BEE

APPLESEED

THE HEART'S

RESILIENT TRAVELS

i. prologue

I met Brian Smith a decade ago when we both lived different lives. He was a college kid of 20; I had returned in my late 30s to the Corvallis Gazette-Times as a hapless cultural verbometer. One afternoon, he entered the building (now but a memory) soft as a whisper, then shuffled free on the wind, as was his wont. Wrapped in his hand: a copy of his new album, The Nights Grew Longer and the Rain Poured in, an effort I’d learn much later was his sixth in just two years.

He was only a sophomore at Oregon State. Yet he was already a prominent member of The Scene, serious, analytical, ambitious, so creative that music rang like blood through his body. He’d already established Corvallis DIY, scheduling, as he called them, “nontraditional events in nontraditional settings,” and the BS (Music) Fest, corralling local noisemakers into multi-hour concerts when he was just a freshman. His was a familiar face in venues all over town.

Nights, like most of his output at the time (he passed me three new releases before his 2012 graduation), reveled firmly in a DIY aesthetic. He recorded his songs at home, playing most of the instruments himself, and wrapped his completed hand-pressed discs in hand-drawn art on thick, hand-folded paper. At the time I compared his eventual handoffs to secret notes passed in class — and that’s kind of what they were, bursting with its author's thoughts wafting autobiographically through the atmosphere, his states of the union. Truths stripped raw of pretense and defense, an extraordinarily personal achievement.

That separated him from many of his peers: his work wasn’t armor or a pose; it was nakedly, openly his id. He was incredibly candid for one so young. In fact, you could track his Corvallis chapters from beginning to end just by listening to the pieces he painted then (i.e., plenty); definite signposts mark those transitions, from his 2008 arrival on New Sounds from a New Home, recorded in his Poling Hall dorm room (328 if you're plotting a plaque), to Farewell Home, his 2012 adieu to Beaver Country. "Home" in subsequent years would become a landscape with ever-widening parameters, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere, and here.

I last spoke with him two months before his departure, which he honored, of course, with a 10-hour Farewell Fest on campus — one last blowout for a town and country that couldn’t hope to keep him. He had places to visit, new addresses to explore, new faces to pull into his growing orbit, new continents in which to write and live.

As luck would have it, our worlds collided again this week when the nomad stopped to catch his breath. He calls from an apartment he shares with girlfriend/collaborator Nora Keyes and their dogs in the artsy enclave of Silver Lake, California, one of the last colorful outlets before the brazen glare of downtown Los Angeles, The location seems appropriate down to its doors, which, more than a century ago, opened into spaces occupied by employees of silent-film impresario Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios. We spend the next two-and-a-half hours covering a lot of ground, because Smith's covered plenty on his own.

Brian Smith's 2008 debut. (Brian Smith)

ii. it starts, the plan

“Is there a great adventure to be sought?”

— “When I Close My Eyes” (2010)

Smith's wanderlust begins in Canby, Oregon, a 15,000-strong city 23 miles south of Portland. His family moved here from Carbonville, Ilinois, when Smith was 3. He grew up, as he confesses, a better skateboarder than musician, though the former hobby was prone to busting his teeth, splitting his lip, and permanently hyperextending an occasional toe. His brother, Bobby, 6 years his senior, wielded the latter chops. Bobby played guitar. Bobby had bands. And the gap between siblings was such that Bobby never took Brian under his wing. He had other, older preoccupations, but his presence was felt nonetheless.

"It wasn't like he taught me," Brian Smith says. "I just saw him doing it over the years. He went off to college [University of Oregon] and made a few albums of his own. They were nice albums. They were influential to me then; I was in high school at the time. Soon he was living in Portland and playing shows. He was more into the folk stuff. I would drive up sometimes to hear him."

Smith began playing music at 15, saving practice for spare moments at home after school. He'd record his progress and early attempts at songwriting, It wasn't until he was 18 when he committed his first full project to posterity, an 18-track concept album called And We Packed Up Our Bags to Discover New Lands After Leaving Our Past Behind (2008), a mouthful that stlll managed to capture a young man on the cusp of adulthood, both musically and emotionally, tracking as it does the emotional confusion/elation one experiences before declaring independence. The disc finds Smith caught between a desperate longing to leave while lingering on the faces he'd leave behind, farewell to the friends who couldn't join him — some for different fates, others for more tragic reasons. The same conflicted relationship most kids have with their hometowns, presented in memorably musical form.

