Mistical (Bajareque)

‘Mistical (Bajareque)’ is a collab project with Parmigianna and Saige Spirit.

Covert art for ‘Mistical (Bajareque)’

AFC in the house.

AFC is Ancient Future Collective, founded by Savej. After a handful of in-person retreats for music production, Savej expanded the vision with 12-week online training cohorts. Cohort 1 lifted off in July of ‘25 and went through September. Amongst the participants: Parmigianna (Gianna), Saige Spirit (Mollie), and myself.

As part of the course design, the cohort was split up into “pods” (small groups) of 3-4 participants. Gianna and I were 2 of the 4 members of our first pod. Somewhere in that span of time we tossed around the idea of eventually working together on a track.

Months later, in December, I had a seed idea that I pitched to Gianna. I started the seed on Ableton’s mobile app, Note. I imported the project into an Ableton project, made a few adjustments and submitted the demo as a potential collaboration project. Gianna dug the vibe, and the project was in motion.

As mentioned in the ‘Premonition’ post, after the first cohort completed the curriculum a remnant of ~10 or so from cohort 1 kept meeting weekly. One of the outcomes is a monthly call for collaboration projects. In January, Mollie and I were paired up for a collab. After working with Mollie on another project, it dawned on me that her touch would be a nice addition to the piece that Gianna and I had begun. I ran the idea by Gianna. Gianna dug that vibe, too, so a 3-way collab project was now in motion.

Gianna and Mollie both put heavy doses of their magic on the track. I added my bits, did some bass design, and mixed the track.

This track had a nostalgic, chill vibe from the start. While the project was coming together, Amy and I were experiencing our first dry season in Panama. Prior to moving to Boquete, we had no idea there is a rainbow season in the highlands due to a natural phenomenon called “bajareque.” It’s a very fine mist that appears to move sideways, mostly, being so easily bossed around by the wind. January through March is also a windy season with gusts up to 80 kilometers per hour.

This mist can and often does occur on sunny days. Meaning → rainbows. Lots of rainbows when the sun is low—ish, like 8am and 5pm.

Amy and I walk into town often, a time we sometimes use to listen to the projects I’m working on. As this track was in the mixing phase in January / February, we were often listening to it while walking in the bajareque.

At the same time, our li’l trio was contemplating concepts for the title of our track. I was already thinking of pitching ‘Bajareque’ when, one morning, the word “mystical” came to mind. Mystical. An attribute of this magical mist.

Mystical. Mist.

Boom! “Mistical.”

And like that, ‘Mistical (Bajareque)’ was a thing.

We pitched the track to High Vibe. They dug the vibe. And on 4/20/2026, we put it out into the world in hopes that many others would dig the vibe, too.

Premonition: Synchronistic and sublime

I had a feeling you might like to know about the track ‘Premonition.’ 😎

Cover art for ‘Premonition’

This track is a collaboration with Just Too Lazy, Adam Enough and myself.

Last year (2025) Amy and I decided to move to Panama at the end of September. Knowing that it may be some time before we return to the States, we made a whirlwind road trip to visit family.

While visiting my kids in Michigan, we were sitting in the living room of my son’s (Shea) apartment that he shares with his partner and 2 friends. One of the 2, Boone, picked up his banjo and began playing a riff. I asked if he’d play it again so I could record it on my iPhone. This story would be boring if he didn’t oblige.

A few months later Amy and I were settling into our temporary digs in Panama. I remembered the Voice Memo recording of the Boone’s banjo. I call it Boonejo. I dropped the recording into Ableton, pitched it up a bit and slowed the tempo quite a bit. It was a groove I knew I could work with. I built a seed of a track using the banjo.

As mentioned before, I was with a cohort of other budding producers to learn the ways of the Ancient Future Collective. The cohort ran through the end of September. A remnant, ~1/3 of the group that began in July continued to meet on Monday evenings. One of the outcomes of those meetings was the decision to pair up each month with a fellow producer to collaborate on a track.

For the month of November, my collab partner was Just Too Lazy, aka Kerry Rodgers. This coincided with the development of the Boonejo joint. I submitted the seed to Kerry. He gave the green light. I handed off the file, and Kerry added his magic and passed it back.

