Seven Questions with Fog Chaser
№76 — Bound To Lose (demo)
organizing an accident is a weekly newsletter where I leak home demos of unreleased songs, first draft lyrics, thoughts on the creative process, & dispatches from music life in Paris.
Listen to “Bound To Lose” (demo):
This song was written on August 17, 2023
This is demo leak #76
Greetings from France,
I hope everyone is transitioning gracefully into a warmer season. Here in Paris, we are not, but my fingers are firmly crossed in hopes that summer will arrive soon.
Apart from sharing a new song demo today (organizing an accident no. 76), I am pleased to open up this space to hear from Matt Evans—a fantastic, Portland-based composer and artist releasing music under the pseudonym
. Here is a description of the project’s sound from his site:Inspired by the forests and mountains of his home in the Pacific Northwest, Fog Chaser writes dreamy, cinematic, neoclassical music that combines orchestral, acoustic, and electronic elements with found sound to create a distinctive and evocative sound.
This is only the second installment of my “Seven Questions with…” series, and I’m excited that Matt dove so deep into his responses, providing as generous and vulnerable an insight into his life and work as one could ask for.
Be sure to check out his music on your platform of choice and/or subscribe to his newsletter. Below the interview, scroll down for the lyrics to today’s song, “Bound to Lose,” as well as my listening and reading recommendations for the week.
With love,
Ryan
Seven Questions with Fog Chaser
RE: Two things you have written about are losing your father and suffering two severe brain injuries. How have the experiences of both emotional and physical trauma changed the trajectory of your life? In what ways have they altered the trajectory of your creative work?
FC: That’s such a good question. I know you recently lost your mother unexpectedly—I’m so sorry for your loss.
Not long after my dad died from cancer in 2019, my wife lost her father to ALS in 2020. There’s nothing like death to make you acutely aware of your own mortality. The brain injuries (2018 and 2019) also made me hyper-aware of my own fragility. I was still recovering from my brain injuries when we lost our dads, so altogether, it was just this massive shake-up to my life. Only now, six years later, can I look back on and see what good may have come out of these challenges—the resilience that was required to get through it all, the realizations I’ve had because of these experiences. Because for about five years, I couldn’t see through the fog at all.
These traumas changed my life in significant ways that continue to surprise me, that continue to unfold. I was diagnosed with PTSD after my second brain injury, which happened in a car accident. The anxiety became paralyzing—I could barely leave the house. And I never wanted to. I had a therapist encouraging me to just go out to get the mail every day because, without pushing myself a little, I would end up shrinking my world down by rewarding myself for avoiding things I perceived as “risky.” Which was true—that did start happening.
The fear of incurring yet another brain injury was just too strong, and I was petrified of putting myself in situations that seemed unsafe. As you can imagine, this started to wreak havoc on, well, everything. My relationships with friends and family grew strained. My wife, who has been nothing but patient and loving and supportive during all of this, certainly felt the weight of it all. During my recovery, I was deeply depressed. I lost the ability to listen to music. The ability to read. Two things that have always been vital to me. I was afraid I would never get those back. Maybe more than anything, I was afraid that I would never feel lightness again. That my hyper-vigilance would follow me forever, everywhere, and prevent me from ever just relaxing, letting go, and being the person I used to be.
The person I used to be. It’s funny, because that guy is definitely gone. It’s kind of sad to me still. And I think it’s hard for those around me. But today I’m just a different person. Life is fragile. I’m more aware of that now. And, thankfully, I was able to connect with a strong support team who helped me make significant progress through physical and emotional therapy, medication, and techniques like EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). My trauma response and anxiety responses are much better as a result and, I am happy to share, fully recovered from the concussion symptoms.
All that’s to say that, yes, these traumas had a major impact on me creatively as well. For most of my musical life I’ve been more of a singer/songwriter, playing in bands, playing shows, releasing records. Not nearly as prolific as you, Ryan, but it seems like maybe you and I were operating on a similar wavelength for a while. Up until 2018, I was most involved with my band Reddening West. We’re technically still together, but I now live in Portland and the rest of the band is in Austin. So, we’ve been on a bit of a hiatus as I’ve navigated all of these things. The longer it goes, I realize that it has a lot to do with my own inability to really write songs in the same way I used to. I’ll try to explain.
