Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
I’ve signed with EMPIRE. They’re a Grammy Award winning record label who played a part in the careers of Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, XXXTentacion, among several other household names, and I’m honored to be a part of that legacy. They’re an independent label, too – one of the most successful in the world – and this means, among other benefits, I maintain complete ownership of my music as well as my status as an independent artist; unbeholden to whatever obligations may come with the more aggressive agreements one can fall prey to in the industry.
Though they have offices throughout the world, they were founded in and are headquartered in the bay – where I was born, raised, and where I currently live. Their studios are blocks away from the nightclub I used to run in San Francisco, from where my grandpa would take my siblings and I to tour the city as kids, blocks away from where I just recently went with my family to join my little niece for her first baseball game, Oracle Park, which is also where we (along with my cousins, years ago) watched Barry Bonds hit his record-breaking homerun. The roots that drive beneath EMPIRE are the same roots that drive beneath me.
When my brother came along with me to tour their studios, he said, “I feel like I’m in your documentary.” I could understand why. It’s a beautiful space – a far cry from my first studio; a booth made of PVC pipe and sleeping bags in my parents’ garage – and I’m allowed to use it freely. It’s fitted with multiple recording studios, pianos, guitars, podcast studios, a bar, a beautiful kitchen. On top of that, the people there were passionate and genuine – and this shone more to my eye than the facility itself. One of them nearly came to tears as he was explaining why he’d dedicated his life to music.
The song that drew them into my world was ‘Hole Hearted’. A song I wouldn’t have written had I not gone to Miami – a city I wouldn’t have gone to had I not started this traveling album project – Made in / Place – and also, a song I wouldn’t have written had I not met the girl who inspired it. In my last conversation with her she said something like, “ – maybe we were meant to meet each other,” to which I replied, essentially, “ – I don’t believe in that type of thing.” Yet, due to this project, and due to the changes in my life because of it, I need to retract that answer – and since this project is what amounts to a public experiment, I’ll do my best to publicly explain that shift.
For years I’ve been living as a kind of materialist – anti-spiritual, say – convinced things were untouched by anything except what’s determined by chaos or combinations of random actions and reactions. When I made music, however, in private, though I’d been embarrassed to say it, I could feel something else – a deep communion with something outside of myself. I’ve told my brother it’s like I’m “hearing the song through the wall” when I’m writing music. To a great degree, this project – and the changes in my life because of it – have forced me to view life itself not as the result of random patterns of cause and effect but as another type of song that’s delivered through another type of wall. There is, maybe, some kind of perceivable truth or untruth in the steps we take; as if in the path ahead there are the imprints of what future steps are truly ours if we have the eyes to see them, and in every misstep there is a corrective hand guiding us home.
As I was sitting on a couch at EMPIRE’s offices in downtown San Francisco – with windows looking out into the city and platinum records on the walls – I thought, neither of my parents were musicians, I was the only one of my four siblings to be excluded from piano lessons, I wasn’t taught how to use the equipment I have, there was no point where a particular someone or something inspired me to pick up a guitar and write songs – and I don’t listen to music too often myself; I’m no connoisseur. It’s as though the flint needed to start my fire was somehow sewn into my heart from the beginning. In our unmotivated interests, the direction we move when we are uncoerced, what we reach for without the prodding of greed or pride or envy or insecurity, may be the sign of our knowing there are future steps we have yet to take but should – truer steps than anything pressed on us by the expectations of this world.
Other dreams and motives might be pushed into our hands, or we might be afraid of the road we know we should take, but what we were meant to do is there – held by an invisible hand – waiting for us to submit to it – and once we do, like the key that finally finds its lock, we find the entirety of our being utilized, and all of the sudden whatever money or fame or security attached to it no longer matters. A bird does not need to be paid to fly, nor a fish to swim, nor a redwood tree to stand. In all of us is a function, I think, a true function – it could be as a father, or a soldier, or a barista, or a musician, or a kindergarten teacher – but it is there, waiting for our fear to melt away, for our false dreams to lose their hold, and for our pride to unfasten from the wheel so we can slip into the mold that was cast for us. This is, to the modern ear, sort of a radical thought. “What do you mean? I’ve authored myself! I am the master of my destiny!” I understand, I used to think that; as my life unfurls, however, I’m not so sure. To say I at one point decided ‘music is my thing’ would be a lie. It just one day arrived as fact by the still small voice in the truest place of my mind – or maybe the truest place of my spirit would be more accurate.
