Everybody’s got a story. But not everybody tells it from the beginning. Some people skip the parts that shaped them—the quiet moments, the weird thoughts, the little details that actually made them who they are. But I can’t skip those.

Because if you really want to understand my music—my mind—my mission… You gotta know where I started.

This is that story. All of it. From the dirt roads of Berwick, Maine, to studios and stages, to raising a family while chasing a dream. This ain’t filtered. This is how it really happened.

I came up in Berwick. A small town where the trees whispered louder than people talked. A place where frogs outnumbered streetlights and your imagination had to work overtime just to keep you entertained.

I was the kind of kid who couldn’t sit still. I moved fast, thought fast, talked fast. Got into girls too early, acted grown before I even had hair on my chest. Not reckless—just aware. I knew there was more out there, and I wanted in.

With no siblings around, most of my days were solo. Just me, my imagination, and the woods. And the mirror.

Robin Williams became a strange kind of mentor to me. I found out he used to study himself in the mirror—trying to figure out what people saw in his face when he changed expressions. So I started doing that too. Practicing characters. Studying reactions. Learning how to express myself before I even knew how to speak my truth out loud.

Sometimes I’d go out to the woods and act out movie scenes. Or I’d sing. Or write little rhymes and poems. It wasn’t “performance” back then—it was just how I survived being in my own head so much.

Meanwhile, I was bouncing between two homes every month like a human ping pong ball:

One week with my dad
One week with my mom
Back to dad
Last week with mom again

That rhythm became my normal—but those homes couldn’t have been more different.

At Dad’s, it was discipline and structure. He was running his own computer business, coding and fixing machines out of his home office. Always working, always focused. From the outside, it looked like stability—but I felt like I was just another line of code he had to debug. I craved his attention, but he loved me through provision, not presence.

At Mom’s, it was loose. Laid back. She smoked her cigarettes, watched TV, and talked with me like I was her equal. I loved being there—it felt free. But that freedom came with a quiet cost I couldn’t name yet.

Because a lot of that calm came from depression. There were days she barely got out of bed. The laughter she gave me was real—but it was borrowed. It came from a deep place of exhaustion. And I didn’t know what mental health was back then—I just knew that when she smiled, it felt like she was choosing to.

Neither of them were perfect. Neither of them were villains. They were just people trying to get through life the best way they knew how.

Still, as a kid, I started to see the cracks. The subtle shade they threw at each other. The way I was made into the middleman without ever signing up for it. It gave me an early sense of adult problems—and a silent job as a translator between two people who used me as a way to speak to each other.

And through it all, I kept studying. Watching people. Analyzing everything. I didn’t always feel safe, but I felt aware. And that awareness became my armor.

This is chapter one. The beginning before the world flipped. The silence before the storm. The kid with a mirror, a pen, and something to say.