The name suggests apathy, but as artists Who Cares put their lives on the line to be one of best hip-hop groups in Sacramento. Originally formed by Ernie Upton, aka Ernie Fresh, and Maxwell McMaster on production, Who Cares is the perpetual opener of rap shows. The self-anointed second-place finishers. And after the group’s Concert in the Park performance June 17, 2016, the band formerly known as Who Cares. Founding member Upton calls it their “big coup de grâce.”

“If we’re really trying to save each other’s lives with the music and it’s more a negative chore then I didn’t want to keep pushing that on anybody,” Upton says of the break-up. “Slowly it just broke apart.”

The news came up unexpectedly during an interview with Upton and current member Andrew “Young Aundee” Southard. The plan was to discuss the Juvenile Hall EP, a record sent to me weeks prior. But the information trickled out. The EP has been shelved, no longer the farewell album as planned. We drive for nearly two hours, discussing as much as we can. It feels vital to start at the beginning.

Origin, aka “Radical Reformation”

Upton traces Who Cares’ formation to 2002. He was on the mic with Max McMasters behind the boards. A year later they cut a record, a CD-R release they handmade with cut/paste album art to peddle at shows. The Who Cares sound reflects the era of backpack rap, bound to the history and four elements (MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti) while finding a new footing in the suburbs through artists like Atmosphere and Company Flow.

Upton is a graffiti artist and wired to think visually. As Who Cares becomes a bigger part of his life he envisions a character that could be the group’s calling card. An image that embodies the nostalgia, teenage heartbreak and latchkey kid mentality that courses through the music. He saw a teddy bear with its mouth sewn shut.

“I was trying to knock off some old Teddy Ruxpin, cute character gone bad,” he says. “The first one I did, it didn’t look sad. It looked all cracked out. I put Who Cares on it and turned it in. People liked it.”

Upton commits to the bear during a graffiti mission with friends at an abandoned winery in Napa. He stops writing his graffiti name and draws the bear instead, this time making it cuter.

So the group slaps the bear on album covers, T-shirts, posters and stickers. Upton fondly recalls falsifying orders to Kinkos in order to make 5000 stickers for around $3. DIY isn’t always the most ethical path.

“People know the propaganda even if they don’t know the music,” Andrew Southard says.

Southard becomes a Who Cares fan in 2005 at the Heritage Festival at Raley Field, drawn to the group’s live performances and aesthetic. He remembers the exact moment.

“Ernie knew me and would always say my name on the mic,” Southard says. “It made me feel hella good.”

Southard joins Who Cares during an evolution in the group. At that time, it consists of Upton and McMaster with Ryan Hall on keys and Jammal Tarkington on saxophone. Southard adds an R&B vocalism and melodica, slowly becoming a more prominent member.

In 2006, Who Cares releases The Winter Came Back EP. The six-song cycle demonstrates the group’s growth, as tracks like “The Rain Song” and “Heaven Ain’t That Hard” weep with gut-wrenching saxophone solos and groove with live bass. It’s the sound of dexterity beyond their years, which Upton credits to Tarkington’s input.

“I’d probably still be on some nerdy backpack shit if I hadn’t become friends with him,” he says.

By 2010’s Teenage Ego Trip, the official debut, Who Cares evolves to a core three: Tarkington, Southard and Upton, while Dusty Brown is the silent partner and executive producer. In my review for Submerge that year, I call it a breakthrough that resolves the group’s identity crisis of electro versus emo rap.

The album is a long-time coming, but by its arrival, fans are aging out of Who Cares.

Southard says, “that DIY ethic was dying out.”

Best Show, aka “Let’s Fly”

Southard considers his first show Aug. 4, 2006, a night the group unanimously remembers as their best show ever.

“It was a full on Beat Street slamdown,” Southard says. “It was at the Mezzanine in San Francisco. It was Who Cares, Egyptian Lover, and Nucleus.”

