Hey friends! My wife and I are thrilled to share that after three years of ups and downs and all arounds, we are expecting little River Jean to join our family!

We got so used to things going so wrong for so long, it’s dizzying to look back and see how all those tears and tough days played a part in making this exact moment possible. We know there could be, and likely will be, more twists and turns, because that’s life...but right now we are so happy to be celebrating what really feels like a miracle.

This whole experience makes me want to shout so many things from the rooftop, like how so many queer folks might not struggle so much with fertility if they were accepted from the jump as worthy and deserving members of societies and healthcare systems and families; how grateful we are to my mama who essentially funded this journey posthumously; how fortunate we were to be selected by complete strangers to be the recipients of such a mind-blowingly generous embryo donation; how appreciative we are to our family and friends who have been there every step of the way; and most importantly, how excited we are that River chose this family! What an excellent choice!

So far, I am feeling better after an exhausting, ravenous, and queasy few weeks, and Audrie is spending lots of time kissing and singing to this slightly-expanding belly o’ mine.

Announcing this pregnancy is cool and all, but we are both ECSTATIC to be done with hormone treatments starting today...you know it’s true love when someone is willing to stick a needle in your buttcheeks for 3+ months straight!

We love you, fam! Thanks for celebrating with us!
Mama & Mamba

Hey friends, cool news! My song "Crickets" has been nominated for a 2021 San Diego Music Award in the category of Best Folk/Acoustic Song. I'm proud of this little ditty...one of the first that I recorded/produced all by myself! (With help, of course, from Alex Dausch on bass, Amelia Sarkisian mixing, and Trevor Hamer mastering). The category is full of friends like Tori Roze, Julia Sage, and Lee Coulter, so I say go forth and vote in whatever way feels good for you! You can vote once per day!

I'm really grateful to my dear friend Susan Lipson for nominating me and to all the folks who have celebrated this news. I am very honored to be seen in this light by folks who know me, particularly by Susan, who has been such a wonderfully supportive friend and fellow artist.

Without wanting to take away from that deep level of gratitude, I naturally have mixed feelings about accepting accolades from the same city that gives my wife wrinkles about job stability, that inflates police budgets while so many areas in the community deeply lack in funding, that arrests my friends at protests, and the list unfortunately goes on. 

I am trying to let the award itself be the honor it is and hope to point any visibility it brings toward Lady Brain Presents and We All We Got SD. If you are even a smidge proud of me, I hope you show it with a small (or huge, it's your life) ongoing contribution toward one or more of these groups. I also hope to connect with and learn more about the work some of the other recipients are doing throughout the community and expand my network of community contacts and resources.

So basically, I'm sitting in the "yes, and" of it all and hoping more people - no matter who you are or what your capacities are or where you are on your journey- find ways to get involved with community care that make sense for the amount of privilege you have - whether that's wealth, time, energy, skill, or any other kind of service to your neighbor.

We all - especially white/wealthy/cis/hetero/able folks -  need to hold both officials and especially ourselves accountable to continually prioritize the folks who are made most vulnerable by systemic oppression and social injustice. My hope is that we can root this work and this accountability in love, without shame. But that's not to say I don't hold space for folks who are rightfully livid and perpetually let down by the folks who are elected and employed to serve the people. If we're making room for "yes, and" we've also got to make space for "no, and."

Freedom and love for all must be the destination, peeps. There are a lot of lanes available on this road. Just gotta get in where you fit in.

PS - The official press release that came out said Lady Brain was a group for women (a common misconception), but our membership is inclusive of any gender marginalized person. For more info, read here.

PPS - I would love to see a gender non conforming/nonbinary awards event from the Mayor if one doesn't exist yet! Break that binary!

PPPS - I would also love to see more trans siblings honored at next year's Women of Distinction event! I'll stay on the lookout for that submission form so I can do my part on the nominating side! ​

Hey there, friends. I've got a brand new single out for ya out today. This one's called "The Rotten Parts," produced by me (!!!), mixed/mastered by Amelia Sarkisian, with drums by Jules Stewart. I wrote this one as a walk-a-mile-in-someone-else's-shoes plea for white folks to consider not only the current, every-day impact of white supremacist delusion on Black and Brown bodies, but the centuries-long trauma caused by hate, fear, greed, and othering based on nothing more than skin color. Sooooo Dummmmmb and Eviiiiiil. What a grave shame it is to still see so many people refuse to acknowledge the simple, unwavering truth that Black Lives Matter. To still value their own comfort and willful ignorance over the actual safety of other humans. To varying degrees, we ALL grapple with these "rotten parts" because we were all brought up within rotten, broken systems. And those rotten parts will continue to poison generation after generation until we confront them individually and collectively. Thank you for listening - hope you'll work to carve out all the rotten you see in yourself - I'll be doing the same on my end.