I remember the last time I played live—it was December 2018, almost six months after one of my brain injuries and just a few months before my dad passed. I was in bad shape, but I was trying to live normally, trying not to let others down, trying to keep things in motion. But playing shows was very hard—so much stimulation and noise, so much physicality, that it would always exacerbate my symptoms. I walked off stage that night just spent and depressed. My wife is from Austin, and at this time we had lived there for about six years, but, in desperate need of something that would help us change the channel we were stuck on, we decided to leave Austin that summer. We packed up all our things, loaded up our dog, and hit the road, intending to drive until we felt like stopping. We went through Memphis and Chicago, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Mackinac Island, giant swaths of Canada, and Montreal, and hung out in a cabin in Maine for a couple of weeks. Somewhere along the way, my wife got a job offer in Portland. So, I remember that our trip came to a close after a month or so, and we had to book it from Portland, ME, to Portland, OR, in about a week’s time.
That trip was a lot of fun, but I was still not feeling great. I didn’t realize that my anxiety was manifesting in dozens of physical symptoms all the time. After being in Portland for just a couple of months, I got into the car accident that would give me my next concussion and ramp up my PTSD to the point where I just couldn’t function in the world anymore. This was November of 2019, just a few months before the first COVID case arrived in Portland, and we all started to realize what was happening. Simultaneously, my father-in-law, Steve, was diagnosed with very late-stage ALS and given only months to live. My wife was very close to her dad, and I was, too. (He was probably the single greatest supporter of my musical efforts, and I think in all the time I lived and performed in Austin, he made it to every single show I played.)
I was in the middle of physical therapy when COVID hit. Fortunately, I was paired with the most incredible PT specialist who really understood brain injuries. She got me further in my recovery than I could have hoped for. In April, as COVID wreaked havoc on the entire world, we decided to drive from Portland to Austin to be with Steve—we just didn’t know how much time he had, and everything was so uncertain. I was laid off from all of my contract writing work that I had been doing for years, but my wife was able to work remotely. We arrived in Austin in mid-April, and Steve died at age 69, the day before his 70th birthday, on May 25. Because of the pandemic, we were unable to hold a funeral.
I’m writing all of this to illustrate why, after being a musician and songwriter since I was a teenager, I wasn’t doing anything with music at all. I just didn’t care. I didn’t have the capacity. Inspiration, whatever that mystical feeling is, was nonexistent. My anxiety and depression were at new levels of high and low, respectively. I wasn’t on medication yet, but I was admitting to myself that I really needed help. I realized that I’d reached the end of what I could do on my own.
We returned to Portland sometime in June 2020. We were shaken. It would take us a long, long time to get through these things. But music and creativity weren’t even on my radar. By the end of the year, though, I was starting to get a spark back. I was experiencing music differently. I was healing; things were slow and weird and terrifying and illuminating. I had a long-held dream to write instrumental music that had been dormant for years, but all of a sudden it was surging back. I was inspired by film composers, I was inspired by nature. I craved a quieter existence. I didn’t want to sing. I didn’t want to hear my own voice. I didn’t want to write lyrics anymore. I just wanted harmony and melody and nature and space. So, by 2021, I was trying to figure out what that might look like, how I might bring this back into my life. And feeling that again brought me a lot of joy, and that’s when I started this project.
RE: The project that originally launched your newsletter is called Meditations. What are your earliest memories of experiencing transcendence through music?
FC: There’s something that happens when you create or hear a sound, or a combination of sounds, that resonates deep inside of you. Like umami, but with sound. It’s a spark, a magical moment of fulfillment. Music is fleeting—and, unless you are recording it, it only exists in a very specific moment right in front of you, as metal and wood vibrate to move the air to create sound. It’s such a profoundly difficult thing to describe, but in this era of the digital-first musical experiences that make up the majority of our listening anymore, the difference is profound and obvious. I’m always trying to recreate that spark with the songs I write, and when I landed on calling those first 24 pieces “meditations,” it was largely because I was hoping that people would sit with them for a moment of calm, for a pause in our hectic lives.
I think my earliest memories of transcendence through music happened for me very early in life. I’ve always just been moved by music—my mom always had good music on in our house growing up, and I remember being enthralled by everything from pop to classical, from Springsteen to The Beatles. Music just transported me.
When I was maybe four or five, I begged to get this little microphone stand that played music you could sing along to, and I would spend hours acting like a rock star for my stuffed animals. As I got older, I would often sing along to my brother’s records—mostly Pearl Jam—when I was sure no one was around. But one time my brothers caught me belting “Alive” to my crowd of nobody in my bedroom, and they were laughing at me through the window. I was mortified! I threw whatever makeshift microphone I was using at them and shattered the window into a thousand pieces. Maybe that’s why my nickname growing up was “temper boy”? That memory sticks with me, though, because I was always escaping into music. It was music that was giving me this entire world to explore in my head, in my imagination, a feeling that has never really gone away.