I had Ableton for all of 6 months, which is about the same amount of time I knew of this sacred bass genre. That so, I continued to produce the track (for way too long) through the month of December. When the track was pretty close to done, I kept hearing a section that seemed like it could use a rhyme. I searched for a sample just to test my theory. I dropped in a sample, and it worked. Yes. This is what needs to happen here. But not a sample. I want the real deal.

My brov from Asheville, Trevor, could certainly do it. I contacted him. Sure, he’d love to take a crack at it, but he’d be leaving for 8 days to visit family. Right after would be Christmas, then NYE… etc.

So, it was looking like the track would be on hold for a minute.

During that month Amy was teaching yoga at a studio here in Boquete. One Saturday a tatted-up dude, Adam, set his mat next to mine. We connected a bit after class. Cool dude.

A week later I arrived at the studio to pick Amy up, having skipped the class for reasons I can’t remember. Adam came out a few minutes ahead of Amy, so we greeted one another and had another conversation. We realized that we had both, individually, had a sacred medicine journey during the week leading up to that particular Saturday.

Me (roughly): “Let’s have dinner and talk about it.”

Adam: “Ahight.”

The next evening Amy and I welcomed Adam over for a meal (probably fish of some kind). He arrived while I was still preparing the stuff. I asked if he had any background in music.

“I used to spit rhymes for, like, a decade back in DC. That was 8 years ago.” Something like that.

Jigga whuuuuuuut?

I told him about the music I was producing. I showed him the Boonejo track. He was vibing, immediately. So we decided to give it a go.

Adam left our condo around 9pm that evening. The next morning I had a message from him with the text of the rhyme he woke up with. A bit later he sent a video of him rhyming over the track while driving to his gym class.

Amy and I were giddy with laughter. Pure joy. Like, jigga whuuuuuuuut???

It. Was. Spot. On. Beyond what I’d imagined, because, like Trevor, this dude has a gift with words and phraseology and all of that stuff.

A week or so later he came over to put his verse on the track. Oh, and I didn’t have some of the equipment I thought I had brought to Panama. The only option I had was to use my iPhone to record his vocals.

I mixed his piece into the track, sent it off to be mastered, submitted said master to High Vibe Records, it was accepted, and on April 1, 2026, the track went out into the ethers.

It’s a premonition, inner-vision of the mind,

This is intuition, synchronistic and sublime…

Uh, yeah. I’ll say.

LDB: Let’s make an album

So the A&R rep from R.E.X. Records was on board to allow Dude A and his brother, Dude B, to produce a full-length LP. In order to convince the higher-ups at the label that we were an act worth investing in, Mr. A&R had to have something, anything to present to them. This was before social media and gaging audience by “likes” and “follows.” Shit, this was before MySpace.

A demo would have been ideal. But all we had was cassette tapes recorded in an empty school classroom. The empty school was, at the time, the home of the church we attended. Imagine a cassette recorder pointed in the direction of 2 guitars, amps on 12, and a drum machine piped through an amp. In a reverb box in the form of a concrete and tile classroom. Not very compelling.

Mr. A&R was basing his trust in this project on the work Dudes A and B had published prior with their band. He knew the quality he could expect. So he trusted us and asked that we at least give him the titles of the 10 tracks that would appear on the album. He assured us the titles could change, but that he just wanted something concrete to sell to the decision-makers.

So one day, Dudes A and B and I sat in the tiny living room of the apartment my then wife and I were renting from her grandparents, who lived next door. We came up with concepts we would want to convey through the music, and subsequently 10 titles. Out of our asses.

• Yellow & Black Attack

• Ripple

• Better Ways

• Fighting Gravity

• Lemonade

• Radiant Abyss

• Supersaturated

• Martin’s Dream

• The Weather

• Sprout

This is the track list of the final product. There was another title submitted, which I can’t recall. But upon release of the album months later, nine of the titles we spit out that day made the final cut.

From the time we submitted the list to Mr. A&R ‘til the time of our first scheduled studio time, we had a few months. That meant I had little time to come up with lyrics and melodies for an album, which I had never done to that point. And now that I think of it, I have never done since.

By day 1 in the studio, I had lyrics and melodies for 6 or 7 tracks, and the rest would come in flight. But I managed to write the lyrics through this inverted method of title (plus concept) first. And I must say, the lyrics were one of the standout qualities of the finished product.

