Before the boardrooms, what defines what truly exists?

I’ve spent my life on both sides of the camera and both sides of the stage. I toured in bands for years — playing in the same rooms as The Locust and Yeah Yeah Yeahs — while shooting music videos, making flyers, and doing marketing work for Merge Records. Played with Beach Fossils for a stretch too — too much of a wild card to stay in one lineup for long. Opened for Battles at The Milestone in Charlotte — the only show that ever truly humbled me. With Stone Figs, I opened for The xx and Grizzly Bear. And with Little Bull Lee, I opened for Hawkwind and Spindrift at Tremont Music Hall — in a suit.

My feature documentary Bartender at Large — plus its 100+ episode podcast, 10K weekly plays — won Best Documentary and Best Director (Erick Castro) at the Accolade Global Film Competition, plus official selections at the LA Independent Film Festival Awards, LAIFFA, Cinema New York, Docs Without Borders, and the Singapore Independent Film Festival.

From 2014 to 2017 I shot, recorded, and edited SoundDiego, a weekly live-music TV series airing before Saturday Night Live — board audio on an H4n, room mics, artist interviews, weekly turnaround in Premiere, Final Cut, and After Effects. Artists included Tyler, the Creator, Skrillex, Diplo, Steve Aoki, RL Grime, Charles Bradley, Cloud Nothings, DIIV, Sunflower Bean, MS MR, Drive Like Jehu, HEALTH, Foxygen, and The Locust.

I shot a video at FORM Arcosanti — the boutique festival at Paolo Soleri’s experimental desert city in Arizona. I’d known Skrillex since his hardcore band days; years later I was filming him from behind in a canyon there and it clicked who I was actually pointing a camera at. Met Jonsi from Sigur Ros on a roof with a friend. Met Beyonce. Met Taylor Kirk of Timber Timbre — RIP, that one hit hard this year. It was mad.

I also met Phil Elverum of the Microphones, not long after his wife passed. I didn’t know what to say. I just sobbed.

I also played in a band called Los Pinche Pinches — instrumental math surf, San Diego — with Gabe Serbian, The Locust’s drummer, on and off. RIP to him too. San Diego’s heavy scene lost a real one. We played the Belly Up in Solana Beach on a bill with Dick Dale — the King of the Surf Guitar himself.

Full lineup: Aaron LeGrow on guitar, Damon DeLaPaz on drums (founding member of Fenix TX, plus fill-in duty for Blink-182, Good Charlotte, and The Vandals), and me on bass. Our album art is legendary — one cover is a Russian nesting doll of luchador masks with surf legend Mickey Dora in the center, surrounded by party parrots. Another has surfers wiping out around a Trump’s-hair-as-Cthulhu creature, political and apolitical at the same time because it means nothing. Then there’s Skeet Mountain, a half-tone dog on the cover. The joke was always that we sucked, but we were better than you.

I ran Shuffle Magazine (2012–2017) as Art Director — editorial design and photography for a quarterly 40-page perfect-bound print magazine spotlighting Southern music and culture. Directed 20 photographers, managed 10 writers, laid the whole thing out in InDesign. Covers and features included the Avett Brothers, Toro y Moi, Superchunk, Xiu Xiu, The Rosebuds, Des Ark, and Merge Records artists across the board.

Music videos I’ve made have run on Pitchfork, Epitaph, and Deathwish. I directed the music videos for Dirty Art Club.

My favorite thing I’ve ever made is the video for David Childers’ “How ‘Bout You,” off Serpents of Reformation (Ramseur Records — same label as the Avett Brothers). We shot it in a church. I saw some real Southern culture that day.

I also made music videos for Scott Weaver’s Lipgloss parties — drag queens, go-go, full chaos, at Snug Harbor in Charlotte.

I shot and produced “Space Medusa” for the prog-rock band Shadowgraphs — start to finish, in my own backyard, my cameras, my drones.

One client — a partner at a law firm, deep pockets, zero self-awareness — insisted on funding his own music video. Worst edit of my career, and I told him it was genius.