Who Cares has always had a strong relationship with Sacramento artist Neal Bergmann, aka Lopan 4000. Southard and Upton describe Lopan as a true hip-hop head, perpetually stuck in ‘88. His connections lead to Who Cares opening for hip-hop and electro legends Egyptian Lover and Nucleus.

“Lopan made one of those life-size posters parodying the Beat Street poster with all our names in it,” Southard recalls. “I was at the free Chromeo show [at Mezzanine] a week prior to our show and saw it there. I felt super proud like that’s going to be my first fucking show.”

Upton says that night was the first time he felt like they were doing something, rather than just trying. After brief concern over possible hyperventilation, he falls into the moment on stage.

“I looked up and Cosmo D [of Nucleus] and his wife were sitting in the balcony,” he says. “They gave us a toast. That was before we were friends, but I still idolized him and Chilly B [also of Nucleus].”

The Fall, aka “Sad & Gray”

Who Cares is playing TBD Fest 2014, but the night before, Upton is in Reno for a DJ set. He speaks with Tarkington, who lives there now. Tarkington has to put oil in his Vespa, then he plans to meet Upton at the venue to hang out.

Except he never does.

“I was like damn this oil change is taking three hours,” Upton says. “Then the owner was like, ‘Did you hear about Jammal?’”

Tarkington is T-boned on his Vespa by a drunk driver in a pick-up truck who runs a red light.

Southard says, “We thought he was going to end up way worse off than he ended up being.”

Upton adds, “He’s not the same saxophone player. It took a toll on his music.”

It takes a toll on the group, too. Uncertain if Tarkington will ever play again, things are put on hiatus. It’s tragedy in a bouquet of dead flowers for Who Cares.

Upton and Southard have been uncertain of the state of Who Cares for years. The two continue making music under the moniker, complete an EP titled Juvenile Hall with guest appearances from Murs and Cosmo D, but things still fall apart.

“I used to walk through everyday with music blowing through my brain like I was in a cartoon musical,” Upton says. “Now, the sound in my head is me complaining shit as I walk.”

Eventually Dusty Brown makes the executive decision. Sensing the apathy, he asks if Upton and Southard want to push other things. Asks if they wanted to drop the pretense and be free. But they can’t let go.

Upton turns down opportunities due to obligations to Who Cares. Requests for guest appearances and solo work are ignored in favor of pushing the group. Who Cares is the family. You can’t break up with your family.

Southard tells a story of meeting a hippy couple after a show at the Knitting Factory, who encourage them. “They said, you guys can’t quit until the miracle happens, whatever that means for you.”

Redefinition, aka “Heaven Ain’t That Hard”

On April 7, 2016 DJ Shadow announces his new album, The Mountain Will Fall, on Pitchfork. The article features an interview with Josh Davis, aka DJ Shadow. Near the bottom in the tracklisting is a familiar name: Ernie Fresh.

The collaboration with DJ Shadow comes together through a session with Egyptian Lover in Los Angeles. Upton and Southard bring friend and collaborator Mophono to the session. The four artists record a few songs, one of which is played in a Boiler Room set by Mophono. By chance DJ Shadow hears it and inquires about the rapper with the old school flow. He’s got a track perfect for Ernie.

Suddenly Upton is called to Mophono’s studio to work with Shadow. “To me, Josh Davis was in another galaxy,” Upton says. “My whole life was about emulating him. I was perfectly happy with being the best wannabe. I always thought his music was so good that rap would make it worse.”

Thinking of the hippy couple, Southard says, “I guess the DJ Shadow thing is [the miracle], but it’s not the form I expected.”

Being on a DJ Shadow record changes your perspective. Upton says he has difficulty disagreeing with Dusty Brown. He’s gone from the guy in the group going nowhere and stuck opening for his idols to having friends named Mophono, Egyptian Lover, Cosmo D and DJ Shadow.

