I never thought that my journey with cancer would lead me to where I am today. As a musician, I always believed that my passion for music was all I needed to succeed. But when I was diagnosed with cancer, everything changed.

My love for music started when I was just six years old. I began taking classical violin and piano lessons and never looked back. Music was my escape, my solace and my passion. I played in orchestras, bands, ensembles and theaters. But it wasn’t until I heard the album Neon Bible by Arcade Fire that my entire perspective on music changed. Suddenly, I wanted to write songs that were emotional, powerful and relatable. I fell in love with Norah Jones’ style and started writing music in that vein. Over time, my music evolved into a blend of Southern Rock and alt rock/pop.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, my world was turned upside down. I lost my job, my music focus and my sense of purpose. But I refused to let cancer define me. Instead, I channeled my energy into writing music. My new single, “Chill the fck out”, was born out of my need to calm my anxiety and panic. It became my mantra, and I hope it can help others who are going through the same thing.

The most important thing I’ve learned about songwriting is to let it come from the heart. I used to force songs, but now I sit down with my instrument and let the words and melodies flow naturally. I’ve written some of my best music since my diagnosis because I’m allowing myself to be who I truly want to be.

Cancer has taught me to prioritize what’s truly important in life: loved ones and passions. If I only have a limited amount of time on this earth, I want to spend it doing what brings me joy. That’s why I’m no longer worried about other people’s opinions of my music. I want to leave behind a legacy of songs that I’m proud of, regardless of how they’re received.

My advice to anyone going through a difficult time is to focus on yourself. Take care of yourself and don’t worry about what other people think. It’s all about you now. Surround yourself with people who love and support you, and do whatever it takes to feel good.

Learning to produce my own music has been a lifesaver during this time. It’s like learning to paint, but with music. The possibilities are endless, and I’m excited to continue exploring new sounds and styles.

My motto is “Don’t be afraid to feel everything.” Cancer has taught me that life is too short to hold back. I want to experience everything life has to offer, both the good and the bad. And through it all, I’ll keep writing music that speaks to the heart and soul.

Photo courtesy of Hannah Turner-Harts

“Why stand on a silent platform? Fight the war. Fuck the norm.”

When we started LOCATIONS, we didn’t know what the direction of the band was going to be. When we were writing one of our first songs, we knew we wanted to repeat a line that felt political but not divisive. We were looking for a sentiment that everyone could get behind. We came up with “they don’t care about us” - “they” being corrupt politicians. Our song, “Loud”, came together quickly, and we had found a message that would bring “us” together.

We envisioned a chorus of voices shouting the line by the end of the track, so we enlisted some friends to come over and yell into a microphone. We wanted to get them riled up and angry about corruption before we recorded, so we went to YouTube to find a video that highlighted all of the terrible shit going on in American politics.

That’s how we discovered the first organization we got involved with, Represent Us.

Represent Us is a bipartisan anti-corruption organization that is working to pass initiatives at the local and state level. We found this incredible video (starring Jennifer Lawrence!) that explained everything that we knew was wrong with our system of government. After the video laid out the problems, it moved on to the solutions. They were talking about term limits, ending gerrymandering, ranked choice voting, and publicly funded elections to get big money out of politics. We were blown away!

We knew we wanted to use “Loud” to raise money and get our fans engaged with Represent Us. Once we saw how powerful a song with a message could be, we knew that this was the way forward. Of course people want to end political corruption, but they need to be shown how and where to put their anger and energy. We decided that we would focus each of our releases on an issue with widespread support and direct our fans to use their power and take action.

While working on our new single, “Moves”, we knew from the start we wanted to use it to take on the dog shit healthcare system we’re stuck with in this country. We’ve both spent years without health insurance or with coverage so bad that it was unusable. Lucky for us, our trade unionized in 2017 and we gained access to incredible health insurance. Just over a year later, a major medical event came knocking and put that insurance to good use. But to this day we can’t stop thinking, what would have happened without that coverage? How can tens of millions of people in this country fall through the cracks of our healthcare system without the rest of us standing up and saying THIS IS NOT OK?

It is literally insane that Americans can see how the rest of the developed world treats healthcare and not believe that we deserve the same. Healthcare is a human right. No person should have to make the decision to lose their home, or spend their life savings, or risk their mental health, in order to get the medical treatment that their doctors say they need. Hundreds of thousands of people file for bankruptcy because of medical debt every year. Why are we allowing this to continue?

We live under a system that prioritizes profit over health. Americans spend thousands of dollars more per person on healthcare than any other country, and yet we don’t have anywhere near the best healthcare system by nearly any metric. Think about that. Where is all of that money going? It’s not going to healthcare workers. It’s going to the insurance companies, who make a profit off of denying coverage to our sick and dying people. It’s going to pharmaceutical companies, who make a profit off of selling life-saving drugs at extravagant markups.

How do they spend these immoral profits? A massive amount of money is spent on lobbying and donations to our elected representatives. Let’s not forget the Super PACs, which are legally allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money to spend on influencing elections. In the 2021-2022 cycle alone, these PACs have reported total receipts of over 1.5 billion dollars. We know that the vast majority of politicians are bought and paid for. It’s out in the open. 43 Senators just voted against capping the price of insulin! It failed to pass with the necessary 60 votes. We have to put a stop to this madness.

In New York, there’s been a bill called The New York Health Act floating around Albany for over 20 years. It would move New York to a single-payer system that would give all New York residents access to quality health services without fear of financial ruin. You can learn more about the details of the New York Health Act here. 

The bill finally has enough co-sponsors in both the Senate and Assembly to pass. New Yorkers and their representatives WANT to revolutionize our healthcare system. The problem is that the leaders of the Senate and Assembly have to bring it up for a vote, and they won’t because they don’t want it to pass.

Despite Governor Hochul proclaiming “Every New Yorker deserves the dignity of having access to quality health care”, she has remained silent on the passage of the New York Health Act. If she really believed that, she would at absolute minimum vocally support the bill. Her silence is deafening. We called the office of Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to get the most recent excuse on why the bill hasn’t been brought to a vote. Three calls ended with the promise of a call back that never came.