This phrase comes to mind; it’s a beatitude spoken by Jesus Christ. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Peace and purpose come from submission, not from pride – from servitude, not from conquest – from giving all you have to others, not taking all you want from them. In my submission to my deepest and truest inclinations, and my applying those inclinations to the service of others, I’ve felt peace and freedom, and in the stories I’ve heard about the positive impact my music has had on listeners – I have felt purpose. What I’m doing isn’t the result of ambition, it is the result of submission. It is not the result of goal-setting, vision-boarding, or trend-watching, it is the result of my aiming to help others in the best way I know how, etched onto my heart by a hand I cannot see. I have not carved my way or found it, I have yielded to it, like how the earth yields to the pull of the sun – and in the same way the earth finds its perfect position because of that submission, I have found mine; and yours is there, too – your truest orbit – where your peace and freedom and purpose are interlaced.
Beneath a sky full of stars in Alaska, or on a bayou in New Orleans, or on the beach in Miami, or in the eyes of all those I’ve met, in the beauty both within and without, there seems to be a through-line – a great and invisible other-ness; a common divine thread. It has made me think, to what might we owe the result of our dancing across unknowable improbabilities toward their improbable ends? In what wind, I’ve wondered, do we unknowingly glide?
My next song will be the first song I release with EMPIRE. I began writing it in Anchorage, AK. It’s called ‘Man on the Run’. If they can help me bring one more person into the light, I’ll consider it a fruitful relationship. Meeting them, even, and being inspired by the love they’ve shown me, has been a gift.
I hope my music will continue to be the soundtrack to your rising sun.
Kai Straw
San Francisco, 2024
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Huge shout out and thanks to @RenMakesMusic for sharing the new music video for Chokin', and also huge thanks to everyone who has flooded over here to dive in. I appreciate each of you. Thanks for giving me a shot. Many more songs on the way. 🎶
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My new music video for my song Chokin' is now available early on Patreon. To watch it, head over there and join! And massive thanks to everyone who decides to do so. www.patreon.com/kaistraw
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I just dropped my new song 'Indiana / Made in San Francisco' early on Patreon. For anyone who wants to join over there, massive massive thanks -> www.patreon.com/kaistraw
Otherwise, it'll drop everywhere on December 29th.
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New song this Friday!! Drop a skull if you'll be listening. 💀
And if you want to listen early, it's already out on my Patreon. Massive thanks to everyone who decides to support me over there. You can join here: www.patreon.com/kaistraw
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There are so many talented people poisoned by self-doubt.
With hard drives full of music they won't release, poems they'll never share, businesses they won't start, minds full of ideas they'll keep to themselves.
There are great songs that will never be made. There are great books that will die in the minds of their potential authors. "I never thought I was good enough," they'll say.
I imagine the library full of these unmade things being miles tall. A tomb for what self-conciousness has taken from humanity.
I hope I don't die half-bloomed, thinking of all the roads I was too afraid to go down, defeated by my insecurities.
Push through your fear and gift to us what you're capable of. You never know who you will inspire, what minds you will change, or in what ways that courage will echo.
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New song this Friday!! Drop a skull if you'll be listening. 💀
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New song this Friday!! Drop a skull if you'll be listening. 💀
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New song this Friday! Drop a skull if you'll be listening. 💀
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New song this Friday! Drop a skull if you'll be listening. 💀
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There is no depth you cannot return from.
I lost my job to covid and since then I’ve been making music full time. I was a nightclub manager up until I got the call telling me my salary had been cut. I’d held that job for eight years. If you only take one thing from me, it’s this. When it seems like everything around you has crumbled, know there are seeds in that rubble – seeds that otherwise would not have been set free had your world not fallen apart. With those seeds you can grow a different life for yourself; one that’s greater and more fulfilling than the one before. 10+ years sober.
I'm a patreon-funded artist supported by listeners like you, so if you'd like to impact my music career directly you can add fuel to my fire by joining over at: patreon.com/kaistraw. You'll get music and music videos early over there, too.