“It’s reinforced the dream I’ve always wanted as a kid growing up,” he says. “It just fell in my lap, and now I have to let go of the past. It’s hard for a guy who made his whole rap career out of dwelling on the past.”

Eulogy, aka “Show Me Some Change”

Perhaps the ending was written in 2010 and the group couldn’t see it. Listening to Young Aundee’s haunting refrain of “I’m not trying to let anyone down” on “Show Me Some Change” foreshadows the Who Cares of 2016. On it, Upton is brooding, disillusioned and willing to step away in order to keep matters civil: You give it all to keep the ones that you love close / especially when the ones you love turn into a ghost.

The official end of Who Cares is a way to let those ghosts rest. Upton and Southard have a close bond that’s feeding into new music. New music like “Radical Reformation” featuring Cosmo D that channels the same punk and electro spirit of Afrika Bambaata’s Time Zone project. They credit their mutual love of anime as influential on the new direction. Upton’s pursuing more solo work and Southard says he’s down to be his “Nate Dogg.”

“It’s about looking in the mirror and asking, ‘Were you doing this in the hopes of being a somebody?’” Upton says. “Or is this just you? Then, you realize you’d do this every day no matter who’s fucking watching.”

He pauses, then adds, “I hope it stays that way forever now. That would be the reward.”

Who Cares will play its final show (at least for now) at Concerts in the Park on June 17, 2016. Also performing will be Vokab Kompany, The Good Samaritans, The Scratch Outs and CrookOne. Presented by Bud Light, Concerts in the Park take place every Friday night from 5 to 9 p.m. (through Aug. 5, no concert on July 1) at Cesar Chavez Park in downtown Sacramento. For a more info and a full lineup of upcoming concerts, go to Godowntownsac.com.

Visceral Sound Creation

While most teenagers in the ’90s were navigating their way through the precarious world of acne, young love and algebra, Andrew Southard—also known as Young Aundee—was honing his skills as a musician and launching his career as an electronic, hip-hop and trip-hop beat maker while learning to master the melodica, a harmonica with a blow tube, but more on that later.

With a calendar full of DJing gigs, including a slot at Submerge’s upcoming 200th issue party, and a new four-song EP release titled Caveat Emptor that features two vocal tracks and two heavily layered instrumental cuts, Young Aundee is hitting the local music scene hard this year.

“The first song ‘Amazing Grace’ is a beat that Dusty Brown had since 2007. We made some modifications to it,” he explains. “There’s no [specific] concept to it, but the name caveat emptor is a sales term that means let the buyer beware, so I thought it would be kind of applicable, like when you apply yourself to art and music you kind of have to take whatever discomforts come with the bad and the good.”

As he approaches his second decade of making music, the performer has amassed a catalog of music that ranges from punk rock to hip-hop, but says his journey as a singer and performer is still ongoing as he continues to cultivate his talents.

“In the more live, songwriting atmosphere, I’m still coming into my own,” he admits. “Self-consciousness is still a problem for me, so when I do feel like I connect [to the audience] it means a lot to me. I guess ultimately that’s what I’m trying to do is connect.”

Making connections is a language that Young Aundee speaks fluently—he’s played with local and national acts ranging from Sister Crayon to witch house maestro oOoOO, and maintains a long-running musical partnership with Sacramento electronic impresario Dusty Brown. As he gears up to bring his latest project to life, Halftone Society Rhythm Section—a musical alliance he formed with producer Benji Illgen who performs under the name Mophono—Young Aundee says that the act will be a clandestine event shrouded in ambiguity.

“It’s a collaboration between a bunch of different musicians in the San Francisco jazz scene and also a couple in the beat music scene,” he explains. “Mophono [is] trying to keep it as elusive as possible, you’ll never know what it’s actually [all about] until you go to the show.”