Do their campaign contributions affect their positions? I’m sure they would say of course not, but it’s easy to follow the money. In the meantime, countless people are suffering and dying. Shame on them!

It is long past due that we guarantee access to healthcare as a human right in the richest country in the world. Collective action is an existential threat to the immoral healthcare system that Americans are trapped in, and that is what we are trying to achieve with LOCATIONS. But we can’t do it alone; we need you to join us.

Get involved with the Campaign for New York Health. You can give your time, your money or at least your voice. You have power, it’s time to use it! Call your state representatives, and make sure to demand that Senate and Assembly leadership bring the New York Health Act up for a vote. Call your own representatives and make sure they’re putting pressure on leadership to push the bill across the finish line.

Together, we can pass the New York Health Act and guarantee access to healthcare for everyone in New York. Once the rest of the country sees how single-payer healthcare works and wakes up to the fraudulent scheme that is the American healthcare system, the movement will spread like wildfire. Canada passed it province by province, and we can do it state by state. Every other country with a similarly-sized economy has guaranteed access to healthcare. Why should we settle for less?

Take action now.

Photo courtesy of Ren Shelborne

If you’re reading this, you already know the state of the shitshow we colloquially call the American Government. But given the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade and ever-present threat to gay rights in America, I thought it would be nice to spotlight a woman that I hadn’t heard about until recently, despite her being an integral activist in the fight for gay rights. Maggi Rubenstein was an incredible woman who found ways to transform adversity into educational movements for the LGBT community.

Maggi Rubenstein was a nurse, educator and activist born in 1931 in San Francisco. In retrospective interviews, she says she had feelings for both boys and girls growing up, but never acted on her desires until the early 1950s when she married her first husband. Despite marrying at the acceptable age of 21 and remaining abstinent until her wedding day, she was met with disapproval from her parents because her husband was not white. They ultimately split up around a decade later, and Rubenstein began dating a woman. Like many bisexuals, she’s talked about feeling pressured to “pick a side”. In a 1981 interview with The Gay Life, she says, “...in the first relationship, I was heterosexual, in the second...I was a lesbian. What I came to realize was that I really am both.”

In 1969, Rubenstein came out as bisexual to her coworkers at the Center for Special Problems - a clinic that specialized in issues surrounding sexuality. Very special problems, indeed. She was motivated to come out publicly due to the rampant bisexual erasure she was witnessing, at the clinic and elsewhere. She came out to her children and parents shortly after, and was met with more acceptance than she was with her marriage. Her mother thought that “all lesbians do is hug”, and was perhaps relieved by her daughter’s new, “sexless” lifestyle.

In 1973, she paired up with her coworkers and fellow activists, Tony Ayers and Margo Rila, to start San Francisco Sex Information, which was essentially the first hotline for people to anonymously receive information regarding sexual and reproductive health for free. The organization quickly became a haven for bisexuals who had previously been met with judgement and exclusion from both gay and straight communities. As the community began to expand, Rubenstein and her partner at the time, Harriet Leve, began working on what would eventually become the San Francisco Bisexual Center. The purpose of the coalition was to present workshops on bisexuality and sexual health, as well as campaign politically against anti-LGBT legislation. It began in 1975 with a meeting of 20 bisexual doctors, educators and activists in Rubenstein’s attic before being moved to the house of Dr. David Lourea, one of Rubenstein’s colleagues at the Sex Information hotline, in 1977. These small gatherings gained quiet traction throughout San Francisco, but began growing rapidly after the organization publicly fought against the Briggs Initiative, a ballot point proposed in 1978 that would ban any non-heterosexual people from working in public schools in California.

The San Francisco Bisexual Center also became a safe space for trans people in the early 70s. Gay and lesbian organizations would frequently turn trans people away because of how they were presented, so in addition to the workshops on bisexuality, the Center started hosting in-depth workshops on gender and sexuality. It’s clear from the language in these workshops that the Center highly valued androgyny and saw the future of the LGBT community as a genderfluid one, which was very exciting to read, given that the stereotype of 60s and 70s bisexuals is that they were transphobic. The Center was far ahead of its gay and lesbian counterparts on the topic of gender.

Moving into the 1980s, the Center’s focus shifted from exploration of sexuality to education in regards to sexual health and the AIDS crisis. When bathhouses and BDSM clubs (where a majority of gay men gathered) were being closed to slow the transmission of AIDS, she campaigned to keep them open, because it was the best place to provide safe sex information to as many gay men as possible. Her and Dr. Lourea worked not only to make sex safe, but to promote the idea that safe sex was just as sexy as unprotected sex. Rubenstein also organized a “Women and AIDS” program to educate people on how to have safer “hetero sex”, as they called it, regarding AIDS. Because of the homophobia and bi-erasure prevalent at the time, very few people were talking about the spread of AIDS to women and bisexuals. The organization pushed for bisexuals to be recognized as a demographic that was at risk for AIDS, but were ultimately overlooked by the gay communities and demonized by straight people as the reason for transmission to the heterosexual population.

Devastatingly, this exclusion led to the downfall of the Center in the 80s. Given that a majority of leaders in the center were doctors, nurses and sexologists, they needed to turn their energy and efforts towards actively helping the overrun hospitals and clinics in San Francisco and offering AIDS prevention education. They had to turn away from the workshops and community building activities that the Center was known for and had been founded on. The Center shut down in 1984, before Rubenstein and Lourea reframed and reopened as BiPOL with a more political focus.

We are in a time period where bisexuality is more accepted and understood than it has ever been, but the pop culture acceptance does not mean the work is done. Many bisexual people still feel excluded from the queer communities around them, and bisexuality is still seen as a proclivity towards promiscuity and a “fake” sexuality used to “get attention” by a majority of straight people. Learning about the political and educational movements organized by Maggi Rubenstein and the members of the San Francisco Bisexual Center has cemented for me the massive role that bisexual activists have played in the fight for gay rights over the last century, and reaffirms the importance of acceptance within the LGBTQ+ communities today. We don’t have to relate to the experiences and struggles of everyone in this big, beautiful and ever-growing population to work together towards a common goal.

