Hey there, thanks for taking the time to answer these and congratulations on the release of your second full length album “Though life has turned out nothing like I imagined, it is far better than I could have dreamt”.
To start things off, could you tell us more about your musical background and what led you to start Breaths?
Great question, not sure there’s enough room here, but I’ll go for the abridged version.
I played guitar in bands starting at 16 (for context I turned 40 last week, same day my new album was released) until my late 20’s, when I dropped out of music completely from being disheartened and jaded on the scene/industry.
I started a nu-metal band called Eighth Ground back in ’98.
We played a lot of big shows, opened for some awesome bands, put out 2 independent albums, and had some good label interest at the time…but then it imploded in 2000 when everyone started to go their own way in life (as you do growing up I suppose).
A few members wanted to pursue furthering their education, but I wanted to keep focusing more on music, so I joined an alt-metal band called Subcore and helped them define their sound.
We put out an independent EP, then eventually morphed into a post-hardcore/alternative/pop-punk band called Furthest From the Star for the full-length.
This was due to some member changes, a change in sound, never really liking the name.
We went through multiple drummers and shifts in sound, and eventually just grew apart musically and called in quits around 2009.
That’s the point that I decided to step away from music completely for the most part.
I picked up my guitar maybe a few times a month at most for years.
That is until I moved back to my old hometown of Austin, TX from Seattle, WA (where I’d been living for a few years) and started jamming with my old FFTS singer who had an indie rock band at the time, called Frederick.
I was with that band for a short time, recorded a single, then it kinda just fell apart (we couldn’t find a drummer and just got tired of the search).
Soon after that I met my (now) wife and we moved to Richmond, VA the next year (where she was from and where we currently live).
She encouraged me to start playing again, so I found a local band looking for a guitarist and we started jamming.
I convinced them to let me try my hand at singing (which I’d always wanted to do, but had never done in a band).
That band, Conductor, recorded an EP then split back in 2019.
I had some ideas left over from that band and worked remotely with my friend (and old FFTS bassist) back in Austin to record an EP under the name CHNNLR.
That came out in summer of 2020.
That project was/is really slow moving, and I get pretty impatient when I have ideas so I decided to try my hand at production/programming/engineering my own stuff (my friend had done all the heavy lifting for CHNNLR, I had just tracked vocals/guitar and sent him the tracks for the rest).
I had a few ideas that I didn’t think fit with CHNNLR, so I just went for it.
Over the next 6 months or so (around August of 2020 - till end of year) I worked on the Breaths debut ‘Lined in Silver’.
I’m super proud of how that came out, especially for my first attempt at doing everything on my own…and here we are, with the release of my 2nd album a year later.
What would you say are your biggest musical influences and inspirations when writing for Breaths?
It honestly varies song to song.
I like to pull from everything I enjoy when it makes sense.
I love a lot of heavy music, as well as post-hardcore and a lot of shoegaze.
I primarily listen to blackgaze, post-metal, doom/doomgaze, and shoegaze these days, so my 3rd album is shaping up to be a bit slower and doomier overall.
I have a split coming out in April with the Swedish post-metal band, Dimwind, and it just happens to be my longest (15 mins), fastest and heaviest song yet.
It also features Chad Kapper of Frontierer on guest vocals. Then later in the year I’m releasing another split with some awesome blackgaze friends of mine (3 artists total) and I get to explore that side a bit more before the 3rd album (which again is more doom-adjacent).
Why choose “Breaths” as the name that best represents your music?
I chose it due to a few things happening at that point in the pandemic.
The fact that Covid was attacking the lungs primarily, and just imagining (morbid pandemic/quarantine paranoia) that feeling of not being able to Breathe, and your lungs just being taken over by this virus.
That combined with the murder of George Floyd, and his screams of “I can’t breathe!” just really stuck with me.
It was such a politically charged year, with Trump helping to tear the country apart.
Living in Richmond, and downtown at that, I was right down the street from the protests and all of the monuments that were torn down.
It was beautiful to see the city come together, but also brought out a lot of hillbilly racists and reminded me how deplorable people can be.
So far, both of your albums (your latest one in particular) deal with very personal traumatic events quite openly.
What is the process for you in approaching these subjects and writing music that captures the emotions and thoughts that come with, but in a way that can also be consumed and understood by a wide audience?
For my debut, ‘Lined in Silver’ it was a mix of topics.
The album started with the song ‘In Nightmares’ which was a song about a bout of sleep paralysis I had when my son was just born (from lack of sleep I suppose) and the pandemic had just hit (he was born only a few weeks before the pandemic hit the US).
Then I branched out into other topics. For example, the title track ‘Lined in Silver’ is about how my family was my center and helped me through the pandemic.
It’s a love song to my wife and children, but also expanding out in the universal sense, it was a song hoping the world found our way through together.
The closing track, ‘In Repose’ is like ‘Lined in Silver’ pt2. It continued the lyrical content, but even more personal directed to my daughter as I would put her to bed every night.
‘The Forgotten Ones’ is kind of my vegan anthem…a song about animal suffering but not super direct. I tried to make the lyrics sound universal, but there is definitely an intent there.
The album as a whole was written as a commentary to things I was seeing and experiencing, both super personal and more universal, throughout the first year of the pandemic.
The new album, ‘Though life…’ is all very personal.
Each song details a traumatic event from my life, with the exception of ‘The Matriarch’ which is a song of thanks for my mom’s love and support throughout my entire life. For a brief track breakdown:
1. The Elders - This is about losing my grandparents starting really young (at 3 years old my father’s father passed). I was very close to my grandmother (mother’s mother) who I lost to cancer when I was 8. The remainder of my grandparents passed during my early 20’s.
