Whaddup everyone! Here’s a “little” about my life:

  When I was eight years old I was sitting in class with my squad, posted up at this table shaped like a crescent moon. I remember this day because one of my friends brought up an unusual topic. He said that his dad had shown him this rock band, Led Zeppelin, and that he had become obsessed with them. The squad had no idea what a rock band was or what a “Led Zeppelin” was.

  That night I asked my dad (who grew up in England in the 70s) if he knew of this “Led Zeppelin”, to which he replied “nah, never heard of them.” Laughing, he opened up his record cabinet and started playing their albums.

SHEEEEESH.

  Within a few hours I had decided that music is what I wanted to do with my life. I NEEDED to play guitar and become Jimmy Page. This band was magical. Hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time was, in every sense, a life changing experience.

  I was gifted a guitar for Christmas and started taking lessons shortly after. Guitar consumed my life. I joined a band with my brother from the same mother, Zach, who plays bass. We switched bands after a year and started our own group, Pampalibros. From ages nine to fifteen I played with Pampalibros every week. We had concerts at bars, restaurants, venues, and wherever would let us play. We even recorded an album with the legendary producer, Rob Fraboni. It was a BLAST. I remember thinking “we’ll make it big one day”, but then the older members went to college and only me and Drew (my brother from another mother) were left.

  I was really ignorant during this time (which you’ll see is a running theme). I exclusively listened to classic rock. I remember saying “if they had to use a computer to make it, I don’t wanna listen to it.” After years of my brothers and friends pestering me to expand my taste, I eventually caved and started listening to hip hop. Thus began another obsession. Kanye, J. Cole, Kendrick, and Logic became my new teachers. Also, there was a rapper called Felly that my friends and I loved. He was a huge inspiration because he was one of us: a local kid from Connecticut who had made it in music.

  As my hip hop obsession grew, Drew and I wanted to make beats and record in a studio. We had loved the experience of recording with Rob Fraboni but quickly realized that studio time was too expensive for teenagers. We decided to start our own studio for younger musicians. In the attic of an old stone cottage that my parents had used for storage, Rock Cottage Studio was born.

  Drew and I loved running RCS. We worked with tons of local artists and learned a lot about recording. Word spread about us and local bars started reaching out, asking us to help them book bands. Completely unplanned, we became booking agents. We put together many shows, most of which were fundraisers for a local music charity called Horns for Kids. Our work culminated in a 550 person music festival, Rendezvous, in the summer of 2016. The headliner of the festival was our hometown hero, Felly.

  After several years of running the studio it was time to go to college. I had two options for school: New Hampshire or New York City. While I am 100% a woodland creature, I felt that there would be more musical opportunities in the city than in the sticks. I moved to the city for college at Columbia University.

  In college, I did a very good job at unknowingly putting myself in much needed learning environments. For example, my freshman year I joined a humor magazine, mainly to format the magazine and draw the cover art. I loved illustration and design. Although I was mainly the illustrator, they asked me if I wanted to write a few pieces. I did my best job at trying to capture the high level wit of shows like How I Met Your Mother. My versions, much to my surprise, just sounded crass, ignorant (remember the theme?), misogynistic at times, and not nearly as funny. The sentiments that I wanted to express were not accurately reflected in my writing. In fact, I was quite embarrassed by what I had published because it was rash, improper, and so far from what I was trying to say. Despite how ashamed I am of those writings, this was an essential experience for me. I was 18 and it wasn’t until a few years later that I realized just how much word choice matters.

  When I started making songs in my second year of college, I spent so much time with word choice and sentence structure to ensure that what I was saying would come across as intended. It took me sooooo long to write lyrics (and still does to this day).

  I put out my first song, “Gullwing Bravado,” in the summer after my second year of college. I remember thinking that it would easily do well and set my summer goal at two million streams. During that period I got less than 1,000 streams (ignorant once again!). Dismayed, I figured there’s gotta be a way to promote my music. Everyone said to use social media, but I wasn’t good at it and didn’t love using it. Instead, I decided to try playlisting campaigns. These were seemingly straightforward: pay someone to add my songs to playlists with large followings. This would result in streams.

  Unfortunately, almost all the playlists I was added to were fake and my music went nowhere. It took me a couple hundred dollars to realize that I was getting scammed (seriously…the ignorance never stops). After the third or fourth scam I thought “THERE MUST BE ANOTHER WAY!” It was then that I found Andrew Southworth’s Youtube channel.