A Young Aundee performance is both heterogeneous and unpredictable—drawing from his eclectic range of musical interests, his mood-drenched lyrical style combines genuine openness with raw, unapologetic observations of the world around us. Layered over a menagerie of twittering synths and methodical beats, his music is a reflection of the diversity that directs his musical compass, coalescing in a sonic wave that is both hauntingly beautiful and straight-up ear candy.

“The first band I ever played in, I was a keyboard player and it was kind of a Cure, pop thing,” he recalls. “I loved the feeling that we were creating something that was our own, as simple as that sounds, it’s true.”

When he isn’t constructing beats with Brown or tackling the logistics for the Halftone Society Rhythm Section album release party set for the end of the year, Young Aundee also throws down with the hip-hop group Who Cares. In fact, it was through his association with this act that Young Aundee established one of his favorite collaborations, with the ’80s Los Angeles dance scene legend Egyptian Lover.

“My very first show with Who Cares was in 2005 at the Mezzanine in San Francisco. It was the first time we ever performed a song called ‘Space Love,’ which is kind of on that freestyle, Debbie Deb, Shannon kind of shit, and the chorus in that song is straight-up like an ’80s radio song,” he recalls. “So he heard that, and ever since then we’ve kind of been on his radar. We approached him to collaborate on a track and he was available and was actually excited about the idea. To say that I worked with a dude that created a sound, especially on the West Coast, is a big deal to me.”

Creating sounds is Young Aundee’s jam—the soundscapes he constructs, whether performing live with Who Cares or standing behind his laptop churning out beat-drenched grooves at events like this week’s ArtMix at the Crocker Art Museum, draw from his wide-ranging musical pursuits, including the melodica.

“I started playing the melodica because of my connection to dub reggae music; it was made famous by a guy called Augustus Pablo in the ’70s,” he says. “I started playing it in my first band called Secret Six. We were like Bad Brains and Operation Ivy, that punk-reggae, but not the Sublime kind. Yeah, I call that Beach Hut Deli shit, they always have the Pandora station on Slightly Stoopid and Pepper, and all that horrible shit. I can’t stand it. You have to smoke dabs to feel that shit, the highly concentrated shit.”

And while he’s been making music since the days when he recorded original tunes on his four-track recorder at 14, Young Aundee says that his sound has evolved organically through the use of technology, but also as a result of his close relationships with his trusted production team.

“The dudes I work with predominantly are Dusty Brown and Benji, who are like two of the most underrated electronic music producers in Northern California,” he says. “I’m super lucky and blessed to be able to work with them on a regular basis.”

“I usually work with a lyricist, but I also write my own stuff out of necessity,” he continues. “I’m more of a singer and a part maker before I am a lyricist. I’ve worked with one of my best friends since I was in high school, his name is Jeremy Dawson and he collaborates with me on probably 70 percent of the lyrical content.”

The word visceral gets thrown around a lot around these days, but from Young Aundee’s purgative debut album, 2013’s Fear in the Fold, to his latest exploits with Halftone Society Rhythm Section, the singer-lyricist-beat maker says that it is because of those guttural, agonizing experiences that creativity emerges from the dark recesses of the spirit, both in and out of the studio.

“That’s what David Sedaris’ books are like for me, they make you laugh [but] they also kind of make your heart drop,” he explains “A lot of comedy does that for me; a lot of comedians are deeply disturbed, depressed individuals, that’s why that shit comes naturally to them.”

With Caveat Emptor hitting the streets and a full-length album he hopes to release in 2016, Young Aundee is hitting his musical stride. But it is his dedication to the exuberant exploration of the sonic world through bold experimentations and by taking risks that belie his quiet demeanor and allows him to draw in and connect with the crowd.

“Music is pretty transient, so it’s super rewarding to connect with an audience,” he says. “I don’t call myself a DJ but I think that’s the language people can adapt to more than the original music thing, so I’ll take it as it comes.”

