Singer-songwriter Austin Thomas has released his newest track “Hello, It’s Me” as part of his solo project spookyghostboy.
Thomas, who also performs in Robin Daniel Skinner‘s band Cavetown, said the melancholy lo-fi track was recorded in his home studio in between tours.
“A couple of years ago I got diagnosed with a rare form of headaches called cluster headaches. Sometimes they’re called suicide headaches because of how painful they are,” he tells Billboard. “For six months or so I would get them every day for several hours a day and it was pretty debilitating. Whatever I was in the middle of doing, I had to completely drop because I would be unable to focus. They eventually disappeared, but I wrote this song about the experience of trying to deal with that. I was really frustrated having to spend hours every day trapped in my house and being rendered completely useless.”
Thomas said he started recording in high school “using the only inadequate equipment I could find, playing into the microphone of a camcorder in order to capture different instruments. Then I would assemble them together in a video editing software before recording more layers on the camcorder. That was the beginning of my fascination with writing and recording.”
Growing up as a military brat, Thomas constantly moved in his childhood and his songs reflect the experience of being on the road, living up and down the East Coast as well as in Japan.
In 2013, Austin moved to Nashville “and began recording and writing with more intensity than I had before,” he says. “I assembled a small home studio’s worth of recording gear & began to make records out of my bedroom. I’ve always found writing to be the best way for me to process things, so spookyghostboy will always have a very personal, journal-like quality to me.”
Check out “Hello, It’s Me” below.