2. The Patriarch - This is a song to my father who passed away 3 days before my 11th birthday. It’s the song that started the whole idea for the record and my favorite song from the record. It hits me hard every time.
3. The Tormented - This one’s about being bullied in middle school.
Being bullied was very traumatic for me, and I hope my kids never know what it feels like.
4. The Empty - This is a culmination of general failures and loneliness throughout my 20’s and early 30’s even…just kind of feeling lost in failed relationships and failed bands (back when I was trying to make a career out of music).
It has a feeling of lacking purpose in life, but with a glimmer of hope that my best days were not behind me (and they absolutely were not behind me).
5. The Matriarch - I talked about this one earlier, but my mom raised me and gave me everything I had. She stood by me through a lot and still does to this day.
She’s always there for me and my family, and we would be lost without her.
6. The Wayward - This is another super emotional one.
My brother passed away a few years ago. He was my half-brother and was 14 years older than me, so I didn’t ever know him that well as a kid.
I looked up to him, thinking he was the coolest person ever.
He got me into rock and metal, and gave me my first rock tape (which I talk about in the song), Stone Temple Pilots - Purple.
He got me into all kinds of metal too. He was also a giant alcoholic, so much so that it took him eventually to the grave.
It’s a love/hate song to him because he was my brother, but he was also a huge asshole to me and bullied me when I was young.
He just was not a good person in general, so I had actually cut him off years before his death. It’s complicated, but that song was meant to be my farewell to him.
Do you consider this process to be healthy and therapeutic to you?
Absolutely, especially this newest album. It was very cathartic.
In my write-up concerning your new album I mentioned feeling as though it was more focused stylistically compared to “Lined In Silver” which felt as though it tapped into a broader range of genres.
Is this something you did purposefully or did it just happen naturally as you went through the writing process?
I feel like it happened naturally.
I had so many ideas and things I wanted to do when I wrote ‘Lined in Silver’, which helped me sorta hone what worked for me and what areas I didn’t want to revisit going into ‘Though life…’.
The same can be said about my (in-progress) 3rd album, which is shaping up to be much more focused on slower tempos and a doomgaze style.
It’s less all over the map, genre wise.
I also have 2 splits in the works (one coming out in April, and one is TBD late 2022), both of which have their own focus and intent.
The first split song is 15 min’s long and very much blackened hardcore and the heaviest thing I’ve done for the first half.
Then it goes into a very post-rock/shoegaze 2nd half (with some re-visits to the heaviness at the end).
The song also features a guest vocal appearance from Chad Kapper of Frontierer, which is crazy. He’s such an awesome guy.
The 2nd split is with 2 friends of mine, 2 other solo blackgaze artists, and my contribution is much more in that vein.
I have 2 songs that are going to be on that, both of which are very much in the ambient blackgaze realm, in the vein of bands like Alcest, Lantlos, Les Discrets, etc.
Would you consider bringing Breaths to the stage or will it remain a studio project?
I actually started putting together a live band this past summer, but it ended up turning into a different project then ultimately a studio project.
This time it’s with a friend of mine (so a duo) and is more of a grunge/post-hardcore/shoegaze style, and it’s called Roseneath. We have an EP coming out in May.
As for Breaths, I’d still take it live someday if the demand is there and/or if it works.
I’m older, have a family and full-time career, so not much in the touring life for me. I’d love to do some festivals or small east coast runs someday though.
Ideally, which artists/bands would you like to go on tour with as Breaths?
Holy Fawn, Alcest, The Ocean, Cult of Luna, Deafheaven, Deftones, Lantlos, YOB, Sumac, Cave In, Hum, Converge, LLNN, SOM, Junius, Baroness, Monolord…the list goes on with bands I love.
What is one thing you really enjoy about being a one-man band and one thing you hate?
I love the freedom to work at my own pace and explore my own ideas for each instrument.
I don’t spend much time second guessing my riffs, song structures, melodies, etc…
I tend to stick with my initial thought/feeling. I tweak them from there, but re-writes are rare. Bands I’ve been in, and other people I’ve worked with can obsess over the smallest things, which is fine…but I just tend to stick with what I feel from the beginning and expand on that.
I enjoy being the master of my own destiny when it comes to my music.
I don’t really hate anything about being a solo musician at this point in my life/career.
It allows me to create music on a regular basis as it comes to me, from my home without having to be away from my family, and also allows me to move at the fast pace I tend to move at (an album per year so far, and looking like the trend will continue with the 3rd album).
Finally, if you had any piece of advice for musicians aspiring to start their own one-man band, what would you tell them?
Depends on what kind of production / sound you’re going for, but software matters.
The drum program quality makes all the difference to me in my music.
I started using the drums in logic, then quickly moved to Superior Drummer 3 while writing ‘Lined in Silver’, which made a world of difference.
Also, depending on what you’re going for, but for guitar and bass sounds my Helix is key.
Don’t be afraid to experiment, layer, just try until you get the sound you’re going for.
I had never engineered or mixed / mastered anything before doing Breaths, so you can absolutely do it if I can.
The only advantage I had going in was watching engineers/producers and learning from being a band member when my bands would record over the years.
Plus I know the sounds I’m going for…so I just experiment until I get there.
Lastly, just have fun with it. I lost myself when I put too much pressure to make money off of my music in my late teens through my late 20’s and I ended up being so jaded I walked away from music for almost a decade.
It was good and bad, in that it fueled me to do what I do now and took the pressure off.
It was bad though since I was not creating what I’m passionate about for almost a decade…so point is, do it because you love it, period.
There should be no other reason, and the rest may or may not come.
Thanks again for taking the time to answer these and best of luck in your future projects!
All the best!
Thanks so much for the opportunity!
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