Catch a Young Aundee DJ set for free Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015, as part of the Submerge 200th Issue Party at LowBrau, located at 1050 20th Street. The event will also feature live performances by Contra, Sunmonks, DLRN and Joseph In the Well. The party is free, 21-and-over, and begins at 5 p.m.

After a heat wave as intense as the one we just had, we’re looking forward to enjoying more than two dozen DJs and live bands over two days along the Sacramento River at the first-ever Splash Music Festival, taking place at Rio Ramaza Marina and Events Center (10000 Garden Hwy), on Saturday, July 13 and Sunday, July 14. Splash will not only feature international headliners mixed with regional talent, but there will also be a gigantic wading pool, slip ‘n’ slides, misting systems, water cannons and plenty of other ways to keep cool while the following DJs and bands blast through a world-class sound system: Darth & Vader (all the way from Brazil), Krafty Kuts (from England), Luminox, NiT GriT, DJ Dan, Trevor Simpson, Dyloot, DJ Billy Lane, Diamond Dez, Who Cares, The Frail, Element of Soul, G.A.M.M.A., DJ Whores, Atom One and so many others. Considering the level of talent, tickets are a steal at just $40 for a two-day pass. Single-day passes will put you back $30, so we say go for the two-day and make a weekend of it (limited camping and RV spaces are available, too). There are also backstage and VIP packages available; visit Splashmusicfestival.com for more information. Bust out your board shorts, bathing suits, tank tops and flip flops, because Splash Music Festival is sure to be a wet and wild time. Don’t forget the sunscreen!

Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011 is a great day to be hanging out on the campus of Sacramento State, whether you’re a student or not. First, check out the closing reception for the art show CTRL/DELETE: Paintings by Digital Natives, featuring recent work by James Angello, David Mohr and Daniel Taylor at Witt Gallery (located in Kadema Hall) from 6 to 8 p.m. Mohr, who is in the local band FAVORS, recently told Submerge that he and Angello thought up the idea for the show. “We are both interested in what it means to paint and draw in a world dominated by computer technology, so we decided to put together a show that would discuss that concept,” he said. They were familiar with Taylor’s work (“We have all had art classes together,” Mohr said–the three are now seniors at Sacramento State), so they reached out to him and it became a three-person show. “All of our work is very different,” Mohr elaborated. “My work mostly focuses on abstract geometric forms, but I try to use familihttps://submergemag.com/wp-admin/media-upload.php?post_id=4726&type=image&TB_iframe=1ar shapes to reflect on the experiences and methods of interaction shared between humans and evolving electronic technologies.” If you miss the reception on Nov. 3 you’ll have to rush to see the work, as it is only viewable until Friday, Nov. 4, 2011.

After you check out the art show on campus, head over the Union Ballroom and check out one of the hottest hip-hop shows all year, featuring Aesop Rock, Rob Sonic and DJ Big Wiz. The concert also features special opening guests Jel and Who Cares. Show starts at 7:30 p.m., is $15 for students and $20 for general public.

Who Cares Teenage Ego Trip

(Independent release)

When I was introduced to Who Cares, I heard a group with the purest of intentions struggling to craft music beyond the traditional hip-hop realm, while not betraying its beloved culture. I’ve always admired the courage in a group that was willing to make a song as heavy as “Heaven Ain’t That Hard” and follow it up with a Bambaataa-esque throwback like “They Killed the Radio” with Egyptian Lover.

Despite my admiration, there was a glaring struggle in identity that I always perceived as heavy-handed and off-putting. It was as though Who Cares might function better as two entities, one that loves trans-European electro-party jams and one that is meant to be heard during a rainy-day self-reflection session. Who Cares’ third record, Teenage Ego Trip, released last month, is its finest to date. With the help of an engineer and studio guidance, the album also serves as the resolution of the aforementioned identity crisis.