Interestingly, we had titles, most lyrics and melodies on day 1 in the studio… but no singer.

Yet.

Leaderdogs for the Blind: The Recipe

LDB. A topic for multiple posts.

In the previous post, ‘Numb,’ we leave off when Dude A pitches a project to the A&R rep from R.E.X. Records based (at the time… now defunct) in Nashville, TN.

Beyond the track ‘Numb’, Dude A and I continued meeting up to scratch out demos. ‘Numb’ was a terrible song backed by a terrible approach. That approach was combining heavy guitar riffs with funk. Executed properly, the combo can work, though it is a bit of a paradox. A heavy guitar riff is usually saying, “Pay attention to me ‘cuz I have something important to say.” That something is often serious, even dark. Funk is the 2nd cousin that wears colorful t-shirts, has cool-ass parents, and seems to get away with partying too much. And has all the sex it wants. All the fun, zero consequences.

Dude A called it “heavy funk and groove.”

And by the way, ‘Numb’ was not executed properly. We put heavy, funk, and groove into a blender, added a tempo that was way too fast, threw in Dude A vocals (who was not a singer), and some of the worst lyrics I’ve ever written. Try that as your morning smoothie. No bueno.

But somehow ‘Numb’ ended up on a compilation album from R.E.X. Then again it wasn’t difficult to see how it got published. The A&R rep was that desperate to work with Dude A. Oh, and the other 10 or 15 tracks on that compilation were also shitty smoothies.

Dude A packaged up 4 or 5 of the demos he and I had created and submitted them for consideration. I’m guessing we sent a cassette tape in the mail. I don’t recall much about those tracks, other than the fact that it was more of ‘Numb.’ Possibly even more numbing.

While that submission cycle was happening, Dude A and I happened to see a video on Mtv. For you kids out there, the “M” stands for music. Mtv, believe it or not, used to play music videos. Crazy to think that was the only content Mtv had at the time. It was popular. It was fun. Artists blew up as long as they could appear either as a magazine cover model or extremely weird.

An entire generation was influenced by Mtv. It changed the trajectory of pop culture. But it was mostly appealing to teenagers and young adults. Back then neither had money, and few had the power to influence purchases. So the corporate overlords kept tweaking the recipe, where “tweak” means–remove all music.

I mean, c’mon. It is America. Corporate. Capitalist. No record profits? Then you must die on the vine.

Back to that video. It was late night when the edgier, fringe stuff received some air time. The band was called Body Count. I don’t remember the track title. The guitar amps were on 11, the groove was thicker than molasses on a Midwest winter day, and there was a middle-finger-in-the-air message.

We were enamored.

We decided to ditch all previous demos. I can now say, you are welcome.

We programmed that drum machine to pump out thick, heavy grooves, forgoing the funk preset patterns.

The new recipe was starting to feel urgent. Necessary. It evoked deeper feelings. Angst. Raw power.

By the time the R.E.X. rep heard our ‘Numb’ based demo and agreed to allow Dude A to produce a full 10-song LP, we had 4 or 5 fresh demos with the new recipe.

And, we had a whopping budget of $8500 to produce 10 songs and the album artwork. Oh, and we had a few months to do all of this, and by this I mean crank out at least 5 more demos, lyrics to all 10 tracks, find a singer (thank all that has ever been created), and teach the bass lines to the bassist from Dude A’s actual band.

Seems reasonable.

And so it begins.

Numb

The previous post, ‘Michigan,’ explains how I landed in, you guessed it, Michigan.

My wife (the reason I moved) had a handful of cousins. Two of them were about my age, were in an all-original band, and were attending the Recording Institute of Detroit. I later joined the institute to earn a certificate in multi-track recording. Analog. All analog.

To make it easier to tell this story, I’ll call them Dude A, the guitarist, and Dude B, the singer. And let’s call their act The Cousins.

At that time, there was a tiny li’l indy label from Nashville called R.E.X. Records. An A&R rep from R.E.X. tried to persuade The Cousins to sign a deal with the label. But The Cousins, made up of all Christians, had wisely determined to not participate in the Christian music industry.

