On Friday I released a new EP titled Uprooted. The music is a departure from my usual, heavily-technical style. If you have not yet listened to it you can download it here:
Or stream:
Background
The project actually started as a mixtape. The only songs that survived after the mixtape was abandoned were “Chase the Spark” and “Everything She Never Wanted,” though the latter was in a completely different form. I had a tracklist for the mixtape and everything. Then “Miss You All the Same” just kind of happened. Wasn’t sure what to do with it. It didn’t fit on the mixtape anywhere. I even offered it to Rawhide. Then, a lot of stress entered my life. I lost my apartment, got a dog and bought a house. Just as we were reaching the closing, Chester Bennington passed away.
I was in a new home, my own home, and yet everything felt so bittersweet. At first I couldn’t listen to Linkin Park at all. Chester was always the voice that comforted me when I needed it most, but now he was the cause of the pain. Slowly I started listening to Linkin Park again and, despite the fact it was Chester I was sad about, it comforted me just as it always did. Soon it became all I listened to for months. Once I finally found the nerve to put pen to paper again, I wrote “Moment of Zen,” which is one of the most uplifting songs I’ve ever written. It’s weird – the more depressed I get, the less I want to write about the depression.
Reading the lyrics to “Moment of Zen” on the page, I could hear how it needed to be delivered. I listened back through some beats I got from Anno Domini and knew right away when I had found the perfect one for the song. Now, with two songs that sounded nothing like the rest of the mixtape and Linkin Park-inspired lyrics still flowing out of me, I abandoned the mixtape and just let the pen guide my hand.
“The Day She Grew Up” was next. This was a song I had conceptualized a while ago. I was looking for open mics in my area but every place I found was a bar where the cover bands played mostly “dadrock.” I thought about how I could make an impact on a generation older than my own while making music that is very much my own. With a little Yelawolf influence, I decided to make a song loaded with classic rock references. And it fit perfectly with the overall concept for the EP. Finally, “Jane Lane” was written in bits and pieces but the song was crafted into form the very same day Rawhide sent over his cover of “Standing on My Neck,” at my request.
Concept
The theme of the EP is how a person’s relationship with music changes as their romantic relationships change. Not only is music a recurring theme in the lyrics, but the songs themselves are diverse, representing the stages of meeting, bonding, growing apart from, missing and being haunted by a significant other. The first song, “Chase the Spark” takes place after the other five, foreshadowing the events and letting the listener know “this won’t end well.”
Title
Uprooted is the perfect title for this project because it has three meanings:
- It is a departure from a style that I have been using for over 15 years
- This is the first project I created since I physically uprooted myself and moved into a house
- The obvious connection with the name Rootbeer
Here are some working titles for when the project was in a mixtape stage:
- Hood Release II
- The Holdover
- Hood Release II: The Holdover
Once I went the EP route I was going to call it Everything You Never Wanted because it is a departure from my original style that no one asked for.
“Everything She Never Wanted,” the song, was originally called “Where Did I Go Wrong” and it was the first verse squished together with the second part of the second verse (all the singing segments). Then I was going to add a sung version of a passage from the graphic novel series Lone Wolf and Cub and retitle the song Kozuo after the author Kozuo Koike. However, the verses didn’t fit together thematically. Once I decided on the name Uprooted for the EP, that freed up the title “Everything You Never Wanted” which, with a little twist, I wrote a hook around and was able to finish that song.
Mixing & Mastering
The engineer from Fear of Success and Rootbeer Ruins Everything, who is still a good friend, now works for Buzzfeed. He still mixes on the side, but was booked up for months. I reached out to a few others who each worked very hard on the project, but in the end our visions did not match. Dan referred me to Scoops, whose studio we used to mix Rootbeer Ruins Everything and he quickly sent me back a mix of “Chase the Spark” that I struggled to find anything wrong with. Even Rawhide, who is usually even pickier than I am with mixing, said “I’m pretty impressed with this guy.” The only other person he’s ever said that about was Mandingo.
Artwork
The cover was designed by Andrea Malatesta, who was also the artist and photographer for Fear of Success and Rootbeer Ruins Everything. For this post she offers an alternate cover featuring our dog:
What about In/Stability?
That album is still very much a thing. It has not been abandoned, but it did take a backseat to Uprooted for the past several months. This was actually an intentional part of the process. The full title is In/Stability: The Ultimate Ending and it is a spiritual sequel to my 2009 album Alternate Ending. When creating Alternate Ending, I wrote and recorded half of the songs when I was still in high school, then took some time away from it, put out the Hood Release Mixxxtape, and finished the other half my sophomore year of college. I wanted to repeat that approach. Uprooted is like Hood Release in that it is a project I made when I hit the 50% mark on a full-length album and took a break. But that’s 50% recorded. It’s 95% written and all beats have been selected. However, despite that high level of completion there is much more to do behind the scenes and I do not want to release the album until its path is clear. Therefore, I cannot commit to a 2018 release date. Not saying it won’t happen but more new music will be coming this year whether it is in the form of that album or not.