Today we’re catching up with Minneapolis’s Formerly “CAM”
Hi, Formerly. Thanks for spending some time with us today. To start, how would you describe your career over this last decade?
Wow…It’s really crazy thinking I’m officially 10+ (plus) years into this [laughs] but at the same time, it’s like, everything has been different moments, even like versions of what I’m doing now, you know what I mean? it’s hard to lump it all together as one giant journey, but I guess that’s exactly what it is…just crazy. Yeah, it all started out literally just getting exposed to all this music in the back of the car as a kid, you got friends who have instruments they don’t use so you get free range over them, next thing you know people teach you little stuff here and there, you’re trying to learn songs off YouTube. It takes on a life of its own, and we get to here [pointing around] through a lot of bands, and different shows, little opportunities coming your way, [laughing] yeah it’s a lot to try and pack into 10 years it’s a bunch of all of it.
What would you say people know you from? You said there were bands, any other things that might’ve set you apart from the start, or are these new things you’re incorporating?
If I had to say, I’d assume most people saw me in my first few bands, like 2014 to 2016, and in 2018 I was getting booked the entire year, I hadn’t put out any music for at least a year, but they just popped every week it was absolutely insane. That was like my first buzz ever, you know? other than that I’ve just stayed close to my community on the Southside of Minneapolis, and have been working nationally with other artists, (and) businesses for the past five or six years now. My whole mission is cultivating actual, physical spaces for people to work and create, that’s like, what I’ll retire on kind of thing [laughing] but, you know, I’m not s*** right now, I have a lot to prove, for sure. I’m doing everything I can to keep it independent, but I definitely have tons of friends and a solid team that’s kept me active and on course, for sure.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I mean, It’s a ton of up and down for sure. You got struggles feeling like you’re not learning fast enough. You wonder if you’re playing the right music, in the right groups, it can blow up to that huge cloud hanging over you, you know? and it can just go on autopilot at times too and (you) don’t always feel like you’re soaking in the opportunities. Like, a lot of this, in my opinion, comes down to your mentality and how you naturally react to the different factors in play when it comes to getting music out, and off the ground, and into hands of the next audience member, you know? It’s f******* awesome, don’t get it wrong, there’s just always the other side to your day to day, and we naturally tend to keep negative s*** to ourselves, plus for artists it ends up in the art somewhere. We don’t want fans knowing how much this can stress us out, it takes a lot of away from the experience, especially when there’s that real love and respect from them. You just tough it out and highlight the successes, and maybe that’s not best thing anymore, but it’s how it’s been for a while, you know?
Here, let’s try to end it on a high note and with your latest project ‘Dowmedy’. What can you tell our readers about this project? Is there a significance behind the full project being formatted into a single, 16 minute long track?
It being one track is something I’ve been doing since my first few releases on DSP’s. (Digital Streaming Platforms) When I drop projects, I really want you to take the whole journey with me, but I get when people just want to hear their jams so sometimes I’ll release them in that traditional way, but ‘Dowmedy’ as a whole was just an interesting experience for sure. I had f***** my hand up in real life and thought I was taking care of it properly, one day I was working and it felt like I literally broke my wrist. Long story short I got the right cast on it, they told me to stay as idle as possible because I made it like an extra 6 week process than it needed to be, and that’s where it really started. I couldn’t play instruments, could barely pick up a f****** plate for real, and that s*** started to mess with me mentally. I was doing random research online, on the tv, and ran across ‘The Devine Comedy’ and I heard about it, but was too young to get what I was reading type of thing, you know what I mean? So I was really resonating with the allegories, and I felt like I was in h*** just waiting to work and make music again, and it all just hit right there and the project started to write itself.
I took what I was going through, filtered that through how I’ve been feeling, and tried to find those spaces in between with each track. It got pretty deep for me, which I hope isn’t too hard to hear, but I came out on the other side with the skin on my back and a new lease on life, so I really hope it can connect with people going through any dark times on any level. Know I’ve been through it more than once, and it gets easier the more you can trust yourself. Keep crawling y’all, it’s all love.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Flowermouthe.com
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/formerlycam
- Facebook: Facebook.com/formerlycam
- Twitter: https://Twitter.com/formerlycam
- Youtube: https://YouTube.com/@formerlycam
- Soundcloud: SoundCloud.com/formerlycam
- Other: https://Linktr.ee/formerlycam
