I started Nocturnal Company when I got to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for my freshman year of college. I often stayed up all night in my dorm recording on my laptop with the only live instruments being guitar and keyboard. Luckily, my roommate stayed at his girlfriend’s dorm most of the time. That kid was a character, he smoked hella pot and took watermelons full of vodka to parties, where he feigned a french accent.
When I stepped out of LAX and into the warm evening air I suppose I fell in love.
Kansas City, as much as I adore it and feel proud to represent, will never be as warm as Los Angeles was that night in mid-December, nor will it evoke the feelings of excitement and hope that still exist within. So when you grow up in a rural place it’s not uncommon to dream of bigger things – in the back of my mind LA was always the destination.
by Cosmos T’err
For most of a decade, Carlotta loitered, half-finished, in the fringes of my songbook. Old-fashioned with modern sensibilities, her presence was staunch, her gaze penetrating, yet musically, her identity remained vague.
Blurry lights, late-night, pink roses, and a tremendous amount of drama: Enter the world of The Spotlights. My name is Vincent, and I’m here to tell you the story of our first EP called THISWILLMAKEAFUNSTORYONEDAY.
My second album is somewhat of a time capsule. These are the songs I wrote between realizing I needed to get better and doing something about it.
My alcoholism and dependence on other addictive behaviors (weed, sex, etc.) had progressed to a point where they had begun destroying every semblance of a good life I’d managed to build despite them. To preserve any chance I had at living well, I needed to change the way I spent each and every moment of my time. In order to honestly document these in musical form, I stripped away every instrument other than my voice, guitar, laptop, and tape recorder.
“Hey, mom where is my bass and guitar?”
“I took them to grandma’s; you’ve been playing way too much.”
This is how I woke up one day in grade 11 because I wasn’t doing much of anything other than making up random melodies and recording them on a tape player. I loved the fact that I was in control of making these things up and that they were not being graded or picked apart by a teacher or whatever…
I’m Jesse, an independent singer/songwriter/producer. I’ve been recording music in different projects since 2009. Juliet’s Funeral, The Freddy Velcroman Expedition, and International Spies just to name a few. I’ve always been inspired by the DIY concept of garage rock and punk bands. I’m a huge fan of the ’60s and ’70s psychedelia and pop music.
I would describe my music as Alternative Pop Rock with explorations into Folk/Blues, Reggae and Jazz. I’m trying to find that someplace out there for my music, those ears to hear it and hearts to feel it. It’s been hard with such a wide range of influences. That’s when I realized I’d have to carve out my own corner here on this earth to fly my freak flag.
Keno Nifty is a band made by the artist and part-time musician Ricky Alexander (also known as Chazz Forte online). It’s about a group of fictional musicians (left to right: Marlene, Penny, Apollo, and Niomi) who travel around, get into fights and use music as a coping mechanism.
by Hannah McCausland (aka Berry)
Music is a reflection of experiences – your own experiences, the things you see, the things you hear, the things you do, the things that happen to you, the things that happen to the people you are connected to. To me, making music has become a way of taking what is so deep inside and/or what is so out of of grasp outside and turning it into something that does its best to conceptualize what is impossible for me to understand at the time. And then, hopefully, people can connect with the emotion and relate to it.
by Eli Stevick
After we started Soft Milk in 2015, there was a little buzz going because of our music but also some of wacky on-stage antics. It was just two of us then. We played with some cheap 10-watt amps and wore nothing but ghastly bed sheet costumes.