Easily the wisest move Who Cares made in crafting Teenage Ego Trip was pulling Dusty Brown into the project as its engineer, contributing producer and co-writer. His fingerprints leave evidence throughout the long player as he employs the same trademarks that made his This City Is Killing Me EP an instant classic. With Dusty behind the boards, Who Cares resolved its clash in styles found on the previous CD-R the group peddled at shows. Teenage Ego Trip is rich in texture, featuring a studio band intent on boastfully marauding for abstract sound pieces typically reserved for the likes of Damon Albarn and his Gorillaz project. This makes previous Who Cares efforts sound like skeletal demos; it’s as though the past years of songs were written in order to achieve this sort of breakthrough.

Subtle and lush, no song is without nuance in style that is not only rewarding, but adequate in placement–no tricks for the sake of flare–nor are the instrumental affairs exaggerated or embellished. In the past you could have made a case that Who Cares was wanking off a bit, or that a different perspective was relying too heavily on its virtuosity–take your pick. The choicest amount of care is given to production. Take, for example, the snare drum intro on “Cherry Boy” that’s run through filters, muting the percussion to a pitter-patter that, once refashioned, creates a pop to the instrumentation as Ernie Upton, aka Fernie Fresh, comes in with the vocals. The Who Cares style of old haunts the record in small doses: grandiose sax solos are fed as distant radio transmissions. Young Aundee’s falsetto crooning is employed sparingly, not to suggest it should be, but “These Three Words” is given room to breathe and earn its electro-outro that features an Aundee refrain, instead of forcing a vocalist into a boom-bap production or customizing the boom-bap and running the risk of the cursed “crossover” scarlet letter.

Who Cares is well past its juvenile days of rewriting Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth’s “T.R.O.Y.” a dozen times over. The transformation is strictly from a sonic perspective as Fernie Fresh maintains a deep connection with the disenfranchised and half-broken in his lyrics. Teenage Ego Trip is a well-constructed teddy bear for the latchkey kids and survivors of broken homes that took to the seedier side of life and are seeking to do better with their days and weeks. Perhaps it’s time to heal the gloomy demeanor of the Who Cares bear cartoon, give it a congratulatory pat on the back and put a crooked smile on its worried mug.

Who Cares’ Teenage Ego Trip is available for free download online at www.forhiphop.com.

Dusty Brown Rides the Buzz of This City Is Killing Me Toward a New Album

Stolen gear, finicky crowds at shows and an anxiety toward giving his music to anyone he doesn’t call “friend” are just a few of the reasons Dusty Brown feels like this city is killing him. If the local scene is the cause of his suffering, why can’t Dusty Brown abandon Sacramento?

His insularity could be his greatest downfall, but in that apprehension to be seen or be the scene, he’s surrounded himself with friends within music who will gladly step in to exalt his art. After turning over a little five-song EP to his friend and electronic-colleague Scott “Tycho” Hansen, Dusty Brown was uncertain of his friend’s intentions. Hansen’s artistic talents stretch beyond his propensity for finely crafted down tempo IDM. Hansen fashioned the This City Is Killing Me with artwork based on photos by Raoul Ortega and put it on his ISO50 blog for free download.

Hansen was not bashful in introducing Brown to his fan base, as the post was accompanied by a three-paragraph salute to Brown. Hansen wrote, “I’ve learned more about music from Dusty than anyone else; his production style and methods are truly awe inspiring.”

Brown’s career arc illuminates the thought process behind naming a collection of songs This City Is Killing Me. After the dissolution of the electronica scene, Dusty’s band, consisting of his sister Jessica and cousin Zac, had its live equipment stolen in 2007. To recoup the losses, the band put out its Hope You’re Happy LP. “It succeeded in getting my money back to the dot,” he said. “I put a post out thanking everyone and the sales literally dropped flat, which was…great.” Since that record, the group limited itself to the studio and the occasional gig at The Press Club or The Hub.

