping an open mind when exposed to various artists. I wouldn’t claim to remain integral to a particular type of genre by any means. I also feel the desire to view music as a space in time; a patch of something beautiful or awful or empowering that holds you in a moment that lasts until it just doesn’t.
Whether it be complex time signatures, minimal melodies accompanied by silence, catchy lyrics, or empathetic fervor. There are so many different forms. Some are interlacing. Some are never colliding. But all are significant in their own regard.
My wish is never to stop pursuing the sentiment that initiated my passion for sound and music.