Irregular Note 3: On Releasing Music and Philly Love Songs
some musings about the new music I'm releasing and my songwriting as it relates to my creative writing
I dropped an EP today (8/23/24). I’m currently in Cape Cod for a work thing. Never been to New England as an adult. As I write, my phone battery is on less than ten percent. I forgot my apple charger but I think it would be useful to write some reflections (maybe even almost a type of liner notes) for my EP Philly Love Songs.
On the real, I have struggled a lot with songwriting over the past 3 years. I moved back to Philly after writing my album Rustbelt Radio. I had a lot of drive in the first few months back to write and release new music. I was cooking up songs every day. I’d wake up and make music. Three of the songs on the EP are songs I wrote in 2021. Solar Flare, Peanut Butter Honey and Gigabyte all started in that period after I moved back to Philly. The songs feel so old. The other two I wrote in 2022 and 2023 respectively. I’ve been playing them with the band so much that some friends who have been coming to the shows know the songs by heart. That’s a cute part.
(a still from the visualizer Pat made for Peanut Butter Honey)
I have been really blessed to have a really wonderful group of musicians assist me in making these songs work. I had always wanted live drums on my records. I finally did it on this EP. I often feel insecure about musical abilities. But it is deeply rewarding to be able to call on friends for collaboration. To Caleb, Jules, Eli, Manny, Coby and Louis, I am so grateful to ya’ll. These songs have your fingerprints all over them in the most beautiful ways.
My favorite song on the project is Jumbled Up though I honestly love all of them. Jumbled Up is the newest song in the bunch and feels like my best and most sincere songwriting. Despite this, I love all of the songs on the EP because none of them feels unfinished or like filler. And that feels really good, I cannot express that enough. I think I have a lot of projects where I have songs on there that I honestly don’t like but I love all of the songs on this EP. They are full. I still don’t know where I exist in terms of genre specificity but I like to think all of my music has a soul quality. Tiffany (Orion Sun) talked about that in an interview one time. Jumbled Up definitely a country song fuck what them white kids on TikTok saying.
(a still from the visualizer that Pat made for Jumbled up)
But anyway, I started writing short stories, creative nonfiction and novels in earnest in 2021. In many ways, this stymied my efforts in terms of my songwriting. Previously, my songwriting had been stymied by my own mental health challenges, technical limitations in terms of recording and the community organizing work I was doing. For the first time, I felt genuinely uninterested in songwriting. This is okay but it was new and strange. As excited as I am to put out this new EP, I also feel sorta frustrated that it wasn’t a full album. Unfortunately, these songs are the product of my past three years (well apart from all the stuff you haven’t heard) and that feels sorta bad. But I also wrote a novel and several short stories.
I have been reading a book about polymaths by Peter Burke. Polymath is a term that is used to refer to someone whose knowledge spans multiple subjects. I have written and published a book on black history and political theory (under a pseudonym), drafted novels and composed songs. In an era of increasing specialization, this often feels like a weakness. I feel insecure when talking to my writer friends or insecure when talking to my music friends because I don’t match either of these groups of people in terms of my dedication.
I took a train to Los Angeles in 2022. I talked to a professional drummer who was traveling from NYC to LA on the train. He said that I needed to lock in and choose a thing. It felt like good advice at the time. But I’m realizing in a lot of ways that a binary of interests is false and also boring in times of life. Despite my frustration with this set of songs in terms of how long it took for me to produce them, I am proud of being a multi-faceted individual with a variety of artistic skills. I have to write that down to believe it in all honesty because as I said before I often feel insecure. I wonder a lot if I had just committed to doing music if people would fuck with me more? And does that matter? A narrow view of the world can be helpful in terms of refining skill. But I think for me, I struggle to stay in one lane. And I severely wish I could sometimes. Like I want nothing more to be an amazing guitar player rather than a mediocre one. There’s these deep insecurities in terms of skill when it comes to music that I cannot seem to contend with. Sometimes I just be contemplating like damn do i suck? But then I go listen to my old shit and I’m like “nah, my shit hard”.
I have written another 20 or so songs that will come out at some point. Some of these songs I have written with my dear friend Kira. I cannot wait for you to hear them all. But I also cannot wait for you to read my novel, read my short stories, and listen to my (redacted).
I wish I had an uplifting message at the end of this note but I do not. Being a creative person is hard. Being a musician is hard. Being a musician and a writer is hard. Working for three years on a few songs then releasing them into the ether feels hard cause we all know that streaming don’t pay nothing. Maybe I should’ve made more TikToks instead of writing a novel. Maybe I should’ve applied to the MFA program? Maybe I should’ve focused on my career instead of being involved in social struggles against policing and racism? It is really easy to ask yourself those things and question your decisions. It can eat at you. I don’t really have no answer to it either.
Either way, Philly Love Songs is out. Stream it everywhere! Buy it here. Go watch some of the videos we made to promote it here. New announcements about some new stuff that Maurice and I are working on next week. I’m dropping Huey, The Cosmonaut t-shirts soon as well. We’ve figured out a design. Got some singles coming out in the next few weeks. I’m also gonna be re-releasing some old essays about Batman in september on here in honor of the Matt Reeves Penguin show dropping. Stay tuned!
-ya favorite polymath,
Luke
(lovely art made by my dear friend Savan, another invaluable collaborator and supporter of mine)