Dean Stacy’s life hasn’t been the most typical one. Born to a working-class single mother in Las Vegas, his environment was constantly changing. When his mother worked as a nanny for a man who sold Ukrainian brides to American businessmen, they lived in a spacious manor with carpeted stairs. When his mother fell on hard times, they lived in a car in a Walmart parking lot. But despite his humble beginnings and the challenges he faced, Stacy never let his circumstances define him, instead using it to fuel his creativity. The result is something that the artist describes as, “sloppy, sweet, and all-around disturbed.”
His new seven-track EP, The Bathtime Tapes, is a testament to Stacy’s unwavering dedication to his craft. Having always battled against procrastination and his tendency to seek out distractions, Stacy decided to take drastic measures to ensure his focus and locked himself away in a bathroom for a week, where he wrote and recorded the new EP. With no phone, no friends, and no entertainment, he poured all of his energy and creativity into the music, with nothing to distract him from his goal. The musician shares, “There’s a creature in me that will stop at nothing to prevent me from being productive. I look for distractions all the time. YouTube videos, video games, pornography. I’ve probably spent more than half my life looking at screens. And even when I could focus for half a second, some insecurity or anxiety would stop me from creating. I would write day in and day out, but could never put in the effort to get something properly recorded. I became so frustrated with myself that I decided the only solution was solitude.” An extreme measure to take, but one that clearly paid off. He continues, “I paid a friend to bring me meals so that I wouldn’t die in there. I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. I showered surprisingly little.”
The Bathtime Tapes demonstrates the artist’s innovative songwriting style. Taking a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek approach to his lyrics, Stacy instills a lofi-ness to his sound, while colliding different sonic worlds to craft something that he characterizes as “vile alternative, folksy, punk garbage.” Stacy confides, “My writing is cynical, almost brutally so. All of these songs attack something whether it be myself, my audience, or modern America as a whole. The goal is to drag in all the cynics and misanthropes and convert them into emotionally intelligent, caring people. This is just the first step.” Providing an outlet for listeners when they feel alone, isolated, and just no good, this EP reflects the power music can have to take complex emotions and relate them to others in a way that is beyond language. The artist shares, “It’s rough, it’s rowdy, and it’s uniquely mine. It’s my baby and no matter how ugly it is at times, I’m proud of it. I hope listeners might be inspired to know that all it takes to make an EP is a room, a laptop, and a week of self-administered solitary confinement.”
For more information on the artist, visit the following links:
Photo by Connie Ann, courtesy of LPR
About Author
