Long Exposure Photo: a photo taken with slow shutter speed, usually meant to capture movement. Often used at night to show movement of lights.

I’ve always been fascinated with the concept of staying up all night, whether alone or with another person or a group of people. Just allowing a seeming worldwide silence to unfold until the sky starts to turn shades of a bruise, until the sun rises and starts a new day, most people waking up after a night of sleep, but you knowing that you existed in the special time of the late night, cultivating deep thoughts or sharing specific memories that you wouldn’t have otherwise thought about during a normal time of day.

I write about these “all-nighters” a lot, in my fiction, my poetry, and my songs. I’ve realized that my favorite time of day is the earliest of the early morning—which is ironic, because I have always been one to go to sleep late and wake up late, missing that time of day. However, I’ve always found myself to be the most at peace when I reach the morning by staying up all night. This EP was inspired by that concept that I love so much.

Each song loosely goes with a certain time between sundown and sunrise (some words in the titles make it obvious; for instance, “sunset,” “center of night,” “five AM,” “7am” are a few giveaways). (This EP is a lot like Mixtapes’s How to Throw a Successful Party EP, in that sense). The first track will be cool for people who go to Susquehanna or are familiar with that general area, as it is meant to give the feeling of driving north into Lewisburg at sunset. “Five AM is for Lovers and Lawn Ornaments” is a line from my favorite book, Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley, and was a big inspiration for these songs in general.

In this group of songs, I wanted to create the feeling that I so often feel late at night. This feeling of a summer night sky inside your bones, outer space futuristic retro patterns appearing on your skin because your eyes are more tired than your brain.

I would like to expand this eventually. I have lyrics to a lot of songs that would be fitting for this concept, but which don’t yet possess the music to make them alive. I’d love to create a full album, and maybe I will soon. (Yeesh, with the short amount of time that I make songs, I can see it being a soon possibility. Honestly, I don’t even think I’m doing the whole song release thing right. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to just release a new EP every week. But oh, well. Have I ever been one to follow norms?).

Anyway, check out this EP. Listen to it, download or purchase it if it makes you feel something. Let me know what you think. And next time you stay up all night, allow your mind to wander into spaces it wouldn’t normally go when the sun is shining. You might surprise yourself.


Special Thanks to the person or people this EP may or may not be about. To sunrises through window screens. To those who support me. To Richard Berwind, who provided worthwhile advice when it was needed. To Brooke Azoulay, the person in the cover photo. And so on.