I grew up just a little north of KEXP in Everett where I was the quintessential band geek. I played bass clarinet in the wind ensemble, tenor saxophone in the jazz band, and was drum major of the marching band. I was never seen without my discman and I snuck it in to listen to Kid A while taking the WASL in 7th grade. In middle school, I bought a bass and learned the entirety of Pinkerton to impress a drummer I was crushing on (it didn’t work). But I did eventually use my bass playing skills to break into the local music scene, first with surf band Golden Idols, who was once described by Northwest Music Scene as “psychedelic…to an extent.” That led to me being recruited to become the bass player for The Grizzled Mighty. I also have a psychedelic dream pop project with my fiance called Frond.
When it comes to music, I’ve always been a seeker: ravenous to find novel things to listen to. Some of my favorite musical genres are modal jazz, Russian late Romantic era symphonies, afrobeat, and mid-aught’s indie sleaze. But more than anything, I love any music with a psychedelic bent to it. I love vocals dripping in reverb and so much delay on a guitar that you don’t know when one note ends and another begins. I love music that takes you on a journey inwards and leaves you on the other side as a changed person.
I’m very excited to bring a kaleidoscopic world of sound to the new psychedelic show, Astral Plane, for all my fellow KEXP lovers. I never could have imagined years ago while avoiding work at my day job by creating web scrapers to pull down all the KEXP playlist data so that I could obsessively make data dashboards of what songs and artists each of the DJs played that I would one day find myself among such great company.