"When I was a kid, I certainly felt like a black sheep in Canby," Smith says. "But I might also have felt that anywhere. I was just really a creative kid who hadn't figured out how to express it yet. Music became my journal into how I documented my experiences in this world. My perception of being creative in that town might be skewed because I hadn't yet honed in on that skill. I got some negative reactions from people who couldn't understand it, but I wasn't producing the most successful work at the time."

No matter: Smith directed his muse south to Corvallis — not his first choice (that would have been the U of O, where most of his friends were bound, but after watching one son surrender to the heathenous aplomb of Eugene, the Smiths forbade their baby boy from following suit), but one he feels conditioned him for the future he'd adopt.

Eugene was famous for its nightlife; Corvallis' was then a mystery — and would remain so until Smith's 21st birthday. He wasn't yet old enough to mingle with anyone who could help him. If he wanted a show, he'd have to find a way to book it himself. So he joined the college's Musicians Guild, eventually ascending to the presidency. He created festivals and networked as much as he could, building friendships with such local acts as Matisyahu Rosenberg, Gabriel Surley, and the enigmatic duo Old Age (Matthew Ulm and Dustin Daniels), who would issue some of Smith's work on their Two Crows Records label.

But the friend who made the greatest impact was an OSU biology classmate and bass player named Paul Drevets. The two became collaborators and best friends, establishing a band, Wizard Island. Yet Drevets seemed to be living on borrowed time. He was in remission from Ewing sarcoma, a rare form of childhood cancer typically discovered between the ages of 10 and 20. Unfortunately, it returned roughly a year into their friendship. Drevets passed away in January 2011. In his honor, Smith released Wizard Island's self-titled effort later that month, featuring a spooky-prickly version of the Seeds' "Can't Seem to Make You Mine" amid a sea of equally inspired originals (the dreamy "Grave Digga," for instance). The loss affected him immensely. Later that year, Smith wrote "The Great Welcoming Back to Earth" in his honor for Bloody Twins: Songs for the Separation of the Soul Longing for Life After Death. Two new tributes were issued in 2012 for the bittersweet Songs for Paul . (Drevets left perhaps his own epitaph in the form of a Twitter bio: “I study life, so incidentally, I study myself.”)

Smith enrolled at the university uncertain of his academic path. Initially he plannerd to major in Fisheries & Wildlife Sciences out of his lifelong affection for animals and their welfare. But the field seemed to focus more on clinical math than on compassionate solutions, posing such questions, Smith says, as "How many animals can we kill this year so there are still enough left next year?" So he switched to zoology, hoping, perhaps, to become a veterinarian. But, he discovered, that wasn't him either.

"I was in a weird place with education," Smith says. "I was a year-and-a-half into school and standing at a crossroad. I realized that outside of school, I was just doing music stuff. That's pretty much what I was passionate about."

The answer came as inspired eureka. Boom: business management. All the skills he'd need for a future in the music industry, whatever that would entail: concert promotion, business management, booking — tasks he'd already undertaken by plotting and securing event bills, even giving stage time to his brother's band, Sex Life. He scheduled his own small West Coast tours and helped visiting groups find lodging and venues through a savior of a website called DoDIY.org. (It's still wonderfully spartan and easy to navigate.) He was already halfway to a degree just through experience — and academics, it turns out; he'd already taken a year's worth of advanced courses in high school for college credit. Zoology became a minor. Well, you never know.

In his fourth year, Smith was accepted into a study-abroad program, to earn a second degree, in business administration. He would receive an international business certificate. Even better, it offered him the opportunity to see the world from its stages, maybe move a few units, spread his name, and become a worldwide recording artist. By then he'd formed a duo with his girlfriend, Hannah Sheets, recording and performing as Biological Lovers. They made plans to move to Vienna, Austria, in the late summer/early fall of 2012. Smith made one final homage to his adopted city, the six-track Farewell Home, whose cover featured the Smith arm waving au revoir to a campus building. The release stamped a remarkable 9-album journey over a 4-year stretch.

Here's where my initial ride with Smith ended. Quietly, cleanly.

His adventures, however, had only just begun.