Given that Maggi Rubenstein doesn’t have her own Wikipedia page and a majority of her writings are behind paywalls, I gathered a majority of references and information for this article from verilybitchie’s video essay, “Bisexual Activism in the 70s: The San Francisco Bisexual Center”. Her presentation is thoughtful and drenched in far more humor than I presented here. I highly recommend giving it a watch.

If you’ve ever been through grief, perhaps you can agree it’s a whole mess. I joined the grief club, not by choice, in fall of 2019 when my mom was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Waking up to this reality felt like falling on concrete pretty much every day, too real to shake the funk where it put me. Along with my family, emotions were heightened as we experienced some of our highest highs and lowest lows, never wanting to miss any moments of opportunity to create memories together.

Call me an optimist, but there’s been hope throughout my grief journey that I’ve only come to know by actually going through it.

As soon as I realized loss was inevitable, I sought help from a grief counselor to help me navigate it. Before long, I came to understand the five phases closely aligned with grief, both through research and through personal experience. But what I realized in the course of “facing it” was how unboxable it all is. Unable to contain it to an hour-long therapy session, I’ve also realized I’m unable to label it with five stages and be set. For me, grief has brought up countless emotions. And that’s perfectly okay and even normal.

My debut EP, boxes, was inspired by the mess of boxes I inherited from my late mother upon her passing in March 2020. While it is a reminder of my loss, it is also a glimmer of the life she lived and how I’ve been blessed by it. Each box is filled with gems of every kind; photo albums, holiday decor, china sets and her gardening tools. I’ve found myself overwhelmed by all of it at times, but have come to know it as a gift to be unwrapped every time I “face it”. Loss, not unlike boxes in an attic, can bring life with it too, if we let it.

With time, I’ve wondered how to answer this question about grief: “What does healing look like?” And for me, it has so many answers. One of them, though, has been “reflection”. With a song for every [messy] stage of grief, below is a glimpse of how I’ve been healing.

Sometimes taking a break and getting our own lives in check, or dealing with some of the things we have to deal with individually, can lead to a better place in the future of coming back to something when the time is right. We have to focus on ourselves because we have to reinvent ourselves and we have to establish ourselves as individuals so we can survive. It's about finding balance in where you are and what you are as a person in the moment, and I feel that sometimes it can clash with ideas that you have.

There’s a certain way we do things as New Politics. We all get together and write, but in the last five years it's become more challenging to be together in the same place. As a result, we each have had different experiences which has allowed us to try new things sonically.

We share everything equally, which is awesome because it's an honest-to-god brotherhood and there’s something thicker than blood in our experience of these last ten years, but at the same time it can be exhausting. Having the ability to experiment musically on our own is healthy and helps allow for greater creativity.

At the moment, we’re just doing our own thing and we’re almost reinventing ourselves.

We always had to compare ourselves to our last record or our last single, then you have the pressure from the label. I prefer we take a step back and then come back to it when it's right. The universe will let us know when. I prefer then to turn that energy into something that I understand, that comes naturally to me, that makes sense, that gives me a new challenge but I can be in the front seat 100%.

This time I'm writing and doing this solo project with none of that in mind. That doesn't mean that it ain't fun - don't get me wrong, there’s a challenge and a magic and all of that as well that I love and there’s a time and place for that - but I think right now where I am in my life I also have to realize the stakes or I'm not growing and learning ways that I can better myself or change my outlook on things or challenge myself in a healthy way. This project is the perfect thing for that. It touches all of those points for me and I want that to also show in my music. I want to release my music because I like the songs and I believe in them. In a way I'm back to my basics; I'm back to the core of who I am and I'm starting to find this different sense of enjoyment.

It is challenging knowing one thing and doing one thing for ten years but then at the same time me releasing these songs now in the last year I'm just like ‘what the fuck have I been waiting for’. I haven't had this much fun in so long and that's not to say New Politics hasn’t been fun. I will always be proud of that; it's some of the best memories and experiences that I could never replace and I hope I never have to. I wouldn't trade New Politics fans for anything. They’re part of that experience that is irreplaceable. I just don't want to force anything. I want it to come how New Politics naturally came. We didn't have answers, we didn't know what the fuck we were doing, we just did it out of passion and that's how it should be.

The magic that we have in New Politics is phenomenal but it's also incredible to have this experiment that I'm taking on now and I'm only getting started. I can't wait for my first limited edition of merchandise or going on a small tour or doing surprise shows. It's like I got a spark back, and it's not that I lost it, it's a different kind of spark. It's a spark that is personal for me.

At the moment I don't really have an answer. I don't really know what I'm releasing, I don't know what's going to relate to people and I'm also doing this with an independent budget. I have to use the cards that I'm dealt with and accept this is what reality is right now and I have to make the most of it. It's patience and persistence. I just have to love what I'm doing. That's the most important thing. I have a lot of experience which I'm really grateful for and I can really use that to my advantage moving forward and I'm just so excited.

Photo courtesy of Kate Matthews

I've learned a lot of valuable lessons while earning my "degree" in the music industry. I also take a great deal of pride in having worked myself up from as bottom as it gets.

As a person of colour and a minority, playing gigs in my home country of Canada was literally all about survival in some hostile territories early on. So it was with great satisfaction that after a brutally tough few years, I found myself in the very fortunate situation of sharing many big stages around the world with many of my idols and legends of music. It felt like a dream that you don't ever want to wake up from, only for me it was really happening.

So here are a few of those important lessons I learned, along with some fun road stories, that have shaped not only the artist but also the person I have become.

