Milwaukee (2007)

Deciding to leave my teaching position in Milwaukee was one of the best creative decisions that I ever made. It reminds me very much of the time that I find myself in now, a transitional state between work and graduate school, when my creative work is a kind of bridge to a new identity.

After living in Milwaukee for a year, I moved back to Madison. I started posting the songs I recorded in Milwaukee and my old work colleague, Gabe Pope, saw them and reached out to play together. We built a friendship, and a recording project called Lower Stacks.

Looking back on it now, one of the things I like most about that time is that I really leaned into the instrumentals. Five of the twelve songs have no lyrics (though one does have “found sound” samples from movies). I was learning how to be a better craftsman with my guitar, so I didn’t feel the need to sing as much. Here you’ll find early versions of “Gonna” and “Chatty Blues,” and “Falling From Space,” all of which would appear on Starlit Parlor.

Listen to the full album on Bandcamp.