Cover art for the Letzebuerg, Letzebuerg! EP (April 2013)

iii. living the dream

Confession: I may surrender narrative cohesion to wallow in international waters as I write this segment in jealousy. Paragraphs may become sighs for exotic cities, names I may misspell out of ignorance or spite, I'm not sure which quite yet. But fret you not, patient reader: We'll be back in America before you know it.

Our couple (i.e., our Biological Lovers) arrived in Europe sometime before the leaves turned in 2012. Smith celebrated first by embarking on a small, two-month tour before taking residence at his Vienna apartment with Hannah. They continued on as the Biological Lovers for roughly four months until cruel fate intervened in the guise of opportunity: America beckoned Hannah home to pursue a master's certificate in Boston. She coufn't say no. And Smith couldn't leave Europe. He wasn't finished, and the continent wasn't done with him. So many villages left to entertain, audiences as yet unseen.

"I was in Vienna, and I wanted to get a rail pass like we had for the two months leading up to living in Vienna," Smith says. "They allow you to take the train. I thought I was going to end the three months and maybe come back [to the U.S.], look for a job, or maybe meet someone along the way. What ended up happening is that after three weeks of a 3-month tour, I realized I had a job already. I had paid for the whole rail pass from the shows I'd been playing. Everything after that was a profit. 'Whoa, I'm getting paid to travel? That's crazy.' I rode the wave as far as I could."

Hanah spent her remaining time in Europe visiting all the cities she'd hoped to see. Sometimes the two would meet up for a gig: Helsinki, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Balkans, Croatia, Belgrade, and Serbia. Then she was gone, boarding a flight home as winter turned to spring in 2013. Today she lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she's a teacher for the deaf. She and Brian still keep in touch.

His three years on foreign roads unroll from the tongue, a whirlwind travelogue of experiences, testing the limits of 90-day artist visas, caroming through dreams on rail systems linking realities. Western Europe to Eastern Europe, with respites in South America. The Schengen Area. Subotica, Serbia. Watching dogs sprint freely over the Romanian border and wondering if they had the proper credentials to cross. A bus through Romania to Maldova and Odesa, Ukraine. He took part in the 2013 protests at Taksim Gezi Park after his performance dates in Istanbul were canceled, spending multiple days amonhg the 10,000 souls engaging in active civil unrest, rallying for various causes like freedom of the press (retaliating against a forced media blackout) and the right to assembly. He speaks breathlessly of the consciousness of the moment and living fully at the center. He spent time in Macedonia, Albania, and the sovereign state of Kosovo. Two summers in Montenegro. Art hostels with inspiring perspectives. Seven full educational months in the former Yugoslavian countries. Meanwhile, he wrote and played new material at a furious pace, couch-surfing between shows, burning CDs of his albums for sale, financing his continued run as a tireless American ambassador. Final tally: 322 concerts in 40 countries over a 3-year period.

"It's so weird to think about, it's funny," Smith says of that unintentioned truth. "Anytime you're traveling internationally, you're representing your culture and everything about the place you're from. No matter how far you travel, you can' never leave that behind. You inevitably find yourself in philosophical and geopolitical conversations, these situations where you really have to educate yourself on your history to know what you're talking about. You don't want to look like the ignorant American, especially when you're the guest of honor. I found myself engaging in an education that far transcended what I'd been able to aspire toward in an academic setting. Three years on the road teaches you a lot. It gives you a unique perspective into the lives and struggles of others."

Despite his blitz, Smith had reached a creative impasse. He had fresh songs but no real way to record them to his satisfaction. At this point he resolved to return to the United States to achieve the sound he sought. And he knew just the guy: his old friend River Nason, then living in Olympia, Washington. River was a DoDIY acquaintance, having rolled through Corvallis with his band Camp Wisdom to fill Smith bills, So in October of 2015, Smith ended his globetrotting and came home to record what became his first full-length LP, Backpacker Blues, released in July 2018 under a new name he'd donned, Bee Appleseed.

Cover art for Starflower's Cosmic Soul (Feb. 2020)

iv. the bee takes flight

(nw prelude/inner-lude)

The Bee was self-evident. He himself was a B and an E, Brian Eric Smith. All he needed was an extra E to be. Friends had been calling him that for years, anyway. The name seemed to suit him too. "It was a good match for who I am," Smith says," just kind-of floating around and bumbling about the world, finding myself in beautiful places."

