Meet DJsNeverEndingStory

Today we’d like to introduce you to DJsNeverEndingStory.

DJ, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’m originally from St. Louis, Missouri. My story in LA begins after leaving St. Louis the night after my ex-fiancee’s birthday for a three-day Greyhound bus trip to San Bernardino in May 2015. I left in the middle of the night without much sleep.

Today, I can hardly remember her birthday dinner aside from a few old photos in my backup folder on my phone, but I’m sure it was full of laughs and smiles from my ex-fiancee and mother while I sat stoic as usual, overthinking my future. When I was dropped off at the Greyhound Station in downtown St. Louis, my dad and a couple of friends met me there to say goodbye. I chose a bus trip instead of a plane in order to save money and also give myself time to reflect on the biggest leap of faith I’d ever taken up to that point in my life. I had $200 in my pocket which many around me didn’t know. I told them I had a couple thousand dollars when I left but the truth was that my royalty check for some film work I completed hadn’t cleared yet.

My decision to leave St. Louis was during a dry period in my music production and audio engineering career. For years I worked remotely with record labels and TV studios but the work slowed to a halt. The animated TV series, Unsupervised, that I produced music for was cancelled and the residual income stopped. I knew that part of my suffering was from my own decision to not make music with rappers and singers that promoted music I felt was detrimental to the mental health of society, specifically, Black people. The only good thing I had going for me was my work with my friend, Prince Ea.

We worked on a series of spoken word videos that went viral on YouTube and Facebook after the initial video I recorded of him for his response to the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson in 2014 went viral. Eventually, our work led to sponsored spoken word videos which I was able to make money from. I used some of that money to pay old debts and save for my move to LA. I was hoping that meeting former colleagues, attending networking events, and using other resources in LA would allow me to flourish once again. I’d hoped to establish a job and place to live in LA then send for my fiancee when all was well. If I failed I knew I’d be coming back to St. Louis completely broke and with an even more disappointed mother-in-law.

I sold my car, donated a lot of my clothes, and boarded the Greyhound bus in downtown St. Louis with a travel suitcase containing a few outfits and a backpack holding my laptop and other small audio gear. The driver entered the highway for the 1,800-mile journey to San Bernardino with about 30 stops on the itinerary. We passed by my fiancee’s downtown loft that stood next to court buildings, fire stations, and police stations that all were guarded by military personnel and vehicles to diffuse any potential disturbance that might arise again because of the Mike Brown aftermath. That was the last I saw of the city of St. Louis for months as I rode the bus to California with a group of circus performers, ex-convicts, college students, and everyday laymen.

My friend Jojo and her boyfriend, Mike, moved to Riverside several weeks prior to my trip to California. Both were originally from St. Louis also but they lived in New York and Florida before moving to California. They were still adjusting to the move but invited me to stay in their apartment until I was able to solidify a job and a place of my own. My friend Julian was also making the move to LA for his career and I convinced Jojo and Mike that all four of us could split the money on rent and food until we could venture out on our own.

After three days of hardly any sleep or food, I made it to Blythe, California. It was the first California stop and I texted Mike so he could pick me in his car at the last Greyhound stop in San Bernardino in a couple of hours. I checked my bank account to see the deposit I was waiting for had processed. Once Mike picked me up, we drove to his apartment in Riverside.

I was surprised to see how rainy and cool the temperatures were in May in this region of California. It reminded me of where I was from in the Midwest. I unpacked my things in Mike and Jojo’s living room and slept on their carpeted floor in my only coat I brought with me. Julian arrived the next day and settled in the way as I did while Mike and Jojo slept in the bedroom. In the first few days, I made many walks to the lobby of the apartment complex to use the free WIFI. At the time, I shared a family plan on my phone with three other people that had limited minutes and 15 gigabytes of data, which was used up quickly. I applied for dozens of jobs daily: jobs relevant to my skills, warehouse jobs, and retail.

I found out days later that Mike was also unemployed since he joined Julian and I in the lobby frequently to job hunt. Jojo was working part-time in a Target store in Moreno Valley. At this time, I started to question how we all were going to sustain this lifestyle in Riverside. I believe we were in Walmart almost every day buying food, returning food, and trying to ration what we had while constantly restructuring our budget. Eventually, I bought an inflatable mattress to stop my back pains from sleeping on the floor and inhaling dust that was making me sick. We did nothing for entertainment while at the apartment.

However, we discovered Sycamore Highlands Park that was walking distance from the apartment. Mike, Julian, and I played basketball after we’d spend hours applying for jobs. I got a better view of the mountains I’d only see in the far distance while riding in Mike’s car and the bus to California. Aside from a 2013 trip to LA for an ASCAP conference, I’d never seen mountains up close in my life. A few months prior my Greyhound trip, I made an instrumental song called Stoney Mountain. The inspiration came from seeing beautiful mountains in pictures on the internet and books all my life. I finally got to see in person what I admired from afar.

