Brunchdrunk, new brooklyn
BrunchDrunk is about gentrification, privilege, injustice, and breakfast cocktails.
Champagne hangover
This song, named in honor of a literal champagne hangover, is about the consequences of reckless excess, in music and life in general.
“Somewhere between high and low,
So I close the blinds, and I smoke my mind”
When I moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn in 2012, I was exposed to new, sophisticated ways to get fucked up. Here, day drinking was just called brunch, and the weed man came to your door! And had a bunch of fancy weed options! While this was great news for the devil on my shoulder, it posed a threat to my music career.
A lot of weekends that were supposed to be “marathon work sessions” on BACKSTAGE became blurry, self-indulgent messes. “Hedonism’s the religion I chose.” For as much fun as I was having, I was putting my future as a musician into jeopardy, and a lot of the songs on the album (Dream Machine, Champagne Hangover, Front on Me Not) reflect my internal struggle.
I had a perspective problem. If I had a bad week at work, or was feeling insecure about the album, I convinced myself that I “deserved” a drink (or five) without considering what I really wanted or what my long term goals were. I’m very fortunate in that I was able to achieve a balance, as I knew quitting everything all at once, cold turkey was not likely to stick. I stepped away from everything for a while, and was able to reframe my relationship with drugs and alcohol (that sounds awful but hear me out) to be a reward instead of an escape. If I was smoking a bowl after 6 hours of working in the studio, A) I was smoking a hell of a lot less weed and B) I was incentivizing myself to do the damned work.
Charlie Day (from Always Sunny in Philadelphia) once said, “Don’t just do what makes you happy; do what makes you great.” Often, those two aren’t the same thing. Whoever you are, know you are worth putting the work in, and know that there is no high like achieving something you’ve been dreaming about.