Appleseed boasts more layers to unpack. Of course, it's derived from 18th-century American missionary John Chapman, better known as folk hero and conservation icon Johnny Appleseed, who planted apple seeds across a young post-colonial country. Smith identified somewhat with that as a traveler and collector of songs and stories, an ambassador to the world, speaking in voices that may otherwise lack volume. "He's the story of being American in these very divided times," Smith says. "It transcends personal philosophies of division. This is a character from history that ultimately did good. There's something beautiful and magical about that."

Those facets extend to the simple symbolism of those two nouns fused together: apple and seed, knowledge and life, going all the way back to the Garden of Eden, the beginning of humanity itself.

"Also," Smith adds, "with the Iinternet being a thing, I felt like I needed a name that was both easy to remember and easy to search for. Luckily, 'Bee Appleseed' can be spelled in emojis too. I always felt like using my legal name didn't quite fit the vision, but it wasn't until I had a decent alternative that I decided to take the leap and start over again with it."

Finally, it was also a sign of sorts when Smith was in Olympia, Washington, recording overdubs on the Nason-produced album that became Starflower's Cosmic Soul (2020). It was 2018. Both men went to a party between sessions where a man inexplicably produced a bag of apples for his fellow revelers. "That's too weird, man," Smith says. "All right; ther's the sign." Bee Appleseed was born, the child of many parents.

All told, Smith spent roughly two years back in the Pacific Northwest, hanging in Portland and recording in Washington. He'd completed Starflower, but lacked the funds to accomplish much, crashing on friends' couches in Portland and barely making enough money to live. He felt another call coming from deeper south, one he'd been hearing for more than half his life.

v. 'the west coast
is my home country'

Los Angeles has beckoned millions since 1850, long regarded as the Promised Land, a century-old beacon for musicians, performers — anyone, really, with weird, ambitious dreams.

Smith first heard L.A. as an invocation in his high school years, following the devastating loss of a good friend, Jesse Bogue. Jesse was a rare kid, the kind you tend to read about posthumously, as if he'd been too rare for the world. Smith describes him as ultra-popular, perhaps the most popular senior at Canby High, incomparably talented. He played music, he sang for advanced choir, he scored lead roles in multiple plays, and performed the national anthem at school assemblies.

In March of 2007, the 18-year-old, born on February 9, 1989 (a date eulogized on Smith's 2008 debut), went camping with a group of 10 friends along the Molalla River. Initially, Smith was going to join them, but he wasn't game for an overnight stay. His mother didn't want him to go, anyway; she spoke of a bad feeling. He didn't put up much of a fight.

On Thursday, March 29, the group embarked on a long hike. Afterward, two of the kids, including Bogue, decided to cool off by leaping into the river. Bogue dove in and did not resurface. A fisherman discovered his body about a mile downriver. His death stunned the city and his longtime church, New Life Foursquare, which Smith also attended. His generation mourned him and looked inward.

"It made a lot of kids more existential, thinking about their own mortality," Smith says. "It's a bizarre place to find yourself as a teenager. The effect that it had on me was that I started going to my parents' church now because I actually desired to go."

Later, he accompanied his fellow church members on a 30-hour train trip and found himself seated with Jesse's older brother, Luke, also a musician, and also just as likable. The boy offered this piece of sage advice to his younger traveling companion: "If you ever end up in Los Angeles, go straight to Silver Lake. Don't even mess around with the other places."

It stuck wth Smith. At college, when he booked his brief West Coast jaunts, he managed to land gigs everywhere but Los Angeles proper. He was forever L.A. "adjacent," That changed in 2011 when he found himself at the Home Room art gallery near the city's Rampart Village, opening for comedienne/writer/actress Charlyne Yi (familiar to TV viewers as Dr. Chi Park on House and as a member of Judd Apatow's comedy stable). It's not too far from where he lives now.

But he arrived in a much different condition in January 2017, living in his car for a year until he could support himself, finding a likeminded tribe of fellow artists. "It was not easy," Smith says, "but It was worth the struggle to get where I am. The West Coast is my home country. Wherever I go, my spiritual home is this part of it."

Cover art for "My Voice Is My Weapon of Choice" (Oct. 2020)

vi. epilogue

So where is Brian Smith now, you ask? Glad you asked. He's on the other side of this phone line, laughing down memory lane. Planted somewhere in his Silver Lake apartment, with the city of Echo Park lurking across the street. He's waiting for his girlfriend, Nora Keyes, to come through the front door, She eventually does, relieving him of dog-sitting duties. He steps outside to continue our conversation over the clamor of life at home.

