Maxed Out by Options came out 10 years ago today, and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on making that record.

Before that though, I want to say thank you to everyone who spent time with this record in the last decade. While the way I’ve felt about it has shifted over time, I’m grateful to know that it means a lot to anyone. Whatever my relationship may be with this record, it certainly seems like a testament to the music, that it’s managed to have some staying power for a decade. 

When Maxed Out was released, a small handful of publications covered it, and I did three DIY tours to support it. While reviews were generally very kind and the tours went decently, I wasn’t able to get much traction toward upward mobility, increased visibility, access to a booking agent, or any of the other things a young artist might be interested in. This isn’t to complain, but more to highlight how cool it is that, in the face of such shortfalls, Maxed Out found its own way anyway.

I made the album during a massive transitional time in my life, moving between 4 places in the span of about 3 months, and settling in the last one for what turned out to be 12 years. Maxed Out was the first record I finished writing at my new apartment, also was the first record I worked on at Pallet Sound, where I moved my recording operations during the beginning of 2016. I tracked all the instruments at the Owlery, and finished vocals at Pallet. As with the record before and after, Matt Kissinger (Coaster) helped me produce the vocals, and helped me record drums at the Owlery.

This was also an important moment for me, as this album feels both like a door closing and a door opening, musically. Maxed Out felt like the end of an era that began with What You Want, with Driftwood Metaphor sandwiched in the middle. I was leaning harder into dirtier sounds, at a time when I felt that a lot of my peers were shooting for bigger and cleaner recordings. It was, in many ways, a reaction to my environment, and the album is as much of an earnest search for what I found compelling, and a rejection of what I didn’t.

Feels Certain, Game, and the core of Comfort Blanket were written in the apartment I lived in with Matt and Michael from Coaster. This was the apartment where Coaster wrote most of Tattoos and all of Slow Jams - we were all constantly making stuff, and it was a super fruitful and inspired period for me.

Tighter Vibes was written on a Coaster tour, in the morning before everyone else woke up, on Matt’s baritone Uke that he always brought with. I loved trying to crank out songs at every possible moment, using garageband on my iPhone to quickly get ideas down.

TLC and Swan swere written at an apartment I lived in for a month before I moved into my long-term spot. Unfortunately, I got a cold pretty much immediately and was sick for the duration of my stay there. Lots of inspiration from bands like Pretend, Pinback, Dilute, and lots of music I found on Soundcloud.

This was all while I was working on Driftwood Metaphor, too. I’ve always believed in writing freely, without imposing constraints on myself, and figuring out what belongs where on the back end. The photo for Driftwood was taken in the alley between California and Fairfield ave.

Incidentally, most of the rest of the record was written in my room once I moved.

Some of these were more experimental - I recall Dumber Summer and Morning Sum being assembled in a stoned haze using ProTools, improvising on loose ideas and then learning the improvisations. See It Out was sort of made with this method, but I recall it coming together a lot more quickly.

I was also getting really into making guitar loops and jamming with them on drums, and Kool was written this way. This technique would come in handy frequently down the line, but Kool was a particularly successful example of how it could work.

Figure and Snuff were both written in probably a half hour each on guitar and voice, and I pretty much knew what the other instruments would do before I went to record them. I don’t recall making proper “band” demos of either of these.

Back then, SoundCloud was my working website to upload demos to, so I could listen on the go. At one point, I felt sure the album was done and typed “MAXED OUT” into the title bar, and it felt right. In line with the way most of this album was written, quick and impressionistic decisions were made that felt so right, that they became a permanent part of the landscape.

Options did a few tours around this time. The band changed membership with people’s availability, but all of them were with Matt Kissinger in the band on bass and harmonies. An early version of this featured Nick Levine on guitar and Marcus Nuccio on drums, but Nick wasn’t available for touring and Marcus was playing in Coaster with Matt and I, so I didn’t want to ask too much of him. 

Right around when the album came out, we did a tour with Opposites (Nate Amos + Marcus Drake + Ryan Murphy), where Nate also played guitar with us and Nnamdi Ogbonnaya played drums. This tour was called “Oppositions” and I was obsessed with making off-the-cuff tracks with the whole crew at any moment we could find. We probably made one song-thing every day, and it was a really spirited crew of people to be around. 

