30×30

“Jeff, your music doesn’t suck, but I don’t know if it’s any good”. This is the usual response I receive when sharing my music with those around me. Hopefully, after this release, this fateful question will be answered… Now, where to begin with my newest release, 30×30? Let’s begin six years ago, at age twenty-four. This is the age I began my creative ventures (ADP, JOLAM) while fading out my business ventures (YCYF, SOET, DPD). The last three years have more than seen its’ fair share of turmoil. I intended to release what is now “The Lost Sessions” prior to my son being born, but I got caught up in dealing with life-changing events leading up to and shortly after my son’s arrival. I decided to postpone the release to focus on being a Father, so I wouldn’t end up just being a Dad.

This would prove difficult, however, as I was jobless, hopeless, and a single Father who narrowly escaped homelessness. I didn’t even have the necessary funds to purchase a car seat in order for my son to leave the hospital. I was truly lost. I was under the influence, throughout the entirety of the writing process for “The Lost Sessions”. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever release them because of the difficulties associated with that time period. Truth be told, I even contemplated suicide. In the midst of another drunken stupor, I was surrounded by all of my books (thousands), and came to my senses after realizing that I didn’t want to put the burden on my family of having to clean up after me. I finished out that drink made another (of course), and wrote “More”. If I was the self-declared minimalist I am now, who knows where I’d have ended up.

However, after what feels like a lifetime, I’m now found, and truly appreciate what I went through while wandering in the vast valley of depression that I found myself in. I originally intended to only have eight songs for a fourth EP. This quickly turned into adding ten more songs for what would’ve been a double EP. Becoming obsessed with my music, and the stoned and intoxicated mind that inspired it, I quickly added another dozen songs, bringing the total to thirty unreleased songs. I wrote “The Lost Sessions” over the three winter months, but it took three years before I could finally see my way out of the fog, leading up to “The Found Sessions”.

Fast-forward three years and sixty-plus songs later, and this brings us to 30×30 (Thirty songs from ADP in the form of the unreleased “The Lost Sessions”, thirty more compiled from JP with the first thirty songs “The Found Sessions”, and myself at thirty years of age). “The Lost Sessions” are unfinished (I lost all the original takes. Thankfully, I was sober enough at some point to have at least created .mp3’s of where I stood in the master process), but they contain some of my best instrumentation and vocal takes, as well as some of the darkest and most personal words I’ve ever put to music. “The Found Sessions” are much more refined, yet still (hopefully) retain a level of rawness that I myself enjoy listening to from other artists. My goal is to truly capture a moment of my life in the medium of songwriting – thus the 30-second clips I so pretentiously label as songs. This involves a much stronger emphasis on songwriting, as opposed to writing a few “badass riffs”, and improvising chaos for the remainder of the song.

Overall, these are my proudest works, and I’m grateful I have the chance to include them all in this unreleased/released compilation; dating back to my original ADP releases which were titled “The Eight Trilogies”. I was twenty when I first began taking guitar seriously while in college, and I was eighteen when I received my first guitar as a graduation gift from my parents. 8.24.2018 is too perfect not to be used as the release date for 30×30. Photo by the lovely Tara Comin Ferriter. Edits by JP