RECORDINGS
SUNG MOUNTAINS, Sanctuary (2019)
Sung Mountains is an ongoing collaborative music project (aka “a band”) consisting of myself and my partner Jay Fiske, and sometimes others.
Our first album, Sanctuary, was released on March 1, 2019. The album was recorded and mixed by Daniel Nickerson at The Sanctuary in Arcata, California, in June 2018, just weeks before we moved to Missoula, Montana.
The songs on the album were made from demos and loose structures we’d been playing with together, in some form or another, since we met in 2014. In the brief weeks we had between meeting Daniel and leaving town, we wrote finalized music and lyrics to these demos, recording them all over the course of three or four days. We also added two covers we’d been playing in recent days: “Dolphins” by Fred Neil, and “Blue August Moon” (“St. Elmo’s Fire”) by Brian Eno. Daniel added instrumentation to most of these tracks: an easy and natural collaboration we feel lucky to have gotten to experience.
The name Sung Mountains refers to a passage in Gary Snyder’s The Real Work, in which he describes his practice of ‘singing the mountain range’ in the places he visited, in an effort to acquaint himself with the land. In this way, we consider Sung Mountains to represent a record of the ranges we’ve encountered and known.
Sanctuary can be found at sungmountains.bandcamp.com, and is also available on Spotify, iTunes, Tidal, and all the other places.
YOUNG FAMILY, You Ruined It (2012)
Young Family was a long-distance musical collaboration between myself and Sam Pink. We recorded and built songs via email and released two albums from 2012-2014.
Our first album, You Ruined It, was named by Tao Lin in FADER Magazine as one of his favorite albums of 2012. He made a music video for our song “$$” in 2013. You Ruined It was later released in a limited (now sold-out) run of cassette tapes by Dazzleships Records.
Our second album, King Cobra, was released on cassette tape by Spork Press.
To listen to and download our albums, please visit youngfamily.bandcamp.com.
HEADBAND, Astral Weeks (2010)
Astral Weeks is the second release from HEADBAND. It was recorded one dark winter night when I was alone in someone else’s cabin in Trinity County, California, using GarageBand and a built-in computer mic.
I recorded the album for my friend Emily May: an album she dearly loved and one we frequently listened to together while living in Portland, Oregon. We’d since lost our shared house and had each scattered to different parts of the country, and I was feeling regretful and heartbroken.
The entire recording took about two hours and can be thought of as a demo—rough and raw as the vocals and levels are. Still, it’s an important timestamp to me of where I was and what I cared about at a very specific time.
All songs written by Van Morrison. Copyright Van Morrison, 1968.
Astral Weeks by HEADBAND is available to stream, purchase, and download on Bandcamp.
HEADBAND, Good Green Leaves (2009)
Good Green Leaves is the first album I recorded on my own, under the moniker HEADBAND. I made it using GarageBand on my Mac laptop using only the built-in mic, and recorded it between Eureka, California, Telluride, Colorado, and Portland, Oregon, from 2008-2009.
These songs are written about and represent a time when I was moving around the country a lot, feeling generally heartbroken and unsure of what to do or where to go. I was 22-23 years old when writing and recording these songs, drifting through the recession and living between a duplex in Northeast Portland with my best friend Emily, my teenage bedroom in Eureka, and employee housing in a remote mountain town in Southeast Colorado. The majority of the songs are about being young and aimless and broke in a city of young, aimless, broke people: a love letter to living in Portland, Oregon in 2008.
Good Green Leaves is available to stream, purchase, and download on Bandcamp.