Summer Shenanigans

Summer Shenanigans was a total whim - I regularly play with silly little songs, usually just for fun, sometimes as a way to add levity to a solo acoustic show, often released exclusively on my group chats with my high school or college buddies. But this year I had a few that I really wanted to get out into the world and they all seemed to fit into a format that I’ve seen other people do, particularly in Country music - the “summer jams” EP.

In that spirit, I sent some demos to the mighty Deke Spears (Quiet Hounds) at Magnetic Recording in Georgia and we banged out 4 killer little summer rockers, released over the late spring, summer, and early fall in 2024.

From “Hey Man’s Day Out” - which explored the social anxiety caused by solicitation and evangelism in public, to my attempt to gin up some body positivity before beach season in the form of “Dad Bod”, to the whimsical forever-young anthem “Trampoline” we tried to create a soundtrack for the summer, at least for anyone with my particular set of psychological, emotional, and physical idiosyncrasies.

The final track, “Beach Bodies” may never have seen the light of day if not for an acoustic show at Eddie’s Attic in March 2023, when I played it for an attentive crowd and one of my old pals whose sense of humor was always right up my alley told me that it had him falling out of his chair laughing. That was all I needed to hear.

The song is a country-metal hybrid, taking some good-natured shots at the Beach Country genre, but also with something not-so-subtle to say about the way purely mindless nostalgia and cookie cutter entertainment helps distract us from all the injustice and misery in the world. It was described by various friends and fellow artists as “the greatest song of 2024” “brilliant, hilarious, schizophrenic” and “a little bit genius” - not to oversell it.