Lesson 1 (from The Rolling Stones): There is Always More to Learn

The year was 1998 and it was springtime in my favourite party city of Montreal. My band at the time was a bluesy rock power trio called Wide Mouth Mason. We were known for putting on a great live show and were nearing the top of the charts in Canada. I mostly remember witnessing the full force of paparazzi as we arrived at the Molson Centre, where we would be playing the first of a five-show tour opening for... The Rolling freakin’ Stones! Strangely, I wasn't nervous at all and we played a very solid and confident set which was enough for not only a standing ovation from the crowd, but more importantly from their crew as we exited the stage. Apparently, the Stones' crew were notorious for being extra hard on the support acts, so that felt pretty awesome.

Then we went to Toronto’s SkyDome to play in front of 68,000 fans, which is easily the most people I've ever played for. My parents were at that show (RIP Dad) and I remember nearly getting vertigo during the set and trying not to fall over! After the shows, the only member of the band who would come into our dressing room to say hi was the ever dapper Mr. Charlie Watts. We eventually met the whole band. Mick would wear a disguise to watch our show from the soundboard in the crowd; Keith and Ron mostly played pool backstage and would let us watch their intense high stakes games; but Charlie, he was my dude. I would relish the opportunities to sit and chat with him mostly about music. Then one day in Milwaukee, he sat down and joined me for a coffee, while he had tea of course. He then asked me what new music I was listening to. I was a little bit taken aback, I mean why did this musical icon care to know what I was listening to? So I named a few artists like Ben Harper, Jeff Buckley, Me'shell Ndegeocello and whatever other new albums I was currently listening to. Mr. Watts then pulled out his reading glasses and a tiny notepad from his inside blazer pocket and started writing everything down. Huh? Then the very next day, I ran into him backstage and he thanked me for my suggestions. Apparently, he went to the record store and bought all of the albums I mentioned and he really enjoyed them. I was blown away.

The biggest takeaway for me was that no matter what you've accomplished in your career, there is always more to learn. And that willingness and open mindedness is what can help you become the best you can be. I shed tears the day of his passing last year, but those lessons will stay with me forever. Currently, I am the elder statesman in my band, The Steadies, and I am constantly absorbing new music from my young bandmates. I definitely feel like it has made me a better and more well-rounded musician with a finger always on the pulse of what's 'cool'. Thanks Charlie, and rest in peace legend.

Lesson 2 (from Alanis Morissette): Always Be Kind

I'm going to give some love to this particular powerhouse lady. As a youngling, I remember watching her on a goofy Canadian comedy show for kids called “You Can't Do That On Television”. Fast forward to summer of 1995, and my band showed up to play a club in Banff Alberta called Wild Bill's. I had heard Alanis Morissette just played there the night before to not very many people. I was like, "you mean that girl from that TV show"? Well a month later, she became the biggest star on the planet and had a #1 worldwide hit record in the now classic “Jagged Little Pill”.

Some of Pereira's tour laminate collection

The words are raining heavy on my parade. This is the worst waiting game I’ve ever played. These are the loneliest nights and the longest days.

Even though most people don’t see me as one, I am a pretty big introvert. Being a performing artist is something that I love, but it also takes a lot for me to get on stage and showcase my talents. The pandemic took it to the next level for me though - at first, I was thriving to a certain degree and enjoying “me” time because LA is a constant hustle. Having a moment of reprieve was actually something that my mind and body needed more than I realized. However, after a month or so of forced lockdown and not being alone on my own terms, I found that I deeply missed human interaction. I think that no matter how introverted we are, humans are not meant to be completely solitary creatures.

“The Loneliest Nights” is a song that I wrote during the height of the pandemic when I was feeling the most lonely, but I also knew that this was a universal experience happening worldwide. Even though I was physically isolated and alone, I wasn’t alone in my experience. We all went through and handled the waves of emotions in different ways - for myself, I spent a lot of time on my yoga mat and doing contortion training. I took lots of hot baths and had time for more meditation and self reflection. I went on long hikes and enjoyed bike rides on empty LA streets. I tried to keep myself active as much as possible in order to keep my mind calm despite feeling many moments of panic due to what was happening in our world.

I knew I wanted to create a video that visually reflected my own experience of what I was feeling during the height of lockdown. Essentially, it is my expression through movement art of what loneliness and isolation can feel like; moments of beauty and calm interlaced with moments of panic and intensity. My favorite aspect of this video is the use of the mirror. I knew I wanted it incorporated somehow to illustrate the idea of self reflection and going inward when forced into extreme isolation. The director, Tonya Kay, had the idea to have me looking at different versions of myself, which I think came across so beautifully.

Humans are complicated creatures, and I believe that this pandemic has given many people an opportunity to deeply connect with themselves, find extreme gratitude for things that might have been taken for granted before and discover what they really want out of life. We’re not completely out of it yet, but I know that I feel grateful to be able to hug others again and share my art in person.

Dear Little Me,

How are you holding up?

I wish I could say that it all gets easier, and everything will make sense, but it doesn’t. Just know that you’ll need to learn to adapt, and learn to learn.

I’m sure you are wanting to know about all the adventures that are ahead of you, and though I won't give away all the secrets, I can let you in on a few things to expect.

You don’t marry him. He left out of the blue. And even though it clouds your happiness for a while, things get brighter. You don’t move to Nashville right after graduation, but you do visit often, and it's magical. There’s no big record deal yet, but just know that you’re making music that you are proud of. In fact, all your crazy dating adventures in your twenties will lead to the inspiration for your debut single. And that heartbreak you’ll never forget will result in a song that not only helps you get through that moment in life, but is one of the best you’ve been a part of writing. You get stronger and wiser with time. It may not seem like it at the moment, but it all worked out the way it did for a reason, even if it’s not obvious right away.

I’m writing this letter at 24. I’m living in unit 15, in a city apartment, with your two best friends. Like you, I’m still learning, and still trying to understand how things work. Remember – it’s okay to feel like you don’t all have it figured out. Here’s a little secret: everyone feels this way because no one has it all figured out.