Dude A had an idea. With the knowledge the 2 had acquired at the Recording Institute, they could produce a band for R.E.X., just not their own band. Trouble is, they had no previous credits as engineers / producers. But Dude A and I had been ripping drop D guitar riffs over a drum machine for fun. It was a creative release for me, and a side project for Dude A.

R.E.X. had put out a call for tracks from new artists for a compilation. Dude A and I wrote a (pretty terrible) track titled ‘Numb.’ That track was selected for the compilation. Sorry world.

That track at least proved to Mr. A&R that the 2 cousins had production chops. Dude A and I had a handful of demos, which amounted to our 2 guitars on 11, a drum machine plugged into a guitar amp (if I recall right), and hitting “Record” on a cassette player. So his idea? → Pitch a full album for the side project.

What happens next absolutely deserves its own post. Until then…

Michigan

Anaheim, California. Not the first words you’d expect from a post titled ‘Michigan.’

So let’s set the path to Michigan, which is both a beautiful place on this planet, and represents an important era in the becoming of SAGRADOSE.

I was born in Anaheim. My parents met in California, eloped, and had 3 children, all while living in California. For the curious, I am the youngest of the 3, with 2 older sisters.

When I was 1, my family moved to Central Illinois. From beautiful California? Why would anyone do such a thing?

My father, Bruce, grew up in the sticks just outside of Canton. It was always home for him. He was the youngest of 6 children. When my dad was 14, he and his parents and 1 of his sisters moved to California. My grandfather, Miles, was diagnosed with lung cancer. It’s not difficult to understand how that could happen as he smoked heavily for years while working as a coal miner. When that caught up to him, cancer care in America was still in its infancy. The best doctors and systems in place at that time were in California.

My grandfather never recovered. By the time my dad reached 18, his dad was gone. A lot of life happened between that time and this move back to Illinois. But for the sake of this post, the keys are as mentioned: meeting mom, starting a family, then moving to Illinois.

The “why” had everything to do with 2 things: work, and the state of the world. My dad was a high school dropout. He worked with his back and rarely with his mind. And work was plentiful then, but you had to go where the work was. He found work in California, but jobs were popping in Canton, IL with the International Harvester plant there.

And, of equal or greater significance, as church-going, Bible-believing Christians, he and my mom and most every other Christian believed America along with the globe was careening towards hell. The end times. Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. Vietnam. Political unrest. Civil unrest. Racial injustice. Women actually reaching for their independence and rights. And California had it all, plus the Hillside Strangler and Charles Manson.

Canton, Illinois is a town of ~15,000 people. It was familiar. Safe (feeling, by comparison).

Canton, Illinois is a place where creatives go to die.

I met a girl from Michigan at Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell at the age of 21. We hit it off and would occasionally meet each other half way between Flint, Michigan and Canton. We fell in love and knew what that meant if you’re a Christian: better get married soon or you’ll be in a battle of desire for the dreadful sin of sex… before marriage. Gasp!

For some reason I cannot even imagine in this Universe, we had originally decided that she would move to central Illinois instead of the other way around. And for some reason I cannot remember, that plan changed and we decided to marry and live in Michigan.

This is just the beginning of this era. Michigan holds a dear place in my heart, and always will. But this post gets me to Michigan, which is what gets me to my next topic: Leaderdogs for the Blind.

The sophomore project

Don’t, please don’t ask why my second Christian rock band was called ‘Lawman.’ That would presume that I knew what I was doing… and as will be the theme throughout, until very recently I, in fact, did not know what I was doing.

The late 80’s was a dark time for rock-n-roll. Thanks to Mtv and the beginnings of the corporatization of radio, most pop and rock music caught a very nasty virus. The internet had yet to roll out for everyday households. So music discovery was in the hands of a small number of old white men with dollar signs in their eyes.

Gone were the days of extended intros, dynamic sections in songs, guitar solos with feeling that actually sing while the lead singer sways with the crowd.

A format had taken shape. There must be a hook in the first 10 seconds of a song. The recipe = intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, bridge, searing guitar solos apparently judged by the number of notes per second, chorus, out. And you better have the look, which is either GQ or Vogue cover material, or lean hard into weirdness. Or both.

Without being able to articulate why back then, I was becoming disillusioned by the status quo of what those old white millionaires were curating for the general public. I found incredible bands that were bucking the equation. Tesla, for example. Jeans. Jean jackets. Long hair, but not styled like a runway model. No hairspray. Attitude. A “fuck you” quality to their messaging, which is what drew me to rock-n-roll in the first place. Grit. Genuine machisimo.

