Nobide began in 2015. I was a sophomore in college, and in the process of creating my own major, “Sociomusicology.” I couldn’t read music, so I couldn’t audition to get into the music school at CU Boulder, and this was my backdoor into taking music classes. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, or what I wanted to study, but I knew I wanted to “do music” for the rest of my life. I hoped that if I built Nobide while I was in college, I could graduate and hopefully just start making a living as an artist.

The University accepted my proposal and the Sociomusicology major was born. In order to graduate, I had to do a thesis project which consisted of a written piece, a performance, and a record (which became the first Nobide record, “Contrary To Popular Belief”). It was a bit vague, but I sought to understand how music production, consumption and distribution processes were being influenced by technology. Honestly, I just wanted to play around in Ableton… but that made it sound nice.

Under the guise of working on my thesis, I wrote Contrary To Popular Belief over 2016 & 2017 instead of working on school assignments. For the thesis performance I wanted to demonstrate tech’s increasing ability by starting the show with a full band that gradually disappeared as the set went on.

That was the first time I had ever played my music, or any music really, with other people. I fell in love, and knew I wanted to perform as a band. The thesis performance took place in November 2017, I graduated in December, and by February I had put together an official Nobide band.

For the Nobide band, I worked with several amazing musicians – starting with friends, then bringing other local players in. The group we landed on was Matt McElwain, one of my favorite drummers in the world, and Tanner Fruit, an incredibly forward-thinking saxophone player. I met Matt on Facebook, and Tanner through Evergroove Studios.

We spent all of 2018 and 2019 traveling across the country playing late-night festivals, huge stages, podunk dive bars, and everything in between. We even got booked for Coachella in 2020 before ye old COVID… yeahhh…

Coming out of college and going straight on tour, getting picked up by an agent at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), having pro management and lots of attention… it felt like we’d “made it”, and that it was all going well. As far as I was concerned, if we just kept grinding it out, there was no chance we wouldn’t make it. But we couldn’t have expected the world to totally stop.

We were entirely a live band – we thrived in front of a crowd. The energy was , tangible, unmatchable, delicious, crazy, sexy, fun. When we had to stop touring in March of 2020, we realized that we didn’t have the same energy in the studio, nor any source of income. With no live music, we were fkd.

As COVID carried on, it became clear that instead of trying to force the Nobide project, we all needed some space from it. With a hefty financial debt accrued from touring and recording, but no spark between the band and no income on the horizon, I felt it was best to take the project back to a solo venture, not knowing whether I wanted to continue pursuing Nobide or not. I was washed out, exhausted, and confused by the whole thing.

With mounting financial pressures, I tried to spark excitement with the “Corona Collab” album, a video performance, and two new tracks – “Invisibilia” and “I Want The Truth”. It felt like I was still kinda fumbling around, reaching for anything, but finding nothing. There was something there, but I couldn’t place it yet.

Upon returning home from a trip to the East Coast last Fall, I took some time to dig into what the Nobide project was, is, and could be. I hadn’t taken the time to think about the Nobide basics since I’d started the project seven years before. With a lot of patience and understanding, I got to the core of what was bothering me, what I wished was different, and how I could sustainably bring this project back.

I realized that I want to do more than just music – I want to integrate technology, fashion, design, and more mediums of expression into the fabric of Nobide’s expression. Multi-media artists (Virgili Abloh) and projects (Songcamp) opened my mind to the ways I could pursue a multi-hyphenate artistic career myself.

Along with getting back to the Nobide basics, I began exploring the NFT and web3 landscape. I came for the money, but stayed for the values and the community. This is the first time I’ve felt like I’ve found my people online - forward-thinking, smart and (mostly) driven by the desire to help others. Amidst the many bad actors and scams in the space, there are people doing genuinely good work. And the potentials as an artist… don’t even get me started!

So, with all that, this is what you can expect from Nobide moving forward.

Exploring the spaces between the ones and 0s.

As we progress towards a deeper relationship with technology I believe it's important to maintain and encourage the human spirit, not try to erase it.

As a multi-media project, Nobide will reach across and between disciplines - including music, fashion, and design to explore the potentials of bringing life to each project.

I aim to find out if a healthy relationship between "IRL" and the digital spaces we’re building exists. I, for one, am not excited about a Zuckerberg dominated digital sphere for the rest of our lives. I think there is a world in which technology enhances and uplifts humanity and doesn’t sterilize or erase it.

I intend to start exploring avenues of creation, consumption and distribution both physically and digitally, and using any and all tools/mediums at my disposal to help communicate the vision. The analog/digital, live/programmed, and human/robot interplay has always been a part of the Nobide ethos. I look forward to bringing the vision out into the world and sharing it again.