Just because someone appears to have their lives completely together doesn’t mean they do. You beat yourself up comparing your life to others - you really gotta stop doing that – but the truth is that they are feeling the exact same way and making their own mistakes. Everyone has their own path. Embrace yours. It’s so easy to get caught up in caring about everyone’s opinions, but at the end of the day, you should spend more time trying to impress yourself first.

When it seems like everyone is passing you, and doing greater things, it just means that their time may have just come sooner than yours. Celebrate them. Let the feeling of envy go. You have a lot to offer in this world; it just isn’t your time yet. Be patient. The rest will happen as it should. If you force something, it will fail. Remember that Dad always says, “Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity". When you start something, remember the reason why you started it in the first place. Don’t forget the goal.

In the meantime:

Be nice to your brother. Mom is always right. Visit your grandparents more. Money comes and goes. Stop beating yourself up about that night. Go on more hikes. Be patient. Stand your ground. Don’t throw yourself away to please somebody. Listen to understand, not to respond. Don’t skip class. Relationships aren’t like The Notebook. Stop sleeping in so late. Love your body more. Tomorrow is a new day. It will all work itself out.

And one last thing – it’s okay to be wrong. At least some of the time.

One of the biggest pieces of advice that I ended up giving myself was to take the time to sit with everything I wrote, and even if I hate it or I get to the end of it and say I'm never going to release this, just keep writing them and keep the cycle moving. Every 5 songs or every 10 songs you'll find the one where in your heart you know it's fully you and you can be proud of that work. I think that took me a really long time to get to, even after the first release that I did. I think that's why I have so few songs out because I write all the time but there are specific ones - little drops in the ocean of all the songs that I've written - that I truly think are expressing what I'm trying to say, or express who I am as a person musically as well as lyrically and what they mean to me.

I think “Crying Blue” was one of those. Last summer my dad was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I was living in Nashville at the time and the pandemic was already happening. I was working in a restaurant so I couldn't fly home for a weekend just because it was way too dangerous to try and see him if I was seeing that many people publicly.

One morning I just woke up after having a dream about him and immediately I wrote the first verse and the first chorus. I was recording a voice memo to remember it and in the recording I just kept going and my brain wrote the whole second verse and second chorus. I remember it was a weird experience. After I finished it I was like, “Is that done now? Did that just happen in front of me and I was completely unaware?” But it's moments like that where you finish the song and you realize, ‘This is actually me; this is my soul.’

I didn't have to think about this because I was feeling these things and I didn't know it was a reflection of the emotion and honestly that’s why I write in the first place because it's something in my mind. There's conflict going on or there's an emotion that is hard for me to face in conversations with friends or myself and somehow it will come out in the melody or the lyrics in a way that I hadn't thought about before. Then I get to look at it and realize what I was feeling the whole time and it is healing in a way. Yes, I am still sad that this is the situation. No, there aren't really any solutions. But now I have this piece of art that can reflect how I was feeling in that moment and if it connects with somebody else, great. If nobody knows that “Crying Blue” is about my dad and what's going on, then fine. It just gave me a piece of mind.

The same goes for my latest single, “Brand New”. I think we as a society move really quickly and think really frequently about past experiences and future experiences and being in the present is not easy. I wanted to try and create something that is three minutes long that puts me back in the present moment and in my body and realizing that we don't have to carry past experiences into the present or into the future because we change and people change. You can have a clean slate whenever you want and just because you were this way in the past doesn't mean you are that way now. I think growth is super important and the lyrics “Wash my mouth of all the little things// Clean it out and begin again” was about how the way you’ve behaved in the past no longer needs to define you.

I remember my first year of college I was very shy. I didn't really tell anybody that I did music or I played guitar. I wouldn't really play for anyone or sing that frequently because I didn't think it was what anyone wanted to hear. As the years went on little by little I think I broke out of that shell. Even saying I am an artist is still a little bit hard for me to fully embrace, especially because I've worked in so many different areas of the industry now, but I am this person and I know in my heart that I'm this person, so in these new people that I'm meeting and as life moves forward and other chapters are started, I want to feel comfortable bringing who I am into the future instead of carrying that doubt and that fear the rest of my life. That's not functional for anybody and I wanted to try to express that everyone has the opportunity to do that. It can take a long time; healing is not linear and you can bring past experiences into the future without even realizing it, but do mental checks with yourself and try to see the year’s worth of growth instead of focusing on a bad moment. Yes you will have bad days, bad weeks, bad months; but if you look at years of your life, have you grown? How have you grown? How have you come into your own? I really like that message.

Our music has really taken a back seat in the past year. We’re lucky these songs have been done and we’re prepared and ready to go, but since we’ve really been grinding we’re ready to go away for a month or two and really grind it out. We could never leave our fans without content for two months, without speaking to us and talking to us live. I truly would feel like us not going live is like not calling our parents; the longer it goes by, the worse it feels. Our fans are our family now.

I’ve become such a better man; I feel like I wasn’t a man before Pink Elefants. I think it wasn’t until Pink Elefants started to get some support from people that it did a lot for me. When we first started doing well last year we thought: how long will it last? Playing these shows live and getting tips and selling merch. We were trying to enjoy it while it lasts to be honest and I think we were trying to enjoy it while it lasts so much we’re making damn sure that it’s going to last forever.

When we went to Maine earlier this year and drove along the East Coast, we didn’t meet up in random spots. We went to our fans’ houses. We think about every aspect like that because I look at it like I do think we’re going to be a top artist. I don’t know when it’s going to be but I do believe that so when I do these things I go, ‘I want to go to their house because I want them to remember us in their driveway looking outside at their home’. It makes a difference and it goes that extra mile. Who else is doing that?

It is life changing to see you can do something like that. It makes me realize that maybe I do make a difference and we’ve been told countless times that we’ve saved individuals from their dark places. That is very humbling and it makes us feel a way that is not explainable. That’s really what we live for; we try to have a positive image, we try to develop this family relationship with our fans. We try to make it unacceptable to not try to be the best person we can be. We all make mistakes, we’re all far from perfect. I’m going to make a fuck ton of mistakes today, tomorrow, but the more great things you do in the day the less that things can seem to really affect you.