7th Angel had made a mark in the central Illinois region. We played a lot of shows and recorded a few songs in a real studio (the only kind that existed then). We opened for bands that were big in the Christian rock and metal genre (meaning not “big” but popular amongst that audience).

But we were young, and as life starts to happen, decisions get made (girlfriends instead of your loyal band? WTF!), and projects go by the way.

I had been introduced to a dude that was a flaming guitarist with a great rock-n-roll voice. At some point we decided to join forces, and Lawman was born. This dude was the real deal. Incredible, tasty guitar licks and solos, interesting and pro song writing, and beyond the hairspray and spandex cock rock phase.

Perfect.

My good friends filled in on bass and drums. We had a member change here and there, but the main drive was this new friend and myself.

Lawman gained even more traction than 7th Angel. We recorded some songs, and now the music was starting to sound like the music in our cassette and cd players, and in our own dreams.

I can’t recall why Lawman broke up. But it was an excellent sophomore experience for me, solidifying the notion that I have the stuff, the chops, what it takes to actually make music that people want to hear. And, like before, the music was a vehicle for something weightier than sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. There was a message in every song. No music was created or played just to fill time. It was all steeped in intention.

The intention, of course, was tied directly to the directives of the dogma we had all elected to ingest with the tantalizing Kool-aid. But that attribute–weaving something sacred into art–I’ve never been able to shake.

And it continues on with SAGRADOSE.

7th Angel

That was the name of my first Christian rock band.

As I mentioned in my previous post, The Hymn, my parents uprooted our family the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. That’s where a member of the band offered an acoustic guitar that set me on a whole new trajectory.

The pastor’s (of the church in Canton) youngest brother who is only a few years older than I also moved to town about the same time. He was a singer and super into rock with a harder edge. We sat in the sanctuary one Sunday after church, talking, and dreaming about putting together a band.

My drive to learn guitar was apparent, and as mentioned, my parents bought an acoustic guitar for me that Christmas. That was a full-on dousing of fuel on my fire. I didn’t have my high school friends to hang with as they were all a 40 minute drive away. I spent every free moment I had listening to the Beattles early records and playing my guitar.

My parents once again took note. I was graduating from high school that May, and had my eye on only 1 thing–an electric guitar. That April they bought a black Peavey beginner guitar for me.

Game on. My passion was a lock. All I wanted to do at that point was write songs and play guitar.

In the time between arriving to Canton and receiving the Peavey, my vocalist friend and I met a few others in the church. Our passion bubbled over and we convinced one friend to pick up the bass. He knew of a drummer that absolutely slayed and played drums loud enough to be heard 3 zip codes away.

We had the recipe. Guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

I chose the super dope name, 7th Angel, mentioned in the book of Revelations. That book alone will likely be a separate blog post, but know that I believe what many Jewish and Christian scholars have posited about the meaning of that book. The Christian community at large believes it is a prophecy of things yet to come. The scholars do not. Again… another post for another time.

By early summer, after my graduation at 17, 7th Angel was playing a show in the town square with 3 or 4 songs I’d written plus rock versions of worship songs I thought could be cool.

There was nothing cool about it. I didn’t know what I was doing. There was no, and still is no road map for how to go from the idea of being a musician to recording and playing live.

The gist here is a common theme. For so much of my creative pursuits in life, I didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t heard of “fake it ‘til you make it,” but that’s 100% what was going on.

7th Angel was set. Our oversized eyes were on getting to Stryper’s level, maybe even sharing the stage with them. We were gracious, so they totally could’ve opened for us.

I mean, we weren’t cocky. Adacious? Sure, but that almost implies intent. We were naive. Completely. We wanted to rock, but we wanted the message to be aligned with the values of that dogma. Rock-n-roll. People like rock-n-roll. And we can rock. And we can slip in messages of the gospel and help save the world.

While I no longer want anything to do with that dogma, I can say the pattern was set in me. I want to use the gifts I was born with and have the drive to develop for something more than just creating a party environment. I want the music and the message to have weight. To be compelling. Provocative. And that has never changed. And that is part of the reason I know Universal Sines and SAGRADOSE are the fulfillment of a lifelong drive and dream.

