As promised, I have my very first demo for you.

Quite honestly, this feels terrifying to me. I have always been so scared to share unfinished work, especially without a million qualifiers.

If I were the old me, I would tell you how this isn’t complete yet, the mixing is still being adjusted, the vocals are not fully edited, not to mention it hasn’t even been optimized for all speaker types or mastered in any way.

And while all of that is true, my challenge to myself in the coming weeks and months is to simply stop caring. To allow the imperfections to speak for themselves, to let the humanity in my work shine through, and to grow comfortable with the journey and the evolution.

This is the lead single, Becoming. It will be finished and released very, very soon, and I hope you enjoy your first little taste.

Xoxo,

Austin

Each month, I will be sharing a tightly curated playlist made exclusively for my paid subscribers. I think through these playlists very carefully, so my strong recommendation is to listen to it from top to bottom rather than on shuffle.

This month, I am sharing a set inspired by the sun and the end of summer; that particular nostaligic feeling when you k…

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On Becoming…

How this journey began and where we are headed

I’m becoming something new. It’s formless and difficult to describe; I don’t know who I am right now, but I know who I’d like to be.

I often feel vulnerable and shaky, like a newborn pony struggling to find its footing (it is the Year of the Fire Horse, after all). Last year, the life I had been living imploded: I left impassioned leadership positions out of a moral crisis; I was T-boned in my car, and it was totaled; I lost my dead-end 9-to-5 job; my only brother passed away after a five-year-long battle with brain cancer, and my mom was diagnosed immediately after with kidney cancer. All the while, the world was (and still is) burning, with genocide and war and starvation and inequity and atrocity and autonomous killing machines, and oh yeah, did I mention that the earth is actually very, very angry at us humans?

My illusions about reality began to slip away as I reckoned with the carnage and disease and death surrounding me.

And so, standing in the middle of the rubble, I had a decision to make. Would I try to continue on as I always had before, shape-shifting into the person that I believed society wanted me to be? Or would I break the spell once and for all to build a life that I actually believed in and wanted?

Could I build a life I was truly proud of?

The one thing I’ve wanted more than anything else in the world, my earliest wish, is to make music. To be a musician… to be an artist. And secondly, I’ve always wanted to make a difference and to be a force of good. I want the art that I create to say something, to mean something, and I want to stand for something.

But the truth is, I’ve put this essay off for months now.

Call it fear, imposter syndrome, or at times, your run-of-the-mill procrastination—whatever it may be, I’ve been crippled by anxiety that I’m not good enough to actually make a career out of music.

Why would anyone even care to support my work? Who am I to think that among over 100,000 tracks uploaded to streaming each day, my music could break out above the noise to reach and impact listeners?

Last year, I made an announcement that I was making an album and I would be taking you along for the journey.

And then life happened, and oftentimes to my detriment, I’m a very private person by nature. I prefer holding my cards close to my chest, only sharing when the thought is fully formed, the work is perfected, and I am 100% certain that the reception will be as I hope it will be.

So I’ve been moving in silence; quietly working away. Studying and refining and shaping. Crafting and editing and editing again. Trying my hardest to make some damn good music.

The album that I’m making is no small feat: 4 distinct acts, 16 tracks, all completely written, produced, and performed by me.

I’ve been crystal clear on the story that I want to tell with this project for a while now. You may have been able to guess from the hint’s I’ve dropped along the way, the project is called Becoming, and that’s exactly what it’s about.

The past couple of years of my life have been a true refinery. Forcing me to face the rawest materials of my being and allowing them to become their truest form, oftentimes outside of my own direction or understanding.

Distilling all of this growth within myself, my own metamorphosis, and capturing the moment that we are living in globally, that can’t be that hard, right?

On Artistry, Artificial Intelligence, and Sustainability…

What to expect from this space and the future

As I begin this journey as a fully independent artist, it’s a tough balancing act to sustain and support my life and bills while also trying to create art.

It’s also been difficult to ascertain exactly how I want to share the journey and the process of creation. As technology is rapidly advancing, there is so much emphasis on the artificiality of it all. Where we humans fail, automation and agentic offloading can fill in the gaps.

Some would suggest that the creative process can be offloaded or even entirely handled by machines. There are more and more AI musicians flooding the charts; Suno is taking the internet by storm, and it’s becoming more difficult to tell what is real and what is generated.

What I am certain of is this: art and creation are uniquely human functions. To craft something out of nothing, to play god and deity, is to participate in an ancient practice that transcends our time or era as a species

What I am also certain of is that the “broligarchs” are LYING to us. Artificial intelligence cannot make art. Computers and robots cannot create something out of nothing - they are simply relying on patterns, extraction, and theft to do what only we humans can do.

Frankly, we are at an impasse that I believe will be one of the defining issues of this era: what creativity says about our humanity, and how uniquely human-made art serves as a greater testament to humankind’s excellence and consciousness.

I want to be part of that testament in my own unique and minuscule way, which is why I’ve ventured into this little corner of the internet. My vision is very uncharted territory, but a little trial and error never hurt anybody.

So here’s what you can expect out of this space (for free!)

• Monthly essays like this one

• Multiple album updates weekly, with voice memos, production demos, snippets, and more

• Lyric teases and a behind-the-scenes look at my writing processes

• Exclusive information on release dates and other updates

If you decide that you would like to support me financially (it’s just one coffee a month!), you can expect bonus content like monthly curated playlists (available now!), complete access to my research and mood boards (coming soon!), and detailed & complete music demos.

Basically, my goal with this space is to have it be a living testament to the brain power and creativity that I am putting into my work, to show that this is human-made from start to finish.

I do hope that you will subscribe—even a free subscription goes a long way to help me build this career from scratch, and if I do my job right, we will create something uniquely revolutionary, sustainable, and necessary, together.

On Telling the Truth, The Whole Truth, & Nothing But The Truth…

When I was a teenager growing into an adult, I was convinced that theatre was my life’s calling. I was lucky enough to train and work with world-renowned artists at one of Atlanta’s nationally renowned regional theaters.

An early mentor and teacher of mine, the playwright Pearl Cleage, taught me some of my most fundamental lessons in how to weave my stories into something beautiful and transformative and, most of all, true.

Every day, as we students sat down to write, she had us recite the old courtroom words, “I promise to write the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

I still carry that with me, and in everything that I create, I hope that it comes from a place of authenticity and truth. And I guess in writing all of this here for you, I’m hoping that the truth will set me free.

I can’t promise you perfection. I’m not going to be always on time, and I’m sure that I will miss posting here and there. But what I can absolutely assure you is that I will tell you, and myself, hopefully, the truth. The whole truth. And nothing but the truth.

If you believe in truth, in authenticity, in human-made and human-first storytelling, then this is the place for you. I’ve got so much more to say and so much more to share.

The album is extremely close, much closer than I can even begin to process. The lead single is even closer, and I’m kind of panicking about it, but I am just so, so, so excited to get it out into the ether. In this space, you will be the first to experience any of this world that I am building and the first to know when it is on its way.

By taking this first step, I’m hoping that we can build something meaningful together. That we can RESIST together, and refuse to accept what we’ve been told is inevitable. Our joint forces, our collective joy, our insistence on liberation are all resistance in the face of incomprehensible tyranny. Keep up the fight, and participate in good trouble however and whenever you can, my beloved.

I’m really fucking proud of this music I’m making, frankly. I can’t wait to share more with you over the coming days and weeks and months; we’ve got quite the journey ahead of us.

Cheers to ever and always being in the process of Becoming. Thank you for being here. <3