We’re in the process of doing everything ourselves. We didn’t realize that it was a possibility but I will tell you this: in the past, when we were working on music videos or working on production, we’ve always been self-reliant. We’d always been pretty well-equipped to do it ourselves and now that we have some funds to be able to build a studio and do these things, I think we don’t know what’s to come because we plan on doing it all ourselves. It’s that simple because the people that I really look up to working with, we just aren’t there yet and I think it’s up to us to get there.

You can’t let anybody stand in your way. As much as I want to work with Benny Blanco and all these producers that do a lot of these top songs - I’m not the kind of guy who thinks I can do it without them - I just know the only way we’re going to be able to work with these guys is if we earn our own spot.

We spend all the money we make; we invest it into things like the studio we’re building. It doesn’t feel like an investment. If I blow money it’s because I bought a synthesizer or something that I probably shouldn’t have bought but we’re going to use it and we’re going to make sure it’s in a song and hopefully it pays itself off. We look at it as an investment and if it doesn’t work out, at least our fans got to see us fuck around with a synthesizer. I just think that alone is worth it. You really need to care about the entertainment value of what you’re putting out.

I’ve learned a lot this past year.

I’ve learned about myself, but mostly I’ve learned about other people.

I’ve learned how often people don’t choose love and that facts don’t matter. And I’ve also learned how easy it is for people to silence the voices of others.

As a Black female, I think about how often micro-aggressions have found a way to maneuver themselves into my life - the little ways in which my voice has been dismissed by random strangers on social media or even by some of my closest friends.

I told my husband a while ago that I often feel invisible - in my career, in my circles, in my work - and that the only way for me to be seen and heard is to be loud.

But the problem is when I choose to be loud I am often accused of being angry or aggressive because the spaces I often inhabit are predominately white spaces: spaces where your Blackness often has to be defended; spaces where the checklist of how to act, what to say, how to present yourself, have to be checked off before you even dare think about speaking. As a Black female in predominantly white spaces, often you are not seen, at least not in the way you want to be seen. You see, if a Black woman speaks on what and how she feels, she’s angry. Suddenly, she isn’t a human being whose feelings were hurt and is letting you know how your words made her feel. Suddenly, SHE is in the wrong.

If we as Black women choose to do the natural human thing and defend ourselves from things that we find offensive, it is OUR fault for letting it affect us, and not being able to take it as a joke and laugh in the moment. If we as Black women bring to the attention of those around us that what they said or did was inappropriate - or, dare I say, racist - we are the ones who are immediately exiled from the community.

I’m a direct communicator. I get to the point and don’t beat around the bush, and I’ve realized a lot of Black females operate the same way. The problem is that being direct is often misconstrued as being aggressive and that trait is almost always projected onto Black women. So instead of going through the emotional checklist of how do I act, how do I talk, how do I change how people perceive me…. we shut down out of fear because we know how our voices will be misinterpreted and we will be deemed angry. The angry Black woman trope has always been used as a way to silence Black women and invalidate feelings that are completely warranted.

But I’m tired of having my voice chosen for me. I’m tired of not calling people out on the things they say because I don’t want them to feel bad. I wish I knew how to express my feelings without having a stereotype pushed onto me. But that’s the fear… fear of offending, of being misunderstood, of coming across the wrong way, of losing out for speaking up. It doesn’t help matters that there is almost always some form of indirect punishment for speaking out and speaking up.

I feel this way too often. It’s as if we have the audacity to speak up for ourselves, because when we do, we are viewed in a negative light. But if there’s anything I’ve learned recently, it’s that I don’t need to accommodate others and their feelings. I don’t need to conceal my voice or feelings because when I do, where does that leave me? It leaves me feeling like my feelings don’t matter and because I spent so much time and emotional labor making sure the other person doesn’t feel bad, I feel worn down.

So I challenge you:

Instead of thinking a Black woman might be angry, listen to her and understand her pain.

Instead of thinking a Black woman might be sassy, listen to her and understand her voice.

Instead of thinking a Black woman might be aggressive, listen to her and understand her strength.

Instead of thinking a Black woman might be wrong, listen to her… because chances are she’s right.

#ChooseToChallenge #IWD2021

Thankfully now, organizations like Black Lives Matter have helped me and millions of others wake up and understand that these situations shouldn’t be normalized. None of this is normal. The police are supposed to protect and serve. That should be the norm. It’s in black and white. There should be an investigation into every confrontation resulting in their killing someone. That also should be the norm. How about they just not kill people? Can we normalize that?

Particularly for me, seeing and understanding what happened to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and recently being made aware of Elijah McClain - it demanded my attention. Especially with Elijah.

I saw somebody that I knew in Elijah. I saw myself in ways. I knew kids growing up who were very much like him - sensitive, would never hurt a soul and into the arts like me. The way that those uniformed individuals took advantage of him and treated him as less than human was heartbreaking. It was disgusting. The way they assumed him being Black made him inherently criminal was gross. And the way they ignored his cries was worse than evil. His pain meant nothing to them. His life meant nothing to them. He means everything to us. Each one of their lives mattered.

I've gone out and marched before but with everything going on with COVID-19 I was forced to take a step back. To make sure I was doing something, I focused on making calls to legislators, sending emails and donating my money. In getting ready to release my song “Don’t Feel Like Dancing”, it felt trivial compared to everything else right now. I felt bad about focusing on music and trying to bring attention to myself but I’d done all this work preparing for its release. Then I thought, “Just give all the money to the movement”. Donating the proceeds from the song to Black Lives Matter was a way for me to continue my work and also bring focus to something that, to me, is a lot more important.

