Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephen Smith.
Hi Stephen, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in a small town in Maine called South Berwick and started recording music in my bedroom in 2010. As a kid, I was really inspired by video game music from Sega Genesis and Playstation, then turned my attention to electronic and rock bands as I became a teen. When Animal Collective came out with their album “Merriweather Post Pavilion” in 2009, I was fascinated by their ability to create textural environments using only samplers and vocals, so I bought an old sampler off of Craigslist and started doing kind of my own version of that mixed with my other influences. For financial reasons, I was slow to the “gear game” and tackled music with mostly intuition and some years of childhood piano lessons, so my various online releases over the past decade have slowly increased in quality. Nonetheless, in high school I performed scattered live shows at coffee houses and talent showcases with a microkorg synthesizer, electribe sampler es-1, microphone and PA amp.
I only played one show my first year at Emerson College, where I was accepted for Screenwriting and Sound Design, but things weren’t clicking the way I wanted there and I didn’t feel ready for the highly competitive artistic space. I transferred to University of Vermont in Burlington for the rest of college where I earned a BA in English and Philosophy and continued to hone my music skills in my spare time. I upgraded my setup a little bit in that time and played live sporadically once again, this time for campus events, basement shows and the occasional small Burlington venue at some odd hours. However much progress I felt I was making, I knew that my music wasn’t hitting people the way I wanted it to, the way it sounded in my head. After several failed attempts at dating anyone steadily and feeling like my college days were already over, I fell into a deep depression summer going into my senior year.
During my depression, I didn’t feel the least bit inspired to write or record music and felt like it would be a waste of time when I should be taking my English degree seriously. Moreover, it seemed like it might’ve always been a waste of time and that I was perhaps delusional about how good at making music I actually was. From Summer to Spring my gear collected dust and instead, I opted for excessive napping and television in my free time. One day that spring, I took LSD, not nearly for the first time, and saw a Brazilian psych-rock band called Boogarins with my close friends. The sheer energy of that performance was immediately inspiring, and my depressive phase faded surprisingly quickly. I got Logic Pro on my computer and started writing and recording again, now under the artist name Lapis Pop.
Out of college, I got a 9-5 job as a Data Entry Operator in Burlington and continued on my grind while also catching several amazing shows that summer such as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Radiohead. I had the work ethic and the creativity back, but my production knowledge was still limiting the success of my releases, and instead of teaching myself through simple google searches, I continued to rely mostly in intuition. I entered a relationship that lasted three years, all three of which I put too much pressure on myself to make significant leaps in my career faster than I was. Still, I landed a part-time job as a live sound engineer at a local venue called the Monkey House and learned a ton. After two years in Burlington doing Data Entry, I moved back home with my parents in Maine for a year to focus on recording and mixing an album. Again, though I felt great about most aspects of the music, the mixing still wasn’t coming out right, forget the mastering.
I moved back with my ex in Arlington, MA and worked as a catering temp all over the greater Boston area for the spring and the summer while I went through the hoops of becoming a Wellness Advisor at a medical cannabis clinic. After getting that job and working it for a couple of months, my ex and I broke up and I lost my job in the same week. I had visited my college friend out in West LA for a vacation and really enjoyed it, so I called him up and it turned out that he needed a roommate. November 2019, I shipped my belongings across the country and flew to my new apartment in Palms, releasing my album “Codex Lazuli” the same day. I luckily landed a job close by at a cannabis dispensary where I have worked the past year as I have mixed and mastered my latest EP “Complacent in the Filth.” Before COVID-19 hit, I was lucky that I made some friends out here, and they have helped me take my art to the next level. I’m finally proud of where my skills are at and the quality of my recordings. I plan on releasing an album this spring and am editing a creative memoir I plan on publishing within the next two years.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’d say depression and general uncertainty have been the biggest obstacles. Also, the pressure of wanting to make as much money as my peers, as well as not having a lot of money to being with, coming from a lower-middle class family. I didn’t have my first iPhone until spring 2019, which was partly self-imposed, but I guess a lack of exposure to or direction towards the “latest and greatest” held me back a lot.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a musician, a writer, and a budtender. I produce, record and mix all of my own music in my bedroom studio and I’ve been working on a creative memoir for the past two years. I also love to play soccer when I can.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
I love the dystopian universe of the MaddAddam Trilogy of books by Margaret Atwood, particularly Oryx and Crake. That book was written in 2003 and is not too much of an exaggeration of what’s going on right now with growing wealth inequality, super viruses and high tech. I also love books by Graham Hancock about tracing the origins of religion and the existence of past civilizations wiped out by cataclysmic events. Podcast-wise I’ve been listening to the Joe Rogan Experience for years and find it intellectually rewarding in virtue of the variety of guests he has alone. I also really like the Duncan Trussell Family Hour, another comedian-run podcast that explores a lot of eccentric ideas.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: lapispop.bandcamp.com
- Instagram: @lapis_pop
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8hGgpvJXULUs4-FDMCTFyg
- Other: https://www.lazuliancat.com
Image Credits:
EP album artwork – CC Butcher @tinklewinkwink
