Casey Reid

Since I can remember, music has been a major player in the fabric of my existence. I’ve reminisced over videos of beating on my grandmother’s pots and pans with a stick while barely able to stand as my father stood by filming and saying, “you got your drum stick huh Casey? Yeah, I bet you’re gonna be a drummer.” I’ve heard the stories of my mother’s experiences while pregnant with me as she would have to step outside of church during worship because I would jump around so much in her womb. At three years old I was ready to start actually learning to play the drums and began pursuing that on my own. My father, recognizing my knack for music early on (he’s also a musician) enrolled me, at the age of 5, in piano lessons where I spent something like 7 or 8 years being heavily trained in music theory and classical style music. Meanwhile I continued teaching myself drums (with the aid of about 6 months of lessons somewhere around age 6 or 7 I think), began learning the technical side of production (sound mixing, live production, etc.), and was able to put the things I learned into practice as I volunteered at church.

Being homeschooled until high school afforded me more temporal and mental capacity to pour into my passions during my elementary and middle school years. My father’s persistence on only being allowed to play educational games on the computer kept me learning all the time and gave me a hunger for knowledge and learning that has yet to be quenched. In junior high I started teaching myself guitar. Originally I just wanted to learn bass guitar but my dad said he wouldn’t buy me one unless I could prove by learning to play on a regular guitar first that it would be something I would actually stick with. I quickly got tired of just playing one note at a time, picked up a chord book, and started practicing. I would spend probably 2-4 hours a night, something like 4-5 nights a week, for several years learning John Mayer and Dashboard Confessional songs; taking some of the new chords I was learning during this process, coupled with my knowledge of music theory, I began writing my own music during my junior year in high school.

After high school I took drums lessons for a couple years, a little over a semester worth of guitar lessons, and a semester of vocal lessons. Taking the things I learned from these lessons and my understanding of learning, I continued to teach myself various instruments through my twenties while simultaneously refining my abilities to mix sound by working freelance with churches in the metroplex.

I cut my earliest demos in my closet with garage band (I made the switch from Windows to Mac circa 2004) and in my father's DIY recording studio. By the end of my senior year I had written and recorded (very poorly) my first full length album. It’s never been released. During my late teens and early twenties I played a lot of open mic shows around the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex, put together a MySpace music page, and thought I was somehow going to “make it” in music. After a few months I realized I had no idea what I was doing but loved making music and wanted to find a way to do it well and on my own terms. So I pretty much quit playing shows and focused on getting better at writing, playing, and producing. I spent the better part of my twenties working my ass off to acquire the knowledge and experience to be a well-rounded producer. I’m still not as good as I’d like to be but I’m way closer than I’ve ever been and, over the past few years, have started producing and releasing my own music.

My first two releases, One Way Window EP (2011) and “Cold As December” (2013) were produced by other producers I worked with. In 2015 I got my own loft/studio space and began doing (mostly) everything myself. Since then I’ve put out two EP’s – Princess EP (2015) and Coombs Landing (2017) – and my debut full-length album 490 Days (2017).

I currently live with my two dogs, Gnguyen and Sai, in my loft/studio (The Boiler Room) in Dallas, Texas where I produce my own music. I have a van – appropriately named Vaniel – that I’m in the process of doing an RV conversion on so I can begin touring as I start playing shows again.