Photo by: Will Williams
This piece was originally featured in AM01 — Issue One of Ascribe. Click here to read it alongside the rest of the issue.
Last time we spoke you called yourself a romantic. You’re now in a relationship with your girlfriend, Eve, and recently released your shades of you EP. The EP is described as a “sonic love letter to not only his lover but his supporters who have stuck by him for all these years.” Can you tell us how being in that relationship has changed your music process?
You know, before Eve all of my music was very sad. I was just this hopeless romantic who couldn’t find someone to love me or give me the time of day, and I think being with her was very organic in the sense of “oh, I’m in a relationship now.” I have to make this positive music because I am still a writer at heart, so I think whatever came to me was what I was going to write about. Just being with her, the love she has for me, and the love I have for her have just made me want to try different sounds.
I think that’s the feeling she made me feel when I got into the studio and Ian (Gwinnup) started playing certain productions; I started to gravitate to productions that felt like what I was feeling in real life. It happened by happenstance that it became this sonic love letter to her — it was never the idea that we are gonna make an EP all about Eve and the way she makes me feel. It was more “this is what I am writing about, and we have six or seven songs to choose from. Let’s group these together to make an EP and put it out.”
My personal favorite on this EP is the titular song, “shades of you.” Which would you say is yours?
Oh, man. It is always changing, I think right now it could be “27,” but I do go back and forth between “shades of you.” I do think that “Eve” is my favorite to perform live. That’s the one I have noticed when I go and do a house show, or when I did the April Showers Music Festival, people really like to get up and move to that one.
What was it like working with Mixed Signals as well as Macy Crawford on the single “Feel Like Myself Again?”
It was a really, really cool experience. I hadn’t worked with a lot of collaborators. Macy Crawford is such an incredible writer, artist, and just a boss woman in general when it comes to the music industry. She and I wrote it together and we gave it to Mixed Signals. I recorded it with her, and she vocally produced me and everything.
Does the music scene in Charleston, SC — where you reside — affect your style?
I still think I’m very much ingrained in pop, but naturally as I continue to progress as a person it kind of changes. I feel like I’m going more indie pop, just wanting not to have that kind of mainstream feel to it. More so trying to find what really speaks to me.
Lately I’ve noticed that when I work with producers and they start to play things back, it turns out to be in that genre of indie pop or alternative pop, but I still like it to be kind of catchy. That’s just me and my songwriting. I like a catchy chorus, so that is going to be kind of hard to get rid of and change genres.
But other than that, I think I am inspired by other kinds of music. Charleston is very musically inclined, so I love that and it’s always an inspiring place.
If you weren’t creating pop music, is there another genre you want to try?
I think I would probably try rock. A really good rock-and- roll type of thing. I know for me, I cannot really do it. Or I could be a rapper! I would try that too, but I let myself not do things I am afraid won’t be authentic.
When I think of love, I usually think of cranberries and roses. If you could make your EP into a candle, what scent would you like it to have?
We love candles! If this EP was a candle, I feel like it would smell almost like a pumpkin spice candle. Something like that. It’s kind of got a summery vibe, but kind of goes into fall. I think maybe something with a hint of pumpkin, vanilla … and maybe a little bit of floral.
What can we expect from you next?
You know, I had a minute there where I said I was going to take a break from music. I did. I did take a solid good two weeks off. I think at first I was very serious about it, and I thought I need to take a second when it comes to the promotion side — the business aspect, it kept not working out.
This project took over a year; I was just so excited about it. You post about it, then it’s not reaching your usual audience because of the algorithms and things like that, and you get discouraged. Money and time go into this stuff, and you have people around you who are expecting certain numbers from you in order to continue.
I think it was kind of draining in the sense that I didn’t want to lose the fun of music. I took those two weeks to not really look at what I was putting out as a business thing anymore. At the end of last month, I had to go into it with a fresh mindset of “let’s make the music, and let’s give the business to a team and let them promote it for me.”
In terms of music, I haven’t been in the studio since the beginning of October, but I am going to start working with some new producers in an official studio soon.
I think I am done with the EPs. I think I want to do my very first album. That will be coming in the new year.
