Stormrider by Spherehawk

On September 28th, 2022, Hurricane Ian swept through the Gulf Coast of Florida leaving a trail of catastrophe in its wake. In the early moments as the storm began to hit land, my parents and I decided to evacuate to a shelter.
As the storm intensified throughout the night, we were fortunate that we felt secure in a stone structure with many barriers to protect us from the violence unfolding outside. That night, no one was sure what, if anything, would be left in the morning.
After a long, sleepless night, we travelled the 4 miles or so back to our house, and the wreckage was dismaying. Signs, roofs, trees, bent metal, debris, floodwaters. We prepared for the worst as we entered our neighborhood.
When we arrived home, we were relieved to find the house still standing. The damage had been minimal.
In the days following the storm, there was no power and little cell service. The lack of information was troubling - what little bits of info we did get, sometimes from an occasional cell bar or word of mouth, seemed to indicate that the damage south of us was another level of emergency.
In North Port, just 10 miles from our house, neighborhoods were underwater. Elderly residents were swimming out their own windows, people stranded on the roof, wreckage of untold scale and economic loss, not to mention the wracking numbers of human casualties reported.
It quickly became clear that what we had been through was not just an exceptionally dangerous circumstance, but also, how utterly fortunate we were to still have a house over our heads. As we proceeded into the next 9 days, we had no electricity, and had to adopt the mentality of camping. But it did not matter because we were still lucky.
I feel lucky to have cooked on camping stoves in my garage and worn my headlamp in the house and sort through the world around me without the constant buzz of electronics and internet and "keeping up" with life in our digital age.
Over the course of that week and few days, in a few moments stolen aside on either my acoustic guitar, or my electric guitars plugged into my looper and battery amp, I recorded little slapstick jams on a field recorder (hence the true lofi quality of these recordings) and so they were recorded with batteries in the dark, in a hurricane relief zone after disaster. So my feelings are a lot of anxiety, uncertainty, and worry, but also finding moments to look for joy and gratitude that I could be here, to do this, to make these rough, scratchy little jams in the dark and be thankful.
With any money I make money off of this album, I'll put it toward disaster and hurricane relief for communities in need locally. But this album goes out as a tribute to all my fellow Floridians who've been affected by this storm, the survivors and the first responders and workers who have put so much hard work into getting our communities back up and running.
To end I say, I hope something in this album touches a note somewhere, and brings you some comfort out there. Stay safe & golden

Trevor Brown

This is Tevor's "Alter ego" music project

Bedroom indie psych rock? I guess???

est 12/19/2019