I'm releasing my first EP soon. This is what the cover is going to look like.
My dad came to visit me in Portland for my 19th birthday. I remember sitting together in my apartment downtown, looking at the city from my 4th-floor view, and talking to each other about goals and resolutions for the new year. I told him that I wanted to release my first EP in 2015. This was in December of 2014.
Clearly I didn't quite reach that goal. It wasn't really a goal even, just something that felt good to talk about. I hadn't the slightest clue of how to go about doing it. I had nothing going for me - barely any material, no money, no studio experience, and no deadlines/set dates to hold myself to, so there was really no way it was ever going to happen, at least back then.
But I'm honestly really happy it didn't happen back then. I don't want to think about how it would have sounded or the money I would've spent or how unprepared I would've been once I actually got into a studio.
The whole thing was recorded in my apartment and Sal's town home in Aloha. Up until about March or April. I was going to hire a drummer, hit my buddy Alex Koehler's studio, and have Sal and Alex co-produce it. As I started working on some demos, I realized I was already doing a lot of the production work myself, and programming the drums myself made me realize I didn't need a drummer after all. On top of that, Sal started releasing some amazing-sounding tracks by himself, without spending thousands of dollars in a studio. Given that I have a better relationship with him than any engineer in the world, I asked him if he'd like to help produce, mix, and master it. He said he was down and that's pretty much how it happened. I challenged myself in May to record for two hours each day in my apartment, not knowing if I would finish one song or the entire project. I ended up finishing 6 songs with a few days to spare. sort of to my own astonishment. The last few months have consisted of me heading over to Sal's spot a few times each month to record vocals and produce the tracks. We just redid some vocal takes on Thursday and now the thing's ready to be mixed.
My idea for this record was to have it be a snapshot of my life from when I was 18-19, which is when all of the songs were written. It covers some of the insanity of going to and leaving Switzerland, biking to Portland from Salt Lake City, the heartbreak I was experiencing at the time, getting into dating, and the honeymoon phase of my first relationship.
I hear a lot of my heroes, in reference to their younger selves, saying, "Man, I was so green back then!" Green, to me, is inexperience seen in a positive light. It's being the new guy who doesn't know much but is attentive and willing to learn. It's that young, fresh, and optimistic, if naive, view on life. Everything at this point in my life was new and exciting, and my next release is going to cover the flip side of that - topics of jadedness (or whatever the noun of jaded is) and the end of my first relationship.
There's going to be a bonus track on the physical copy, an additional track to the 5 tunes that will be available on streaming services, and the order is also going to be different for each. The CD is going to be in biographical order to better tell my story, and for Spotify I'm going to put what I think are the most commercially accessible tunes first.
That's pretty much all I have to say for the moment. The photo for the cover was taken on Lake Lucerne from my exchange year in Switzerland, an experience without which none of this would exist.
I'm excited for you to hear what I've been working on and your continued support means the world to me! :)
Thanks so much for reading.
Talk to you soon,
Ev
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