Hopefully right now everyone is doing what they can and, for me, this is just doing my little part. For all I know, I could make $10 from the song but I know it's $10 I need! That I can use! It’s a part of my sacrifice. It's my little part. If things go well, it makes a ton of money; that’s a contribution that I can make towards the movement and pushing for change. It’s been encouraging to see the incremental changes that have been made over the past months. It feels good to know I made phone calls and sent emails contributing to legislation that’s passed. It’s been all due to seeing other activists. Witnessing their courage to do these things has given me the confidence to be able to do them. I try to share my efforts with my followers in hopes that they feel inspired as well.

Change is possible. My way of thinking has changed. My perception of reality changed. Thank God. It’s a domino effect. You can easily get caught up thinking sharing your views won’t make a difference. You don’t think sending an email will have much impact but in my case two weeks later Mayor Garcetti announced he’s taking steps to get rid of use of force. It makes you feel good and it’s proof of the aforementioned. Every bit counts.

Thank you to the Black Lives Matter movement for changing me and changing the world for this southern boy from Memphis, TN.

When I was fourteen, I got heavy into slam poetry. I would stare at my computer screen (open to my now regrettably deleted tumblr) and scroll through hours of miscellaneous faces speaking or yelling or whispering their pseudo-profundities. One of those faces was a poet by the name of Neil Hilborn. While slam poetry lost my interest as suddenly as it caught my attention, it was one of Neil’s works (or, rather, one of Neil’s lines) that always stuck with me; an excerpt from his poem “The Future” goes as follows:

“I think a lot about killing myself, not like a point on a map but rather like a glowing exit sign at a show that’s never been quite bad enough to make me want to leave.”

He was right.

I had been suicidal for eight years at that point and would remain suicidal for four more. I wondered why I didn’t just do it. Why didn’t I just kill myself? Was it for a higher power? No, I didn’t believe in one. Was it for my loved ones? No, they would all die eventually, too, and take the collateral damage from my death with them. Was it for myself? No, I hated myself. Was it for my potential? Now, we’re onto something…

I have never been an active participant in my life. My life has been a show I watch in a theater empty except for myself. And, the exit sign. I loathe the show. The “protagonist”, if we can even call her that, from whose perspective the show is from is two-dimensional. She is water. She is whatever you put in her or put her in but nothing in and of herself. It is exhausting watching her project the front that she is someone when she is, in fact, no one. She is a husk, a papier mache person poorly masquerading as knock-off archetypes. While the main character lacks substance, the supporting characters, settings and plot lines blatantly boast some sort of potential but are grossly neglected. There’s a certain meta irony of the show in that it’s entire focus is on how much it sucks. Everything else is so secondary it is virtually nonexistent. The exit sign’s glowing red reminder is a security blanket assuring me that there is always a way out, at least. In the vacant theater, it was my companion and my comfort. Yet, I stuck around, just in case the show ever got good. After all, it was less about exiting and more about having the option to exit.

But, then something happened. It started when I first saw my psychiatrist at eighteen. With once weekly therapy sessions and twice daily medication, the exit sign began to dim. I didn’t notice it immediately. It wasn’t until months into my recovery that I noticed the flicker. The sign had shone so brightly for so long, but now it was barely visible. Before long, it went out completely. The moment the darkness engulfed me, anxiety swelled in my chest like a puffer fish. The old fallback was gone. I was going to have to see this show through to the end, for better or for worse. Instead of staring at the exit sign, I turned my attention to the screen. When I did, something changed.

Suddenly, I wasn’t in the theater anymore ― I was in the show itself. I was the protagonist I so despised. Even more to my surprise, the entire thing was self-directed. It hit me all at once that it was now my responsibility to make this show good.

Realizing this, a heavy weight crashed down on my already burdened shoulders. I had to make choices. I had to participate. I had to make the changes required to make this show at least bearable, lest I live in misery. The first step? Workshopping the protagonist (i.e., myself).

After spending a lifetime of excruciatingly yet shoddily modeling myself after what I thought I should be, I finally surrendered to what I was. I had to finally make decisions based on what I actually like, dislike, want, believe in, etc. rather than what I thought I should. Instead of asking myself, “What would Mackenzie be like?”, I began asking myself, “What am I like?”, viewing myself as myself rather than dissociating. I stopped obsessing over perfecting the character, an amalgamation of others’ perceptions and my expectations of myself, instead acting on instinct and inclination. I am still undergoing this process, finding out more about myself every day. I replaced a lifetime’s worth of rigid character scripting with one guiding principle: I will do what makes me happy and become a product of it.

Still, I obviously do not have the luxury of doing whatever I want.This is where the second step in directing the show comes into play ― addressing the settings and supporting characters. The rule for this is as follows: do what you can where you are with what you have. I started working on my relationship with others and my relationship with my environment. Before, I had drifted through life like a shadow person, never taking advantage of my surrounding people, places and things and how they could better my life. I took for granted so much while trapped in my own pitiful self-absorption. Now, I refuse to miss out anymore. Now, I’m no longer going to kill myself, so there’s no excuse to remain distant. I talk to the people around me. I meet new people. I spend time with loved ones. I create a home for myself out of the places I have at my disposal. I do all the things I was too busy hating myself to do before.

Do not misunderstand me ― these things were not easy. They were necessary. I struggle every day practicing this new way of life. I struggle every day trying to be true to myself. I struggle every day using the tools at my disposal to construct a happy life for myself. Some days, I miss the exit sign that once relieved my ache for change. I didn’t know back then that the only way to change the way I felt was to change the way I lived.

I don’t think I heard any word growing up more than the word “stubborn”. I know a lot of the time it was most likely directed at me in frustration: when I wouldn’t listen or pay attention to my authority figures, when I wouldn’t follow the rules, when I refused to do things other people’s way. I don’t know if I just misunderstood the word growing up, but I really enjoyed being called stubborn, taking it to mean I was determined, strong, focused and motivated, even though that is not the definition by any stretch. I can only guess this was probably due to a lack of understanding and valuing limits and boundaries. Maybe it was a lack of the maturity needed to understand that ending things or moving on or switching focus doesn’t mean you’re quitting; maybe it means you have gained enough wisdom to know when to cut losses and to understand the intrinsic value of what things are worth in terms of your personal cost.