My most profound memory of experiencing transcendence through music probably happened at a time when I was simultaneously discovering my own independence. My parents were in the middle of a bad divorce, and I was seventeen or eighteen, and I remember I was supposed to go to some baseball practice during the offseason for a new team (playing sports was a constant throughout my life up to this point). I was driving myself, and I was about ten minutes late—I hate being late, but looking back I think I was running late because, subconsciously, I knew that I just didn’t want to be there. I was listening to our local classical music station, which had been a recent companion, and something happened that made me decide to skip out on this baseball practice altogether and drive aimlessly for hours absolutely enamored with the sounds of the Baroque and Romantic and Medieval classical music that was pouring through the speakers. I was at once terrified of the consequences of skipping out on an obligation and thrilled by this exertion of my own free will—a theme that really took root during this time, and which has continued throughout my life—all swept along by Mozart, Bach, and Corelli, finding true solace in my independence.
RE: You and I first connected over our shared experience of becoming new dads. Parenthood begs reflection, re-prioritization, and a reshaping of our day-to-day lives. How has being a father impacted your creative routines, writing, and relationship to the idea of legacy?
FC: Absolutely. I definitely have a lot less time than I used to, for sure. But that reality forces me to be much more intentional with the time that I do have set aside for music. As for my creative routine, I seem to not really have one anymore. And when I look back, I feel like the routine was a little haphazard—I would just sit at my desk and meander aimlessly, tinkering on a song whenever I had some time to spare (which was more often than I appreciated at the time). So, my hope is to create a better one now. I am much more focused, and I am much more appreciative of trying to do less overall, and to focus on the things that are more important. I just started a new day job, which is fully remote, so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to carve out more time for sitting, writing, and composing more intentionally. We’ll see.
As for legacy, that’s an interesting one. I can’t say that I have any expectations around legacy—this might sound like bullshit, but over the course of my son’s first year I’ve started to realize that my only hope is to be present for him, to never prioritize my own creative desires over his needs and wants. This may sound flippant, but I just don’t care that much—life is short, which maybe ties back to my experiences over the last six years. I love writing music. I love writing. I love photography. I do. But all of these things are additive to my life—I lost them before, and I may lose them again. So, above all, I want to be someone who, when his kid reflects on their upbringing, was around. Was available. Who wasn’t overly precious about his time. Who didn’t think that his creative pursuits were worth more than hanging out at the park for a couple of hours. My time is something I can give, and I will. Maybe that’s what I want my legacy to be. And yes, as I’m writing this, it’s almost certainly because my relationship to mortality has really changed.
RE: You recently released an "Original Book Score" for
’s Oblivion, a self-described utopian novel serialized on Substack. How did crafting the soundtrack to a futuristic, utopian world differ from your usual writing? Do you have a dream scoring gig?FC: Elle might laugh at this, but you know, having to write music that felt “positive” was different for me. I had to go against my typically emo sensibilities. I have always been someone who gravitates to heaviness in music, in emotional heft, sadness, darkness. I find it to be an honest place to hang out. But Elle, and the text of her novel, really asked for something lighter than what I typically might write. Which was great because it helped me stretch and helped me work on being more adaptable as a musician, as a composer. Those pieces were also much more electronic/ambient than my usual work, which was also fun to explore. I don’t think of myself as an ambient musician, but I really like ambient music and felt excited to try to create pieces that had more space in them, less movement, more expansiveness.
I’ve been really lucky to be asked to score and write music for other people’s creative projects. I scored a short documentary for
, and I’m currently working on a score for another documentary, as well as a few other pieces for people on Substack and beyond, which should see the light of day in the coming months.So, in all honesty, these projects are the dream realized. The fact that I’m getting to write music for people at all is it. I’m doing it. I’m doing the thing; I’m doing the work today. Now, if A24 wanted to recruit me for a film, I can’t say I’d be mad about that. But in the meantime, I’m very happy to be doing these types of projects at all. I just want to do more of it.