He's in a good place. You can hear it in his voice — his singing voice, too, now powerful, assured, and controlled, his T. Rexian/Dylanesque slip-slide flutter completely of his own design. He's listening to his older stuff as his old high school friend, Andrew Endres, masters his extensive back catalogue for Spotify. He's commissioned artists to redesign his old covers. No more thick, folded paper enveloping a compact disc. He's shortened a few of his titles, too: 2009's A Venture Was Sought and Discoveries Were Made in Realms of Love and Other Good/Bad Things is now, simply, Realms of Love. The grand Bloody Twins: Songs for the Separation of the Soul Longing for Life After Death (2011) has been tightened to the more concise Life After Death.

He's tackling the past in other ways too, completing the Rock and Roll Propaganda album he began with his friend Daniel McIntire (Dirty Whips) and an international band (members hailed from Portland, Germany, and France) at a Sweden cultural center in 2014. Smith has spent the pandemic recording parts to fill. He calls it the "lost album" between Backpacker and Starflower, his first attempt at a straight-out rock record.

As always, present endeavors keep him busy. He wove ill-fitting tracks proposed for Starflower with newer songs into his next solo release, 21st Century Prayer. It may turn out to be the masterpiece he's plotted since picking up a guitar at 15. "My goal with every album," Smith says, "is to get closer and closer to a place where you feel like if you were to take away the words that the music would stand alone and that if you were to take away the music, the words would stand alone. I’ve been trying this whole time throughout my artistic journey to arrive at that place. This, I believe, is that record." So you'll forgive him if he takes his time.

Smith's also issued a string of well-chosen covers, Leonard Cohen's "There Is a War" and Patti Smith's "People Have the Power." Soon he'll add fresh takes on a Lee "Scratch" Perry joint: Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves," famously covered already by The Clash (Smith restores the original's classic reggae pulse). Finally comes a stunner: Elvis chestnut "Can't Help Falling in Love." "I tried to make it as dreamy as possible," Smith says, "ethereal and floaty in a magical, airy state."

Did I forget to mention Elf Freedom, the duo he formed with Keyes, herself a scene veteran through her solo sojourns and her work with longtime outfit The Centimeters (1996!) and Fancy Space People, a lineup that included Don Bolles of L.A. punk legends the Germs and slabbed for Billy Corgan's (The Smashing Pumpkins) Starry Records label? (Holy cow, what a sentence.) This newer act follows a more improvisational muse on stage, performing wholly in the moment. Two albums are in the final mixing stages with a third about halfway complete. Smith and Keyes also launched Godyssey Music in 2018, a label they've expanded into the healing arts, emphasizing music's therapeutic faculties.

And so the adventure continues. Watch this (ever-growing) space.

You’ve released two covers this year in response to the maelstrom that is modern America. I understand you heard from one of the late Leonard Cohen’s children regarding your recording of “There Is a War.” What does Leonard Cohen mean to you as a fellow writer, artist, and seeker?

Leonard is the top of the top. I hold him in the highest echelon of my heart. He’s my man. (laughs) For over a decade, I’ve considered him my favorite artist in any art form past or present. A cover can be a complicated thing. Like, who are you?

I saw Leonard Cohern in 2010, when he played in Portland [Dec. 8 at the Moda Center]. I had a beautiful experience because it was my last time wirh Paul Drevets. He didn’t think he could make it and I wasn’t expecting him to be able to come. But I kept his ticket. And I'm glad I did, because at the last minute, he told me he could go. He was in a wheelchair at the tme wirh tumors all over his body. He knew he had only a few months left. It was my only experience actually being in the same place as Leonard Cohen in this moment with my friend.

We exchanged our tickets when we got to the show for the handicapped seating section. Though I knew he was in immense pain, when I looked over at him, for example, during "Hallelujah," he had his eyes closed and tilted up to the heavens. In that moment he was free.

This EP features songs that speak to a time. This is the one I felt had the most, and it kept returning. "There is a war between the rich and poor / A war between the man and the woman." I don’t think that war ever ended. (laughs) That war is still raging and it’s gotten a lot more intense this last year. It felt like that one was right.

I tagged his son Adam, who produced his last couple of records and is a musician as well. I was grateful to hear from him. He responded, “Always loved this song and thought of it in these times.with increasing regularity. Nice one, stranger.”