  Andrew Southworth is an indie music marketing guru. LEGEND. A savior amidst the demons of the music industry. His channel was filled with videos about how to use Meta Ads to promote your songs on Facebook and Instagram. The ads on social media would supposedly direct people to Spotify, resulting in real streams and high engagement. It looked wonderful, complicated and time consuming. I kept putting it off when I was in school, thinking that it would take too much time. But then….Covid. The world shut down and I was back in Connecticut with nothing but time on my hands. My Southworth study began.

  After weeks of learning and testing I had finally designed a successful campaign. I set my daily budget at $7.50 and turned it on. The next day I realized that I had accidentally set it at $75.00 (Andrew you dongus!), buttttt I had generated 1,400 streams in a single day! I was ELATED. I had finally found a way to promote my music (outside of social media) that worked. This became my primary promoting method.

  Covid ended, school progressed, and by senior year I was putting out a song every couple months and promoting for $25/day using money I earned working odd jobs. At one of these jobs I was the audio engineer for a racial justice podcast. I didn’t know much about this subject and learned loads, especially when I tried to defend Thanksgiving as a holiday while talking with my boss, not understanding how much pain and suffering it represents (once again…ignorant).

  When I graduated, I moved back to Connecticut and worked for my parents’ landscaping business for a few months. During this time I traveled, met a girl (whatever…not at all a life changing experience or anything like that), and tried to figure out how to best make money to support my music.

  Initially, I figured I’d work as a recording engineer in a music recording studio. I landed a job as an audio engineer trainee at an infamous studio in downtown Manhattan. One of my first shifts was from 3:00 pm to 7:30 am the next morning. The pay was low, the shifts were humongous, and the schedule was unsustainable. After thinking it over I decided that having a career in music recording was not the best way to fund a career in music performance. A little disappointed, I stayed in Connecticut and continued working for my parents’ business.

  I must point out, working in landscaping was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. For me, there was no greater satisfaction than finishing a week with the crew, guzzling a Corona, and plopping down in the yard. Also I got ripped. So that’s cool I guess.

  While I worked for my parents my friend added me to an audio/podcasting listserv. I sent out my resume and, after a few months, landed some jobs as an art studio manager and an audio engineer. These allowed me to move to the city in the fall of 2021.

  Since then, I’ve been posted up on the UWS of Manhattan, grinding, and working a variety of odd jobs. All of these helped me finance my music. By 2023 I had 23,000 monthly listeners on Spotify but was very unsatisfied with my progress. I figured it was time to step things up a notch. Instead of releasing one song every 3-4 months, not promoting enough, and wasting time with minutiae, I made a New Year’s Resolution to release one song every four weeks, promote the hell out of it, and hope for the best. This led to The Unsure Mixtape. I spent all of my savings on promotion (which lasted for a few months) and got to 70,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. I picked up any job I could (including working at a Marine Layer clothing store which was an awesome experience) to finance my promotion. Nevertheless, I ran out of money in July.

  Around that same time, two major things happened:

  Some startup investors approached me and asked if I was looking for an investment. They had seen my growth over the six month period and were impressed by the efficacy of my strategy. After a few months of discussion we decided to test an investment for one month (low stakes, short contract, no stress). The first month went well so we decided to do a second month…then a third…and a fourth…WOOHOOO!
After the investors approached me, I scheduled a consultation call with Andrew Southworth (the indie music marketing guru). He had recently opened an ad agency and was running campaigns for artists. I wanted to ask him whether I should hire his agency with my potential investment money. After looking at the results I was already getting, he said “no, you’re doing great by yourself.” I was shocked at this response because I hadn’t realized that years of running campaigns had actually made me pretty decent at it. In fact, a month later he hired me to work at his agency.

  By August of 2023 I had new investment money to fund ads AND started working at a music ad agency. I was PUMPED. The peeps at the ad agency helped me optimize my campaigns and contributed greatly to the success of my advertising.

  The investment performed so well that I was able to quit most of my non-music work by May 6th, 2024…my birthday! I started pursuing music full time. My main goal was to CRANK OUT MUSIC. I had 300,000 monthly listeners when I quit my job, and double that six months later. This attracted the attention of a management agency, WHY&HOW. I signed with them in November of 2024.

  And that’s about all for now! I have never been happier and am infinitely grateful to be able to make music everyday. If you’ve made it to the end of this absurdly long “about” page, hell yah! This was also a nice reflective exercise for me. A lot has been going on and I wanted to take a minute and appreciate everything that has happened (especially because there’s so much more to come).

As always, more music is on the way. Thanks for listening, vibing, and being a part of my life.

Much love,

Andrew