RE: Last year, you contributed music to
’s short film, Woodbine, which follows one son’s attempt to tell the story of his late father. What was the significance of memory when writing this music? Does composing to image or memory factor greatly into your process?FC: Both image and memory are very important to me. I often write with a specific image in mind, so when I have footage to work with, I feel really guided by that. It’s challenging in some ways, but also helpful. Thinking back on it, though, with Taegan’s project, I don’t think I had any footage from him yet for the scene I was writing to. I just kind of winged it based on what he told me. So there, I drew on memory, I drew on my own feelings of nostalgia. There’s actually a clip in Woodbine of Taegan’s dad roller skating/blading around in the street that I had seen before I started writing, and it reminded me so much of home videos I have of my own dad. That really opened up a lot of memories for me. When I sit down to write at the piano or when I’m building or searching for a sound palette, my mind is often a thousand miles and 30 years away, swimming around a sun-drenched memory in my childhood backyard in Arizona. Hard to explain, but that happens a lot.
In film scoring and theory classes I’ve taken through the Berklee College of Music’s online certificate program, many of our assignments involve writing music to short video clips, which I’ve always found helpful. I love watching a scene and evaluating what is being said or not said, what the undertones are, how that scene fits into the larger narrative, and whether or not music fits and what it could sound like to support what’s happening on the screen. I’m still learning how to do this, but I love the process.
RE: What is something you once held to be true that you no longer believe?
FC: That being an artist with a day job is somehow tantamount to being a failure.
RE: Over the past few years, you’ve built an online community around your music, leading to collaborations and friendships you wouldn’t have otherwise found. How do you envision one day elevating Fog Chaser to an IRL experience? Does the concept of a “scene” matter to you as a musician?
FC: The pandemic really changed the way I think about what a “scene” is. Over the last several years, I have found more connection online through my newsletter than anything else I’ve done online in the past decade. I’ve never been a big social media user and tend to prefer analog over digital in most things. But I’ve appreciated the opportunity to connect with people from all over the world through this project—I’ve met some really cool people doing cool stuff (like you!).
I’ve played a lot of shows in my life. I had fun at the time, but the whole live music “industry” has become really uninteresting to me. I mean, I would often feel good after playing a show, but all the moments leading up to the show, and all the exhaustion and come-down after, just made it all sort of generally unpleasant to me. The nerves and anxiety before I would play, lugging all my gear for a 4 pm sound check for a 10 pm slot, waiting around for hours, loading out at 3 am on a random Wednesday night, knowing you’d have to be up in just a few hours to go to work. I’m very grateful I did it when I was younger, and that I got to do it with my friends and my band. But I can’t say I miss it. I’ve never really been a scene person—I never felt cool enough or alt enough or emo enough or straight edge enough or talented enough to be part of the cliques that existed in certain arts scenes, so I’ve always just sort of kept myself to myself, for better or worse. I’ve had a few close friends I could make music with, and that has always been good enough.
The pandemic was an interesting time to make music and connect with other musicians online. But now, the world has definitely returned to a more pre-pandemic state as far as live music is concerned. There are plenty of musicians in the neoclassical space who are performing instrumental music to rapt audiences, so I do wonder if that might be in my/Fog Chaser’s future. One thought I have had is to work with an ensemble to bring my music to life IRL—a simple concert experience with minimal accompanying visuals. Whether I would perform with the ensemble or not, I’m not sure. I’m starting to think of myself more as a composer but not necessarily a performer. That said, I am starting to write songs with lyrics and vocals again—which has been a pleasant surprise. I’m not sure how much is in that tank, but there may be something in the future there as well. Portland has a strong songwriter scene, so maybe I’ll play some tunes at open mics in the future. Although, as soon as I wrote that I regretted it, so maybe not. Maybe I’ll just continue to hang out in my bubble and send my songs to the people on my list who like to listen to them. Really, that’s more than enough and has been one of the more creatively satisfying things I’ve ever done. ◍
Thank you for reading. Be sure to listen and subscribe to Fog Chaser.
“Bound To Lose” lyrics
What would you say
If we pack it up and move
From here to forever
Some place with a view
I picture you gray
On a sunny afternoon
As we learn to measure
What we’re bound to lose
Bound to lose
We’re bound to lose
Bound to lose
We’re bound to lose
It’s out of our hands
Guess there’s nothing left to prove
Last call for summer
It’s all over soon
We had a good laugh
And danced like drunken fools
‘Til we all discovered
That we’re bound to lose
Bound to lose
We’re bound to lose
Bound to lose
We’re bound to lose
These lyrics were written in August 2023.
From the vault
What I’m listening to this week
What I’ve been reading
David Grossman - A Horse Walks into a Bar
Shawn Coyne - The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know
Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.
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Matt and Ryan, I find it so humbling when clarity follows tragedy. Thank you for your honesty about the slow process of waking-up to what truly matters in your creative work--and ultimately in your lives beyond the music.
This is a fantastic dialogue. So honest and vulnerable and open. Merci