His last record [2016's You Want It Darker, released 17 days before Cohen's death] killed me.

An artist can’t hope for a better final record.

Why did you record Patti Smith's “People Have the Power” as a duet?

I recorded it with my friend Sarah Harris, who records as Lucky Baby Daddy. Wirh this covers project I wanted to be more collaborative. “There Is a War” was also a duet; that's Nora singing in the background.

Sarah and I wanted to create a song together, as she was going to be in town. She's lived in Arizona during this whole pandemic. We were deciding between that one or [Smith's] “Free Money.” I said, “Well, I guess it depends on when you think the song will come out: before the election or after the stimulus." [It did both, arriving Nov. 2.] (laughs) We recorded that in four days. I did the acoustic guitar part and a basic vocal. Then she did a vocal. I had a friend, Brendan Peleo-Lazar, play drums. He's from a band called Triptides.

I recorded that song as a duet becaue it felt like it had to be more than just my voice. It was fun to team up. The nature of doing cover songs for my purposes is that they need to be more collaborative.

How do you feel about our country’s chances after “My Voice Is My Weapon of Choice”?

I’m cautious. That’s my stance. It’s how I feel about the trajectory of our country. In life, ideally, you hope things get better. You have to be optimistic. But to be fair, I think a lot of the reasons why we are where we are is because of neoliberal policies through the past. Joe Biden was a part of that, I still am protesting the government. The presidency right now created such division, so whatever comes after it has to be really transparent and accountable. If they’re not, then the people will hold them accountable. The things Trump got away with, too, I don’t think Biden will try to get away with. He doesn’t have the approach where he brushes things off and keeps on going. I’m cautiously optimistic, though we're still a long way from living in Utopia, even though all the technology is here.

Finally, you’re a number of years into the wandering troubadour life. What are some of the lessons you’ve taken from the experience? How would you sum up the adventure to date?

I feel like it never truly ends because I’m always finding myself going on some adventure somewhere. Not this year, obviously.

In general, to summarize it all, you learn that no matter the language, culture, or environment, those invisible dotted lines of the border you find yourself on, people ultimately want the same things. They want love. They want to feel safe. They want to feel free. They want to feel valued, like the things they do matter. Everyone has dreams.

Everyone’s not so different after all. Only our cultures make us think we’re different. There’s a lot of value in our culture and traditions, but they offer a narrow perspective of what the world is. When you go places and find people to talk to and explore, it’s a beautiful thing. I think everyone should travel. It’s a shame America’s so far from a lot of other countries. I think it requires a certain amount of adventure to actually take that leap, to be willing to mingle with so many strangers, to step out of your comfort zones and regular environments. We’re becoming such a globalized world.

I think it’s a shame to miss out on these things. It's the duty and moral obligation of young people while their minds are open to see the world and to interact with people different from you in general, whether you’re leaving your city or not, being with people who don’t look like you or speak your language. There’s a lot of value in having those cross-cultural interactions.

I've come to realize that of all professions, it is artists, particularly performance artists, that travel the most. Among these musicians are perhaps the only ones expected to re-create their art every night in a different town, maybe a different country, for another audience, sometimes for months or years while mingling with people from all backgrounds and classes of society.

As far as ambassadors go, I am convinced artitsts are the best ambassadors. Despite one's views on the policies of a country, it is the artists who break down the barriers that divide us to reveal what makes us human, carrying their culture wherever they go.

DISCOGRAPHY

As Brian Smith

And We Packed Up Our Bags to Discover New Lands Under New Identities After Leaving Our Past Behind (June 2008)

New Sounds from a New Home (Nov. 2008)

A Venture Was Sought and Discoveries Were Made in Realms of Love Among Other Good/Bad Things (Aug. 2009; reissued as Reals of Love )

One Country at a Time: Tales of Longing from the Adventurous Depths of Peru (Aug. 2009)

The Nights Grew Longer and the Rain Poured in (Sept. 2010)

Wizard Island (unfinished band release) (Jan. 2011)

Bloody Twins: Songs for the Separation of the Soul Longing for Life After Death (Nov. 2011; reissued as Life After Death)

Songs for Paul (2-song EP) (March 2012)

Serenity Infinity! (May 2012; reissued)

Holding Hands (as Biological Lovers w/ Hannah Sheets) (May 2012)