I moved to Los Angeles in January of 2020. I had just finished up classes at Boston University and proceeded to take the biggest leap of faith in my life and move across the country to pursue a career in music. Up until March of that year things were going pretty well: I got some of my first mix clients, started doing my first sessions, and met some new friends along the way. Then the world fell apart and I had to move back to my parents’ basement in Louisville, Kentucky. For the first time I started to question my decisions. How can I make a living off music? I love doing it but how can I have a sustainable career?
After a few months of sitting in the basement in Kentucky I decided to book a one way ticket back to LA in early May. Still in the height of the pandemic, I figured that if I could be scrappy I could formulate some sort of a viable career off of my music. And if I could do it during a pandemic, I could definitely have an easier time when the world returned to some semblance of normalcy. Between mixing clients, production lessons, and taking some production fees here and there, I managed to do this for almost a year.
Then in April of 2021 I played a show in a friend’s backyard and invited a bunch of A&R’s and music industry people to swing by. Over the course of the next few months I got on the phone with major labels and one of the reoccurring themes I heard was that it wasn’t just about the music in today’s industry - I had to have the full package. I was told that I had to have a way bigger social media presence, that I needed to blow up on Tik Tok, that what I was doing wasn’t enough, even if the music was there.
Hearing a bunch of voices pulling me in different directions made it seem like I had to focus on everything but the music, and that became incredibly toxic - especially to me as someone who has built meaning in life around making songs.
Overstimulated is a project that comments on my personal journey and its overwhelming nature. When life gets hectic, my primary coping mechanism is to lock myself in a room and work it out with music. Sometimes I don’t really know how to communicate, so I suppose this project is my way of sharing that experience with the world.