Even still it’s hard to tell when you’re being stubborn or extremely determined. I don’t think I would have gotten to this point in music had I not been stubborn. My family, teachers, and many people I’m supposed to look up to always told me music isn’t a viable career. It was only something for other people. I could never make a career out of something so unstable. And while I definitely heard them, I couldn’t stop even when I wanted to, and here I am averaging 75 million streams and plays across platforms, charting over 100 times across the world, and having my music heard by close to a million people every month on Spotify alone. I would probably be viewed as stubborn in terms of music if I had not received any level of success, but instead I am now told I am determined and motivated. Still, I recognize the negative side when stubborn doesn’t look so great; it’s just so hard to tell the difference between being stubborn and determined and is something I still struggle with.

I wrote the song “Stubborn” with Tatiana Zagorac (artist name Talltale) about this concept. It was inspired by both of us sharing a tendency to take our natural determination too far into the realm of being stubborn when it comes to our personal relationships. We will force a feeling even when everything tells us we shouldn’t, and it’s sad because there isn’t a happy ending and all the red flags we ignored or tried to fix due to our stubbornness still came out red in the wash. “Stubborn” is about trying to play God in a way. Trying to make pieces fit where they don’t. Trying to change or “fix” people into who they’re not. Being blind to warnings. Being stubborn.

It has always been at the cost of ourselves. Our mental health, our self-worth. So here’s to learning and growth, changing perspectives and progress. My upcoming album, PARADISE, and all the music videos my team and I made for it are about an obsession with this topic. I’m not the same person now as I was at the beginning of creating this album, and I hope you can find a piece of yourself somewhere along this journey so you don’t feel like you’re walking it alone.

We both grew up singing as soon as we came out of the womb, or at least as soon as we could speak.

Many people don’t get to experience how special it is to share a passion with someone, especially a twin. We both learned about music together at the same time and were lucky enough to be able to feed that passion and turn it into a profession. Our dad was in a band growing up, and he cherished music the same way he saw that we did. Our family knew that we both absolutely loved everything about music, so they supported us very early on with voice, piano, guitar and violin lessons, and acting lessons. Before really committing to music, we began acting for film and musical theatre, which is another deep passion of ours.

Acting allowed us to not be afraid of vulnerability, our emotions, and taught us to be honest with our thoughts. As we started writing music, we were able to just lay it all on the table. It enabled us to open up and write honestly. Another great thing about being sisters and that acting opened us up to was to write about extreme topics without feeling uncomfortable or weird. Our family taught us growing up to own your thoughts, own your emotions, and the way you see the world. They taught us to be authentic in our own ways, and when we decided to become artists, that value was already instilled in us.

During the summer of our senior year of high school, we went to summer programs in New York and Pittsburgh at NYU and CMU. We wanted to learn more about music making. We were introduced to Logic, Pro Tools, various methods of songwriting, recording and production. The experience really allowed for our love of songwriting to expand and grow, and from that point on, we knew music would be a part of our career paths. That year was a pivotal time in our lives and ever since; both of us have been learning about and exploring many different kinds of methods and techniques to songwriting approaches, music production and just trying to make remarkable music. Music is a way of life for us. It is what gets us up in the morning… literally and figuratively. Music is what makes us want to live, it makes us want to be courageous, it helps us when we are sad, it helps us when we are happy, bored, heartbroken, confused, mad, in love, etc. Without music, life would be unthinkable. After-all, it is the universal language and it touches everyone’s life. How grey and dull a life would be without music. To us, music is also a form of history keeping. Music is constantly emerging, constantly changing, and is always pleasing to at least one person, even if only to the person who writes it or performs it. Music tells stories of so many different walks of life, so many different periods of one’s life, and that in itself is extraordinary. The beauty of music is that it can be interpreted in so many different ways. What music means to us now could mean something totally different to another person.

Listening to music is so important. Making music is in another realm in a sense. When someone listens to a demo of a song they just wrote, it is the most rewarding thing. All the hard work from the past 20 minutes to possibly 8 hours paid off. Songwriting allows us to spill out our thoughts and emotions onto a sheet of paper. With just music and words, we are able to convey some of our deepest thoughts and feelings, whether it’s happiness, sadness, excitement, nostalgia, advocating for a cause, or just a feeling of contentment. Being able to go to a piano or guitar and let our fingers play notes and our voice sing words that are meaningful to us is therapy! Some people journal for therapy, it feels the same way. Writing out your thoughts, but instead of leaving them on your night stand, you sing them out to the world. It is scary, but so worth it.

The year 2020 is going to be very busy for us. We are releasing a single February 19, 2020, titled “Almost True”. When we were walking through LAX one day, we couldn’t help but notice how many strangers were there and each had their own story. It was very busy and everyone was hurrying around-- some frantic, some calm, some sad, some oblivious, some seemingly normal. The point being, everyone is going through different things in their life, and it’s kind of sobering to think you never know what is on someone’s mind or in their heart. Out of the 7.7 billion people in this world, the average person will probably meet around 80-100 thousand people in their lifetime. Imagine how many people we haven’t met and how many people’s stories we never hear, or how many strangers we see in our daily life and never know what they are going through. That is the thing, we won’t ever know. Then, when we finally do meet someone out of the average 80,000 people in our life that we will meet, we are taught to hide back our emotions and who we are as people so our life seems sublime. Even if you have never met them. This idea is what started us writing the song “Almost True”.

We have several more songs being released shortly after “Almost True”. We are really excited about the new songs we have been recording and will be releasing! Our next single release show is at the Black Rabbit Rose on February 19, 2020, and more shows are booked in the future as well. We have been doing a lot of collaborations with some really talented songwriters and artists, and plan to release an EP near the end of 2020, circling the theme of self-identity.