Moments in the park set my mind at ease from the growing anxiety that ensued while at the apartment. The apartment was soon becoming a financial burden for all of us, even just a week after combining all our money. Julian and I started to ride the Metrolink and other buses to LA to apply for jobs in person and searching for rooms to rent. I started contacting old colleagues in LA by email to notify them I’d finally made it to LA. Soon, my time in California was becoming a nonstop hunt for resources.

Unfortunately, after two weeks of staying with Mike and Jojo, they let me know they’d soon be evicted from their apartment. To make matters more complicated, Jojo announced that she was seven weeks pregnant. After realizing there was more opportunity for employment and housing in LA, although more expensive, we all decided to travel there. Mike and Jojo packed as much of their stuff in their car as they could while putting the rest in a storage facility. Julian and I were left to travel by train and bus because we couldn’t fit in the car.

Weeks went by and we all became homeless in separate parts of LA. It was too expensive to keep venturing out for housing and employment while rejoining when one of us would salvage the money for a hotel room. I was unable to meet any of my former colleagues due to their busy schedules. I spent most days walking and catching buses to hotels, motels, and job interviews while carrying my backpack, travel suitcase, and two trash bags of clothes. One of the hotels I spent a lot of time in was a Rodeway Inn in Buena Park, which sat diagonal to Knotts Berry Farm. It was a bit of a tease hearing families screaming with laughter through my window as I sat stressed in my room.

Every hotel I found I’d walk around to discover places nearby to see if they were hiring. There was a Goodwill that I applied for in-person after I donated many of my clothes there to rid myself of all the weight I was carrying around. To this day, I remember one of the workers there named Mary. She helped me with my application process and even offered me a ride to another part of the city for an interview. On our ride, she talked about many things including her Vietnamese heritage and offered to try to help once again, this time for housing with her family and friends. Nothing came of it, but I greatly appreciated her kindness.

Before I left Orange County for good, I took a bus to Huntington Beach since it was the closest beach to my hotel. It was the first time in my life feeling the water from the ocean and being part of the beach ambience I’ve only witnessed in videos. Despite being a nature lover, with frequent trips to the Chain of Rocks bridge to meditate above the Mississippi River in St. Louis, standing on the pier at the beach gave me no joy. I believe this was because I felt lost in LA; mentally, physically, and spiritually. As I left the beach, I was offered a flyer for a body piercing shop by a group of people. In my mind, I knew I was already starting to give up on LA, and instead of taking a souvenir back to St. Louis with me, I decided to get a piercing as something to remember about this journey. I walked to the shop and got my septum pierced. This started my love for piercings years later as I went on to get another nose piercing and an industrial bar in my ear. The walk there also introduced me to longboarding as people rode by, which was something I never saw in St. Louis. I bought my first of two longboards in 2016, finding the rides to be cathartic and meditative.

There were nights I’d roam around Hollywood, catching rides with strangers, being invited into recording studios with random groups of people: former TMZ employees, Corey Clark of American Idol fame and controversy, and Fatlip (formerly of The Pharcyde). I talked with Fatlip the most after telling him my cousin Romye (Bootie Brown) was also a member of The Pharcyde. I’d only spoken with my cousin through emails. I knew he lived somewhere in LA but I didn’t know him personally any more than my former colleagues. However, talking with Fatlip encouraged me to contact my aunt, who I didn’t know much about aside from the small talk we’d have when she’d visit St. Louis.

My aunt Zetta offered me a room in her house to stay in while I continued to search for jobs and housing. I was able to rest much better from all the hotel hopping, walking miles around the city with all my luggage to job interviews and fast-food restaurants, and the constant draining of my money while doing so. She lived in Altadena. The room she gave me was small with only enough room for bed and dresser. It hosted many of my cousin Romye’s plaques, from Billboard awards to tour posters. It was motivation seeing it while I worked on beats at night on my computer, something I hadn’t been able to do since my time in Riverside. I started to think of Mike, JoJo, and Julian. Before making it to my aunt’s house, we met up one last time in Glendale at a hotel room I paid for. By this time, Julian was sleeping in a locker room at a hotel he found a job at. Mike and Jojo were sleeping in Mike’s car. Jojo was starting to feel sick from her pregnancy so the hotel room gave her a bed to relax in for a couple of days.

I was able to meet my cousin Romye after a few days of staying with my aunt and uncle in Altadena. I told him how much of a culture clash it was in the house with my Belizean uncle. He explained to me some of his childhood woes growing up there but assured me things would be fine. While riding around LA with him for a week and going to his office frequently, he told me stories of the early days of the Pharcyde and early 90’s LA. He told me stories of being in the studio with Tupac, relationships with current artists and public figures like Ty Dolla $ign, Snoop Dogg and Big Boy, collaborations with The Gorillaz, and giving J Dilla some of his first production credits. It was inspiring, to say the least. I admired all of these people.