The song is available now (along with lyrics and art) for direct download in the store, which is by far the best way to support, or on all the streamy thingies. Special thanks to Jules Stewart (drums), Amelia Sarkisian (mixing/mastering), with single art by Shy the Artist using original photography by Sydney Valiente. As always, big, big love to my Lindsay's Corner fam for their continued support.

*Edit 3/24 - I recently was given the opportunity to root out the rotten parts of this very blog, which was not giving proper credit to the Black and Brown folks who inform my very understanding of racial and social injustice and who motivate me daily to hold myself accountable and try to work/create/speak/live in solidarity. Folks whose work I am particularly grateful for and inspired by in this moment are Sonya Renee Taylor, Dr. Tiffany Jana, Sassy Latte, Isabel Wilkerson, Miki Vale, EB of Course, and so, so many of the harmonizers at our local mutual aid We All We Got SD!

Hi friends! I'm back so quick with a new single, are you finding me to be impressive yet? Haha.

"Piece of Quiet" is another pandemic-inspired, anxiety-riddled bop about being so, so, so desperate for a little sliver of peace during such a tumultuous and traumatic time. I'm feeling much better now than when I wrote the tune, and I credit that with a commitment I made to creating some quiet and stillness in my life. (As I write this, my neighbor's chainsaw screams away. Apparently, he's coping with the pandemic through wood work...we all have our things I guess.)

Anyway, when I get quiet, sometimes that looks like getting off my phone, sometimes it looks like meditating, or reading, or writing. There is a lot of comfort to be found in going within. I hope this song helps you do that in some small way.

The song is available now (along with lyrics and art) for direct download in the store, which is by far the best way to support, or on all the streamy thingies. Special thanks to Jules Stewart (drums), Amelia Sarkisian (mixing/mastering), with single art by Shy the Artist using original photography by Sydney Valiente. As always, big, big love to my Lindsay's Corner fam for their continued support.

New single out today! “You Would Think” is inspired by one particularly challenging relationship in my life but could probably be applied to all challenging relationships in all lives. Now available (along with lyrics and art) for direct download in the store, which is by far the best way to support, or on all the streamy thingies. Special thanks to cowriter Becca Jay, drummer Jules Stewart, producer Alex Dausch, with single art by Shy the Artist using original photography by Sydney Valiente. And big, big love to my Lindsay's Corner fam for all their continue support.

Hey friends. Wanted to point your attention toward what will probably be the only piece of press I receive anytime soon: a really lovely review of my last three singles from my dear friend Lizzie Wann over on the Lady Brain Presents blog. Even though I'm putting out a lot of new music, I just don't have the capacity to push for PR right now, which goes against everything I've been doing as an indie musician for my entire career. Why, you may ask, would someone who has literally written a DIY publicity guide for indie musicians, not put more care into publicizing her new music?

Um, I'm exhausted. That's pretty much it. I've reached a point in this pandemic where I'm creating and releasing music for my own mental health. What anyone chooses to do with it or think about it or write about it is not even a sliver of a thought in my brain at the moment. Maybe one day I'll get back to a place where I keep pushing for more reach, but for now, I'm just going to lean on good friends like Lizzie, awesome collectives like Lady Brain Presents, and my Patreon fam to give me the gentle squeezes and nudges I need to keep on keeping on. 

 Thanks so much Lizzie for these thoughtful and kind words about my latest three releases. If you get a moment, please send her a little venmo love and check out her book and talk show!

New year, new music. Hope you enjoy my latest release "Nothing Worse," an original song inspired by one of my dear friends about that dreaded sense of hope we still somehow manage to feel during incredibly hopeless and lonely times. The song is available on all streaming platforms, but I hope you'll also consider a direct download from my website, which includes a printable lyric download as well as the artwork. Streaming is cool y'all, but artists can't make it work with fractions of pennies for royalties. Direct sales help me continue to invest in creating more music!

Image Description: Single artwork features a collage with light gray text that reads "Nothing Worse" overlaid on a grayish blue mountain landscape. In the center, a photo of Lindsay in a green shirt with black and white polka dot accents. She is propping her chin up with her hand. Bunches of colorful flowers are covering her face and near her shoulder. Artwork by ShyTheArtist, using original photo by Sydney Prather. 

