MUSIC

I am happy to announce that my new album ‘STAR CHILD’ is now out and available everywhere online.

The album (released June 10th 2019) consists of 10 songs, recorded live over three nights. Each song was played live twice (guitar/vocals), then either the best take was used or both full takes were blended together. No edits or punch ins were used. The goal was to ‘document a performance’ as studios did in earlier eras. Vocal harmonies and instrumentation were added over the next week and the album was done.

The artwork is from the painting ‘FISH & FIGURE III, 1984” by my grandfather Dee J Lafon.

Thank you to everyone who supported and encouraged me before, during and after the recording process. Special thanks to Eric Arndt and Matt Morrow for hanging out and playing guitars with me in my living room.

Click here to download or stream STAR CHILD now.

Enoy!

This year I have been releasing new music for the first time in a long time. I never stopped making music. For whatever reason (there are many) I just stopped sharing it publicly.

Over the last few weeks I have released two new songs, ‘Rain Clouds’ and ‘A Happy Man Won’t Understand’. The response to these songs has been great. People say the music sounds beautiful… and unbelievably sad.

Some listeners, fans, friends and family have contacted me about it. First, they congratulate me on the music and then say they’re worried that I’m going to take a bunch of sleeping pills or drive my car off of a bridge or something.

And it’s no wonder, with lyrics like this:

When thoughts come my way
All of the colors turn to grey
And I try to find the words
To tell them to please go away
‘Rain Clouds’ from the album STAR CHILD (2019)

I am happy to report that I am doing well – and the music, while melancholy as hell is actually one of the most mentally healthy things I can do. It’s the reason I started doing music in the first place.

Since childhood, music has been therapeutic. If I am feeling overwhelmed, sad, scared or depressed – music is a way to get it out. I take all of my awful feelings and dark thoughts and convert them into guitar chords and phrases. Then I play and sing them to get them out of myself and into other people’s ears.

The beauty of this alchemy is that by the time these horrible feelings are converted into music and make their way to your headphones, they are transformed into something beautiful. Sometimes beautiful enough to make you cry – or smile – or laugh – or forget about your own worries for a while.

In fact, it is my long time belief that without depressions and sadness, there would be no beautiful art in our world. All of the best art mankind has ever created seems to come from the most depressed, dysfunctional and/or crazy people among us.

We call them ‘artists’ and sometimes the greatest medium an artist can work with is their own tears.

So please don’t worry about me. I am about to release a ten song album filled with sad, dark and pretty songs. The sadder the song, the more therapeutic it was to create it. So if a sad song makes you cry, let it be tears of joy.

And a piece of advice for you – if you currently struggle with sadness, depression, addiction or unease like me. Pour those feelings into some type of art. Pick a medium: you can use music, poetry, paintings, coloring books, wood work or even blog posts as a way to get it out.

Your sadness is a blessed object that you can reshape and send out into the world as something uniquely beautiful. Doing this is helpful and accomplishes (at least) two things:

1. It gets the sadness out of you
2. It makes the world a better place

The pop charts are filled with (seemingly) happy artists squawking happy, vapid lyrics over algorithmic music made by computers.

The world doesn’t need more of that. We need you.

To your tears,
m

I’m sitting on my couch, looking at the screen and trying to think of a good opening line to start this post with. I guess this will have to do.

I hope you are doing well.

I know it’s been a bit since I’ve posted here and that is because lately I’ve been writing and playing music like a madman. The work has resulted in about two dozen great songs. So time well spent.

Speaking of music.

I have just returned home from a great trip to Oklahoma to play an acoustic set with the guys from Rusted Root.

The whole thing happened pretty fast.

I sent my friend Donnie (a concert promoter in Oklahoma) a message that I was ready to play shows again. About 50 hours later I was on a plane, headed to the midwest to play a set opening for the guys from Rusted Root.

I didn’t want to travel with a guitar so as soon as I landed I headed over to Black Bird on Pearl to borrow a classical acoustic guitar from my friend Steve Liddell. The next morning Guitar House of Tulsa was kind enough to loan me another one so I was all set for the show.

The whole experience was a blast. I played 45 minutes of brand new songs that are some of the most haunting, sad and pretty tunes I’ve ever heard. It was the first time I’ve played them anywhere and I think they went well.

It felt so great to hear my guitar and voice oozing through a big PA system again. I’ve gotten so used to the sound of me singing without amplification and it took a few minutes to get used to it again. But after those few minutes, it was heaven.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpFG2PUl1gy/

 

View this post on Instagram

It was good to be back in Tulsa #tulsamusic

A post shared by Malan (@malandarras) on Oct 21, 2018 at 3:02pm PDT

The next night I ended up being part of an impromptu living room concert with some of my oldest and best friends. We moved some furniture, setup guitars, amps and microphones and played for four or five hours until we were all ready to pass out.

I haven’t had that much fun for ages!

It was so fun to get back home and see some old friends and family. I can’t wait to do it again and I will be back soon.

Today I’m back in LA feeling very happy that I made the trip. It was exhausting and I hate flying but it was

worth it.

Over the last year or so I’ve been reconnecting with people from Oklahoma. Some who I haven’t talked to much since I left town.

One conversation was with a sweet heart of a girl named Jenn, a friend from Tulsa who was a fan of our band Rewake.

She mentioned she had a copy of our albums ‘Air Bubbles’ and the ‘Bohemian Dream EP’.

(I actually forgot we did the Bohemian Dream EP… what a “blurry” time that was)

I hadn’t listened to either of these much since I moved away. Everytime I tried to, I’d have a very slight panic attack and turn it off. The music sounded fine, but it sent me back to a time and place that was fun, exciting and creative but also dark and depressing as hell.

But this time I listened and that didn’t happen.

I played the entire Air Bubbles album and then the Bohemian Dream EP back to back. I danced around my house by myself, live streaming some of it to my Instagram story. And for the first time ever – I was able to hear our music as a fan and not as a member of the band.

And there’s a big difference.

When you listen to a band you love, you just hear the song and have a great time. But when you listen to a song that you played on, all you hear are the mistakes, the production problems and a word or chord you think should have been different.

I get asked all the time if these albums can be purchased online and unfortunately they never made it to Itunes or Spotify. So I normally just tell people “Nope”.

I had such a great time listening to these two recordings, that I decided to get them digitized and online. This way, when someone asks, I can just send them a link and they can have a good time too.

So if you were around in those days and have been wanting to hear either Air Bubbles or the Bohemian Dream EP again, now you can.

And if you weren’t around for it – you can check it out for the first time.

Just go to http://rewake.com or http://rewake.bandcamp.com.

It’s free. Enjoy.

And if you have time, come back and lemme know what you think.

Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.

Malan

P.S. If you have a digital copy of our first live CD ‘Foreign’ or any of our other live shows, please contact me and I’ll put them online as well. I don’t have a CD player to rip them.