I worked in the studio with my cousin and he’d give me money for my time. I used the money to start saving up to go back to St. Louis. LA was too expensive and I spent more time trying to survive and take care of my basic needs than having time to work toward my music career. I remember days talking with other homeless people on the street. They taught me about how hard it was for men who weren’t strung out on drugs to make it into homeless shelters: something I considered because my money was running low. Children and women were admitted first. I called many shelters in different parts of LA but they all were fully occupied. I didn’t qualify for the Salvation Army’s transitional housing program either. This is when I also learned about Skid Row. I remember passing by the area. I had a good conversation with a prostitute who chose to walk around with me for a couple blocks until I made it to Nickel Diner in Downtown LA. I left luggage and plastic bags at the door as I sat down and ordered a couple hashbrowns. I reflected more about Mike, JoJo, and Julian. I sent money to Mike and JoJo through Western Union after I found out that Mike was having car issues. Julian was starting to get harassed by a gang on the streets on his commute back and forth to work. I was getting depressed from the nonstop rejection: from housing to jobs, to unread messages from those in LA who offered to help months prior to my LA trip.

The last place I visited was my family’s church in South Central LA. It gave me an opportunity to meet more of my extended family in Compton and hear their stories of hardship and triumph while settling in LA decades prior. Even the church itself, where another one of my cousins was a pastor, was transformed from a house that was passed down through our family. It had a lot of history of perseverance from a family that migrated from farms in Arkansas that split between going to St. Louis and Los Angeles.

I caught the Greyhound back home to St. Louis after months of failure in LA. I stayed with my aunt Patricia for a year, in a room smaller than the one in my aunt Zetta’s home. My aunt Patricia moved from St. Louis to California in the late 80’s, then back to St. Louis in the late 2000’s when my grandfather became ill. He died in 2014 and the room I was renting from my aunt was where I laid. I found a job at a newly opened IKEA. 2016 is also when my ex-fiancee and I ended our engagement, which was devastating after being together for five years and putting my music career aside to focus on overtime at work to save for our wedding. I ended up moving to an efficiency apartment in 2017 that was even smaller than the two other places I called home briefly. I slept on an air mattress. I had a few clothes since I donated most of it away to have my room less congested. I owned no furniture. I had no internet.

I slowly adopted a minimalist lifestyle. It helped me simplify my life and thoughts. It helped in the healing process from the PTSD I still have to this day. My concepts of money changed. I thought of it more as a tool, an enforcer, a weapon, as opposed to something that helps attain pleasure. I walked the streets in St. Louis more, talking with homeless people and sometimes making care packages for them in the colder months. They taught me things and concepts like crimes of poverty. They told me about the lack of resources here.

My relationship with God changed. Although my Christian faith was unwavering, my many walks made me look to nature for answers. Seeing how plants sprung to life again every spring, how wild animals always had food and shelter, how nature doesn’t take more than what it needs, it all made me question society in the U.S. Poverty is a human invention. Society operates on a scarcity mentality that leads to hoarding and greed. When I was homeless in LA, even sometimes giving money to other homeless people there, somehow money found its way to me. Aside from meeting with my cousin Romye to make money, I got one more unannounced royalty check to cover for my basic needs while in LA. I always had shelter.

I stayed true to my principles and gained the trust of strangers to give me rides, open up their home to me, even some pretending to be a relative to get me a job interview, all without me asking for any of this. Although I didn’t flourish in LA, I learned so much about myself and the experience became the catalyst for my new thoughts on what it takes to have peace and prosperity, the only two goals I have in life now. I make music for myself now. I don’t look to sell beats to artists and record labels much anymore. I release them as producer/artist on my own as DJsNeverEndingStory. Just as my name says, this story isn’t over. Actually, my time in LA was the end of the old me and the start of a new beginning.

Can you give our readers some background on your music?
I make ambient, hip-hop, and r&b instrumentals, sometimes combining all of these genres together. I’m most proud of my Until Infinity instrumental EP. It was a project I started before my time in LA and after I left. My work can also be heard in numerous Prince Ea videos. My album, The Harmony Epoch, reached #9 on Billboard for the Top New Age Albums category in 2015. My atmospheric soundscapes and soulful chords are what I’m known for.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I believe every action had it’s a purpose to leading me where I am today, and I’m happy in the direction I’m going. I will return to LA on my own terms when I’m more established. I want to help aid the homeless, especially all those aspiring artists that fell into life on the streets and weren’t able to escape as I did.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://djsneverendingstory.com
• Email: djsneverendingstory@gmail.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/djsneverendingstory
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/djsneverendingstory
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/djs_nes
• Other: http://youtube.com/djsneverendingstory

Image Credit:
All photos, excluding headshot, are by Brandon Kaul.

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