Lyrics:
there's a pillow i keep punching
i always take you lying down
there's a pill so hard to swallow
i have to hide it in my mouth
 
i'm sinking down the valley, can't find the surface
i'm fighting the finale, like a novice novelist
i'm pacing like Penelope, hope for my homecoming kiss
but there's nothing worse than hoping
at a lonesome time like this
 
there's a hole where i keep whispering
i always wonder if you hear
there's a hopeless place where i know best
but dear, i don't dare to go near
 
i'm counting up the memories and the sacrifices
i'll spend them on you honey i don't care what the price is
i'm testing several theories
hoping to prove the same thesis
but there's nothing worse than hoping
at a lonesome time like this
 
worry my mind, furrow my brow
sweetheart, i am sweating bullets sweating you out
how can i let you go
when i still hope that hope exists
i know...there's nothing worse than hoping
at a lonesome time like this
but i just sit here hoping at a lonesome time like this

Thank you for listening fam! If you want to take your patronage one step further, you can also join Lindsay's Corner for $2+/month. Did you know someone would have to stream my song about 229 times before I earned $2? But it costs about $10-20 per year to keep a song distributed to these platforms, so just to break even for a single, my song would have to be streamed  1145-2290 times per year. This stuff makes me want to pull out my hair and quit music sometimes. Having support from the Patreon platform isn't just about financial sustainability, it's about the emotional support and knowing that folks care about artists enough to protect and preserve their ability to create. It's about giving them "hope at a lonesome time like this."

Feel free to share this video with anyone you know who has struggled with similar issues. It's isolating. I hope it comforts and speaks to people who have been through it. I feel very fortunate that we were even able to try five times. In the opening lyrics "I've cried onto a casket," I'm referring to my mom's death. I'm also wearing the clothes I wore to her funeral. I wanted to acknowledge that some folks don't have the resources to attempt to grow their family, and we would've been in that boat had it not been for my mama's death. So maybe she was still my good luck cricket in a different sense. Thanks to her, we will always get to say that we tried, and that is comforting.

Still, I want to point out that for sooooo many LGBTQ+ folks who envision creating families of their own, whose own families did/do not accept them - we get such a late start on this process because it takes us such a long time to shed the shame placed on us by others and to arrive at our full authentic selves. Which then makes us a little late to the game in finding our healthy life partners/relationships, which then makes us really late to the family planning process. By the time Audrie and I started trying to conceive, it was practically too late. So many queer couples I know struggle with this, and it really angers me that our own loved ones, our own schools, our own religions stand in the way of our ability to love and grow into ourselves, each other, and our families. This is tragic. This is abuse. Please, if you are reading this, and you refuse to accept your child or loved one's sexuality or gender identity or anything else about their authentic self, you are literally robbing them of time they could be fully supported and immersed in your love for them and their love for themselves. Don't do that. God wouldn't do that.

****
This track will be available on Spotify/Apple/etc. on December 26! In the meantime, please follow on Spotify, subscribe on Youtube, and check out Lindsay's Corner if you'd like to be a part of the fam that helps me keep creating.

Hi my friends. It's release day! My new song (and silly home video) for "Everything But Loving You" just came into the world, and I wanted to write about it a little since I'm mostly off social media and not doing a traditional promotional blitz where I beg a bunch of media folks to write about it. Instead, I just want to put it out there, give some context to the song, and then not stress out about whether or not people listen to it, but trust that It will find who it needs to find. So, basically shooting my music career in the foot, haha. Small price to pay for mental wellness during a pandemic.

In those moments, the one thing that is stronger than anxiety's prosecution is love's defense. I was able to hang on by focusing on the sense of purpose I feel in loving and being loved by my wife. Writing this song about Audrie, the person that makes me feel calm and sane and steady, provided enough of a glimmer of hope that I needed to be a functioning human again.

Speaking of being a functioning human, this is the first release that I produced, with the help of friends James Staton (bass), Steve Nichols (guitar), Jules Stewart (drums) and Amelia Sarkisian (mixing). It's not perfect or polished, but what feels more important to me than being perfect is: making an effort within my capacity, being proud of any small progress in that effort, being compassionate about any setback in that effort, and letting go of any attachment to other people's perceptions of that effort. It's a good way to fight anxiety. It's also a good way to approach art. And life.

In closing, I feel it's important to disclaim as a white person that this song was written in a mental health moment about a mental health moment. In no way do I want to give folks musical permission to ignore injustice in your community and in the world. I must admit, I've worried the song could be perceived in that light. But then, I just gotta circle back to letting go of any attachment to other people's perceptions of my effort. For me "quitting everything" kinda means letting go of the shit that doesn't serve me (sorrow, anger, worry), and focusing on the shit that does (love, love, love, etc.) so I can function with more clarity and serve others with more stability. However, I absolutely would like to quit doing the dishes for the rest of time. ;)

****
Spotify (please add to your fav love songs playlist or follow mine!)
Youtube (please subscribe while you're there!)
Patreon/Lindsay's Corner (be a part of the fam that helps keep creating)
Lyrics (for word nerds like me)