Hey, thanks for taking the time to answer some of my questions and congratulations on your latest album release, “everbloom”!
To get things started, I would love to know more about your musical background :
How did you first get into music, your previous bands/projects and what led you to start making music as Secret Gardens?
I’m not sure why but I developed a fondness for music at a relatively young age.
It sort of broke my brain hearing things like Green Day, My Chemical Romance or Foo Fighters for the first time.
I was so wildly intrigued that I had to try playing guitar to see if it was for me, and my parents got me my first guitar the summer before middle school.
Then a few years after I joined my first band Here’s To You, which technically still is a band but we just arent as active.
From 2016-2020 I was in a band called VISTA.
During the last few years of my tenure with VISTA, I got this idea in my head from when I first discovered post-rock, that I could easily make music like that, and make something really impactful.
Since 2016 I’ve always had this idea to do an album that sonically represented each season, but never had the right band to work the idea into.
I eventually moulded this idea into the DNA of SG and used it as the foundation for the project!
Why choose “Secret Gardens” as your moniker?
In 2018 when I was in my last band and it was very active, I began working on these songs in secret as to not detract from said band.
I wanted my own kind of sacred space to make this material and the amount of time to do it.
That’s where the “secret” came from I think.
I hike a lot to get inspired, and find the most inspiration from that point, so at some point that’s where the “gardens” came from, because of all the time I love spending in nature.
I had heard the term “secret garden” before, but the plural seemed like just the right fit for the project and entire vision. It was perfect.
Your newest album “everbloom” is the latest addition to an album cycle dedicated to representing your own experience of the four seasons into music.
What made you want to write music following that conceptual idea?
To be honest, I think if I had never heard The Dear Hunter’s “The Color Spectrum”, I probably wouldn’t have had that idea.
That record is a total work of art and I was always mistified at it’s ability to transcend sound and make you envision/feel other things.
I am a person who categorizes just about every memory I have in terms of season, the time of year, and weather.
It’s the cornerstone for a lot of my memories and emotions, so it felt really right to have musical bodies of work centered around those kind of, personal foundations I have.
There’s a clear stylistical and mood shift between last year’s wintery “Tundra” and this year’s invigorating “everbloom”.
Would you say this accurately portrays a shift from where you were at mentally from working on one album to another?
I would absolutely say that.
My mental state in the winter of 2019-2020 was dogshit, to be honest.
I was going through a lot and most of my experience with “Tundra” was needing to make music that helped me cope.
To some extent, each track on “Tundra” represents a stage of depression or grief I went through, eventually towards acceptance.
With “everbloom”, that was my experience finding the world outside of my grief and depression, and who I am when I decided to emerge out of that hole, when the weather got better and I could move forward with my life. It’s a cycle!
One thing I really enjoy with Secret Gardens is how personal the music feels while also being able to resonate with other people.
Between sharing the personal stories and background that inspired every single track on your socials and adding audio snippets of very personal conversations with close friends or family members within your albums, it feels like we’re being directly included in those moments through your music.
Which is really cool from a story-telling perspective but can also feel a bit voyeuristic?
So I guess my question here is : How do you feel about being this open and personal through the music you make with Secret Gardens and putting it out there for all to hear and see?
It's weird cause I completely see what you’re saying, but I also don’t know how else to be.
I’ve been exposed to so much disingenous shit in the music business that, I need this project to rely on for true honest expression.
Which makes sense, but I know not everyone is invested in every minute detail of my life.
I try to make it as relatable as I can but I have always kind of went with the principle that this project is a diary to some degree.
There are plenty of things I keep private in my life though, haha!
But I try not to stray away from being personal, cause you never know.
Someone could be going through something exactly the same or similar, and they may find the art that I’m making really helpful.
That stuff brings me lots of joy.
Through following you on social media I also picked up on the fact that nature plays a big part in your music with Secret Gardens, so I wanted to ask you how does that appreciation of nature translate into your music and influence it from your perspective?
I don’t know how this happens but, something in the creative part of my brain just gets working when im hiking.
Musical tidbits or little guitar riffs will just start forming in my head, I’ll hear an entire piece of music that needs to come out, and I’ll have to record on my iphone voice memos app, miming the parts with singing, and then go to recreate it later.
That’s how a lot of SG music has been written.
I find that nature inspries a lot of the visuals too, because its one of the only real things we have in this world that is unquestionable and tangible, at least to me.
I also like to do bigger excursions in nature, which can get pretty gnarly, so that alone gives me lots of experiences to write about.
Secret Gardens doesn’t seem to be anchored in just one specific musical genre, so I’m curious to ask who would be your biggest influences when you’re writing material?
It really depends on the vibe I’m going for!
For “everbloom”, my influences were definitely varied in a different space than with “Tundra”.
There are characteristics they both share, but I often listen to different music as different seasons come in.
So my set of influences will change, but I like all the different sounds.
I feel like it’s best to keep your ear to the ground on different types of music.
Which aspects of being a (partly) one-man band do you enjoy the most and what are some of the more challenging aspects for you?
It’s challenging to get shows to work out and getting schedules aligned for multiple people.
Its challenging networking and being the only one out there who’s going to bat for myself, being the only one who believes in it as much as I do, it can get really lonely and it can feel like an uphill battle.
However, creatively, I can do whatever the heck I want and that’s amazing.
I can collaborate with whoever in a business and musical sense, its all up to me.
I can oversee all of the visuals, and how everything is presented.
I’m not perfect at all of it, but sometimes its good to fuck up and find out for yourself.
But also on the other side of it, assemblilng a great team is key, having people in your corner that you trust.
What would be your main advice to other musicians who would like to start their own project?
Just do what you love, and spend a while with the people you are collaborating with, inside and outside of music.
A lot of musicians are looking to connect socially as well.
It can be a beautiful thing when it lines up right.
Always be scheming! You don’t have to be making 1 song a week, but definitley always be thinking about the project and any work you could do on it.
Lastly, as of now, what can we expect for the conclusion of this seasonal cycle of albums with it coming to a close on Autumn?
I wouldn’t expect anything in 2023, I am probably going to take a good chunk of time before I would begin the next record cycle, and I also believe in “everbloom” so much that I think it should have its time promotion-wise!
I have plenty of ideas for SG4, but at the moment, I have been taking a break from new material, in order to let inspiration build up and for more life to pass by.
I worked on the winter and spring LP’s so fast after each other, a little more time to recharge the batteries is well needed. It’ll be worth it though.
Thanks for having me on!