When people think about creating music, they often picture expensive studios, professional instruments, and years of formal musical training. While there is certainly nothing wrong with that approach, it isn't how Lotsa Tones came to be. Instead, this song began with something much simpler. Curiosity. I've always believed that creativity starts by asking one simple question: What happens if I try this? That question has led me to write novels, poetry, short stories, blog posts, podcast episodes, and now, my first piece of music. Every creative journey I've taken has started the same way. Not because I already knew exactly what I was doing, but because I wanted to learn. That mindset is exactly what led to Lotsa Tones . For this project, I wasn't trying to create the next chart-topping hit. I wasn't trying to perfectly imitate another artist or fit neatly into an existing genre. Instead, I wanted to experiment with sound itself. The tool that made this possible was...

 There are certain songs that become attached to a specific chapter of your life. They are more than just tracks on a playlist. They become memories, emotions, and time capsules. Whenever they come on, you are instantly transported back to another version of yourself. Sometimes that version is happier. Sometimes they are struggling. Sometimes they are simply younger, trying to figure out who they are. For me, one of those songs is "Terrified" by Story of the Year. Story of the Year has never been my absolute favorite band. That title belongs elsewhere. But they are absolutely one of my top ten favorite bands of all time. I have always felt they deserved much more recognition than they received. They found success during the 2000s post-hardcore and alternative rock explosion, but I have always believed they should have been even bigger. They possessed incredible musicianship, emotional songwriting, memorable choruses, and enough energy to compete with nearly anyone from that...

  Where to Actually Find Physical Media (And How to Not Overpay for It) So after that last post about starting my CD collection, I got a handful of messages and comments asking some version of the same question, which was basically, okay, that's cool, but where do you even find this stuff anymore. And it's a fair question, honestly. We've spent the last decade or so watching physical media sections shrink in stores, watching entire chains disappear, watching the culture around browsing shelves for music or games or movies fade into something a lot of younger folks never even experienced firsthand. So I get why the question comes up. If you didn't grow up in the era of physical media being the default, it's not obvious where you'd even start looking. So I wanted to put together a follow up post specifically about that, about how to actually find physical media in a world that's mostly moved on from it. I'm going to be talking about this mostly through th...

 So a few weeks back I made a post on my Instagram that I honestly didn't think would get the reaction it did, which was basically me announcing, somewhat sheepishly, that I've started a CD collection. And I know how that sounds. In a world where literally everything is streaming, where you can pull up any song ever recorded in about four seconds flat, where your phone holds more music than any physical shelf ever could, here I am going out of my way to buy little plastic discs. It's wild, honestly, even to me, and I laughed a little writing that caption because I could already picture people reading it and going "wait, CDs? like, actual CDs?" Yes. Actual CDs. And I wanted to take some time here, since this is my music blog after all, to actually sit with why I'm doing this, because it's not a decision I made lightly or randomly. It's been building for a while, and I think it says something bigger about where I'm at with music, with ownership, and ...

 When Blue October asked their fans on Facebook the other day what their favorite deep cut is, I didn't even have to think about it. The answer arrived instantly, the way certain songs just live in you permanently, tucked into some quiet room of your chest that only opens when the right question is asked. For me, it's "Overweight." Not the singles, not the songs that get played on the radio or show up on curated playlists for people just discovering the band. It's this one, the one that doesn't get talked about nearly enough, the one that opens with a line so simple and so devastating that I still catch my breath a little every time I hear it. Ever carry the weight of another, for how long. That's it. That's the whole thing. Seven words that somehow manage to describe an entire way of moving through the world, an entire personality, an entire life pattern that some of us fall into so naturally we don't even realize we're doing it until a song c...

  It’s funny how certain realizations don’t arrive all at once, but instead build slowly over time—like waves rolling in, each one bringing a slightly clearer picture than the last. I’ve written before about the similarities between Keane and Blue October, and every time I think I’ve exhausted the connections, something new surfaces. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe it’s just the way our brains like to find patterns. Or maybe there’s something deeper, something quietly shared between these two bands that goes beyond surface-level comparisons. Either way, the parallels are hard to ignore once you start looking closely. The most recent thing that caught my attention was purely visual at first. Blue October’s debut album, The Answers , and Keane’s third album, Perfect Symmetry , share a surprisingly similar color scheme. At a glance, it might not seem like much—after all, album art across music history often overlaps in tone and palette. But when you’re already aware of multiple connecti...

 This post was written on 6/24/2026. Today is June 24, 2026, and Netflix finally let the world see "The One Piece," the WIT Studio remake of Eiichiro Oda's manga that fans have been waiting on since it was first announced back in December of 2023. The teaser dropped at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and within hours it was everywhere, splitting opinions the way only a beloved, decades-old franchise can when it gets a new coat of paint. Some viewers are thrilled by the cleaner animation and the fluidity of the fight choreography, while others are mourning the loss of the scrappy, lived-in texture of the Toei original that's been airing since 1999. That tension is the whole story of a remake, isn't it, you're not just updating visuals, you're asking an entire fanbase to renegotiate its relationship with something it has loved unconditionally for a quarter century. What caught my attention, though, wasn't just the animation debate, it w...