On this tour, we also met the band Fond Han, who saved our NJ show from total doom after all the bands dropped off day-of. We pulled up to the gig unsure of whether it would happen. Tom and Kira played as a duo and we all loved their set! Thankfully, they liked ours too, and April of next year Options and Fond Han went on tour together. This time the band was Nnamdi and Matt K on drums and bass, and Johnny Wilson on guitar. We sounded killer and spirits were high until all of my merch and merch money fell out of the trailer one night while driving to our crash spot, never to be recovered. Unfortunately, I recall being absolutely bummed out for the rest of this tour, but it was still fun watching Fond Han rock every night with Nnamdi on bass.

Before the merch debacle, we hit a real highlight of the tour, playing a show at The Pharmacy in Philly with Blue Smiley and Shelf Life (Scotty Leitch). I had briefly met the Blue Smiley folks in Chicago, upon Scotty’s recommendation, and I fell in love with their music immediately. It was a thrilling moment to have two of my favorite indie rock bands on the same bill, in my relative hometown. This show was booked by Ruben Polo as well, who would always set up a show for me when I came through town. Ruben was a real DIY hero who I cannot thank enough for his kindness during those years.

In 2017, while I was working on Vivid Trace, my new buds Zach Elias and Michael Dunne joined the band on guitar and drums, alongside Matt K on bass. We did a tour with Single Player (now Jupiter Styles) up to Canada (my first time there with Options) and to the East Coast. We were able to play a couple of dates with Little Kid (just Kenny and Brodie as a duo) in Toronto and Montreal, both of which I remember being a lot of fun. It was at the Montreal show that I met the folks in Lockimara, whose set got my undivided attention pretty quickly. I still love their first record Milk, which I listened to a lot after that show.

Back in the mid 2010s, I’d try whenever possible, to bring a cooler with sandwich supplies on the road, stopping every couple days at grocery stores and putting the food in whatever fridge we could find when we showed up to a gig. I think this started with Coaster’s tour out West in 2015, and Matt and I found it to be a really helpful way to eat healthier and save a ton of money on the raod. To top this, Michael brought an aeropress and hand bean grinder, I brought my electric kettle, and we would make coffee every morning at whatever (usually decrepit) space we woke up in. I think we were listening to a lot of Red Hot Chili Peppers on this tour.

These were the only Options tours I did around the release of the album, which was probably because I was touring heavily between Coaster, Nnamdi, Great Deceivers, Lifted Bells. I still think 3 DIY tours to support a small release was plenty, although I’m sure some folks might disagree with that. It just wasn’t really financially feasible, and more would have taken away from everything else I was doing . By the time the third tour rolled around, I was already more excited about the next project in the works.

I was grateful when two friends starting a new record label called Sooper Records were excited to put Maxed Out on cassette tape. It was fun and easy working with Glenn Curran and Nnamdi Ogbonnaya to make this happen. At the time, the label was going ballistic releasing every exciting thing they could find by Chicago artists, regardless of visibility and seemingly only based on whether they felt excited about the music. It was invigorating to be a part of something that felt galvanizing to the community I was a part of, at a time of real importance. And what was even more exciting, was that they were bringing people together from disparate communities with the common goal of pushing the envelope of their musical and creative abilities. It was thrilling to feel like I was a part of something beyond my immediate friend group.

Lastly, I’d like to give a huge Thank You to Mary Clemens (Driftwood Metaphor, Vivid Trace, Wind’s Gonna Blow) who made the album art. After sorting through tons of photos that we were planning to pull from to make the art, I stumbled across the image that would immediately become the cover. We agreed, and it was settled. She had made it years earlier, and it seemed clear to both of us that it was perfect for the vibe of the record.

Mary’s general way of being as an artist, just making and making and figuring it out as you go, still resonates loudly with me. Giving myself time and permission to be relentlessly creative, not becoming too attached or stuck to anything but caring about it all very much, and going with what feels right in any given moment, has been one of the most important parts of my experience as an artist throughout my life. Sharing this mode of creativity has always made it a joy working with Mary on any art project.

She also made a couple of really killer shirt designs, one of which a lot of folks saw worn by Zack Levine on Pinegrove’s Audiotree video session. We were both really into Glow in the Dark ink, and I’m sure it made it onto almost every one of these shirts. At one point, tired of buying Jerzees blank T’s from Michael’s, we found a shirt distributor called EZ Connection somewhere way up north in Chicago, and met a nice guy named Taha who worked there. He gave us both his number and I remember texting him our shirt order quantities. We had a lot of fun making the trek to pick up shirts, figuring out what *was* actually the right amount of shirts to order, and printing in a 11th-hour-frenzy before each tour.

If you made it this far, thank you, and I’ll leave you with the few videos I was able to track down from this time period.