Brown spoke as though he’s a man out of his proper time. He married at 18 years of age and now has four children with one more on the way. Brown said he understood the music business some in the ‘90s–the tour and make connections plan–but as a family man with hermetic impulses, he never thought that giving his music out for free would put a buzz into the band again. “Twenty-five hundred people downloaded it within three days, when before I was lucky to get one or two people to hit my Web site in that time,” he said.

With one stamp of approval blog post from Tycho, the band Dusty Brown went from strictly known in Northern California to receiving coverage from national music Web sites like XLR8R, Pitchfork Media and Yourstru.ly.

“It was a pretty incredible feeling that week,” Brown said. “Coming from a Sacramento guy, who nobody literally knows who we are outside of Sacramento, to have people donate from the Dominican Republic is crazy. The fact that it reached so many people so quickly, shows the old model of touring for months for people to hear your music is completely gone.”

The instant gratification benefited Dusty’s creativity, as he’s eager to finish a new full-length that’s nearly completed. And with the couple-hundred donated by downloaders of the EP, he’s toying with the idea of pressing This City Is Killing Me on vinyl.

Dusty Brown might be riding a high wave this month, but he’s grounded enough to recognize he still lives in Sacramento, a city that from his perspective is still trying to kill him. He played a capacity night with Tycho at the first annual Sacramento Electronica Music Festival in January, only to play again a week later to three people. “This month the NBA Finals will be the reason no one comes out,” he said. “But, I’ll end up playing for a random hippie that doesn’t care about sports.”

He went on to say, “I feel like there’s a superficial love for live music [here]. The minute you feel like it’s authentic you realize it’s not.”

It’s those one-off nights of capacity crowds, that lone hippie appreciator and the seclusion of Sacramento, where his family lives, that keeps Dusty Brown among us. He said that for all the depressive tones his music can take, he often describes it as “melancholy electronica.” “I’m not a very emotional person, so when it comes to music I kind of let it go a little bit,” Brown said. “I’m sad, then I’m pretty happy about the fact that I got over I was sad.”

This City Is Killing Me is Dusty’s passive aggressive bout with the naysayers that have hurt his feelings. But it’s when his sister Jessica takes cues from his sounds and applies them to her experiences that the Dusty Brown music finds its plateaus of euphoria. “I wouldn’t say we’re completely connected, but I think she listens to the frustrations I have,” he said.

At five songs the EP is concise, overlapping tones and instrumentation; but for every brooding moment, the band releases the tension with bursting chorus lines on “How’s That” or the glimmers of hope in the refrain of “Back to Back” as Jessica sings, “As we remember the light in our dark past.”

With the small window of hype surrounding This City Is Killing Me, Dusty said he’s ready to push ahead with the mountain of music he’s been keeping in the vaults. Dusty once employed a writing method in which he wrote three to four new songs for every live set, instilling a prolific work ethic. My phone call interrupted a recording session with Steve Borth of CHLLNGR, who uses Dusty’s home studio whenever he’s in town. In his three years of recording silence, Dusty produced a hefty chunk of the upcoming Who Cares record and prepared several EPs with Jacob Golden under the group moniker Little Foxes. “That EP was just a precursor to a full-length album,” he said. “I’ve got mass amounts of music I need to get out before the end of the summer because I’ve got a baby coming.”

Brown framed the buzz around his EP as “not much” in comparison to what most artists receive, shaming himself for strictly showing his music to people he deems “friends.” I jokingly asked if, after this surge of releases, it would be another three years before we hear from Dusty Brown again. He followed up with an anecdote about a night in the studio with Who Cares: “I was playing them some of the music I’d written over the last 10 years. I didn’t realize two hours went by. I wasn’t even halfway done. I’m starting to think I should create another name just to release all this lo-fi drum ‘n’ bass and hip-hop I wrote.”

Why not?

Catch Dusty Brown with Paper Pistols at Capital Garage on Saturday, June 26. Or you’ll be able to see them at their EP Release show Saturday, July 17 at the Townhouse.

Click to download Dusty Brown’s This City Is Killing Me