Prehab: My Journey of Self-discovery
Prehab was the first song I ever wrote.
Correction: Prehab was the first GOOD song I ever wrote. For as long as I can remember, before I even had a guitar around me, music has always been in my head. As a kid, I would sit down and act like I’m writing the next big hit, but with no means or knowledge needed to actually create a song. It turned out more like bad poetry than anything else. As I grew older, I found myself living in a rather lively music community. I can recall weekly bar gigs and church services, monthly DIY shows, and the yearly festivals. I’d find myself surrounded by a majority of the local talent and really connect with them. One guy who really took a chance on me was Justin. Over numerous projects with him, there were many songwriting sessions and I had a decent amount of involvement lyrically. But, despite all the little contributions, I still battled with the concept of writing my own song from start to finish. I found a hard time expressing myself genuinely, but I didn’t even consider myself a singer at the time.
I struggled with many different songwriting techniques for a few years, trying to find “my voice” or whatever artists call it. An epiphany struck me when I discovered East Coast reggae band Bumpin Uglies in the summer of 2020. Brandon Hardesty, the frontman and primary songwriter, had such a commanding energy to his vocals. Whether or not he lived every experience he recorded, I BELIEVED he had. This really inspired me to pull from the wild, wacky, and downright bad decisions I’ve made over the years, write on the lessons of my experiences, and sing them with conviction. While a lot of these songs may never see the light of day, Prehab was the first to feel like an indicator of a real chance that this could be a viable path for me.
Prehab was written one late morning in the late winter of 2021. To set the scene, I had been living in Portland for a little over a year, and I had just turned 22. My roommate opened a studio at the time and I had a deep love for the place. I could sing as bad and loud as I wanted and no one would be around to witness it. While spending one of my mornings sitting at my desktop with my guitar on my lap, deep into my constant high, I was playing the chords for a song from another band I love. I had seen Uglies release a promo trailer for the song “Wild Girls” on Facebook, and after hearing the opening line, I immediately turned it off. I sang the melody to the rhythm I was playing and for what felt like the first time in my life, everything slid into place lyrically. The song was written in about 20 minutes and the opening line is inspired by an opened beer I had sitting on my desk at 11am.
Here’s to the future.
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