I moved back to the Midwest for a bunch of different reasons in 2020. I am left for a bunch of different reasons in 2021. I got the opportunity to make this album when I started making music with my friend Renee in the summer of 2021. Renee is one of my oldest collaborators, we started making music together in high school. I'm so grateful to finally get to do an album together with her.

This album is about being in constant transition with no long term direction. Rustbelt Radio is the soundtrack to that transition. It's an album about wanting to escape relationships and isolation. The album is about loneliness, heartbreak and Rockford. It is the most personal and the least political thing I have ever written. While I hope those of you who have no clue where Rockford is love this project, I hope that people in the city love it. I wrote it for ya'll. Rustbelt Radio is my love letter to the city. Rockford is boring and I'm boring as hell, too.

Thanks to my friend Caleb for helping produce and create the tracks Mages Tower and Water Ice with Lemon. Thanks to Noelle for doing way too much work to create visuals, photoshoots and promotional material as well as singing. Thanks to my friend Brielle for listening and lending her voice. Thanks to Savan DePaul for mixing and mastering the project and getting it sounding right. Thanks to Diego for writing a very nice guitar part on Anywhere and ripping a sick solo on Saturdays. Thanks to Sindie for doing the graphics. Thanks to Anya for the awesome cover art. Thanks to my homie Jordan for listening to the project and contributing to the interlude. Thanks again to my friend Renee Blaesing for helping this project come to fruition. I really love this project because for the most part, I'm basically making shit that I've always wanted to make. All of my releases prior to this I wasn't super happy with. I am happy with this.

Thanks to all of my friends in Rockford and Philly and elsewhere who encouraged me to keep working on music and pursuing things that are important to me. I played a lot of early versions of these songs for ya'll. I often get discouraged about music as ya'll know but ya'll told me to keep pushing. This album was fueled by trips to Mary's Place and drives through the cornfields. I made it all in my bedroom while I was working at the library and UPS. We really DIY with this shit. There's more on the way, too.

Stay tuned in,

Huey

My favorite books/comics I was read while I wrote this project:

Red Mars
The New World
Monstress
Wynd
Misfit City
Failed State
Rule of Capture
Tropic of Kansas
A Dead Djinn in Cairo
Dungeon Masters Guides
Bttm FDRS
Your Black Friend and Other Strangers
Sports is Hell
Parable of the Sower
The Way of Kings
The Black God's Drums
All About Love
Seeing Like a State
Mistborn Trilogy
Mistborn: Wax and Wayne
Parable of the Talents
Black in the Middle