So the story continues.

Speaking of Universal Sines…

The Hymn

“Dude, you’re a Christian, right? Have you heard of Stryper?”

I became friends with a fellow student in my commercial design class in high school. The tribe of kids I hung with was listening exclusively to the likes of Depeche Mode, The Cure, New Order, Bauhaus, The Psychedelic Furs, and so on. We were the embodiment of the characters in the movie "Pretty in Pink.” We were all the Allison Reynolds (played by Ally Sheedy) character from “Breakfast Club.” This friend of mine was firmly in the column of “burnout,” what we called the kids who lived the AC/DC, Led Zeppelin lifestyle. Partiers. Black concert t-shirt wearers.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Here, listen to this.”

I put the cheap ass Sony cassette player headphones on. Stryper’s reimagination of “Battle Hyme of the Republic” began to play. And I… was immediately transported to another dimension.

Full body chills.

I will never forget that scene, and trust when I say I don’t have a lot of those vivid types of memories.

Wait–I like a metal band? How could this be?

In the summer between my junior and senior year, my parents moved from Pekin, Illinois to a town 1/3 the size and 40 minutes away called Canton. Ugh. Much love to many people there, but zero love for the culture and personality that is Canton. This is not where creative types go to thrive.

I lost touch with my high school friends. I was a complete fish out of water there, dressing like Duran Duran in the capitol of all hick towns, Canton. But the church embraced me, which is both a wonder and a sort of blessing at that time because I’d chosen to finish high school in Pekin. My new friends were exclusively church friends. Again. But it was at least better this time in some ways.

A member of the worship team had and extra guitar. He lent it to me, and like the Bryan Adam’s song, I played it ‘til my fingers bled. I somehow acquired a few Beattles cassette tapes from their early days, which was great 3 and 4 chord rock and roll to learn the basics from.

My parents took note of my passion, and that Christmas they did the unimaginable (lower, low low income class at best) and bought an acoustic guitar as my one and only gift. I played the Beattles. I played the blues and any rock and roll in the pentatonic scale. The trajectory of my life forever changed.

A musician. That’s what I want to be. Not a football player like I thought in 5th through 8th grades. Not a break dancer (super lucrative) like I thought in my freshman and part of my sophomore year.

No. I want to be a musician. I am cut out for this. I have music in me. I am music.

And all from a Christian band playing a hymn on guitars through amps that go beyond 11.

But not just any old rock and roll. I loved the idea that Stryper and similar bands were creating an intense, fist shaking vibe… but with a message. Something deeper. Something that, at that time, I believed was all that mattered. And from that point, I’ve struggled to “just play music” for fun. It’s gotta have some weight, some intention under the hood.

So began my run in Christian rock. Much more of that story to tell. ✌🏼

An industry that doesn’t rock

Ohhhh yes. Christian rock.

I was ALL in it. All my friends were in it. Christian rock gave us the opportunity to, finally, enjoy rock-n-roll. Some of it was decent music. A lot of it, especially in the early days, was not. But it didn’t matter. If I saw a new album from a rock band in the Christian book store, I was going to buy it.

Wanted it. Thought I needed it.

The Christian rock industry is a fucking joke. This is, of course, my opinion, but I earned the right to an opinion having purchased dozens of cassettes and CDs. I contributed, too, as a song writer in multiple bands, some local, some regional, and 1 that recorded an album for a real label.

Well, I say real. But like the industry, the label was also a sham.

As I write this I realize that I have quite a lot to say, so the overarching topic will spread across a handful of posts. The gist for this one–industry.

Once industry becomes involved with a thing, it matters not what the original intent was for the thing. It instantly becomes sullied, and just continues to tank from there. It’s true of pharmaceuticals, self-help books, even health food and especially the “organic” food industry.

Sales. Marketing. Competitions for best band, best artist, best song. And the absolute grossest? Best worship song.

What?

Let’s pick that apart for a minute. Worship is, loosely, expressing adoration, generally for divinity or a being of some sort of elevated status. It’s love. It’s devotion. It’s honor. So when King David penned the Psalms, often the messages were worshipful. Sure, he rants and whines, too. A lot. But clearly he has deep admiration for the God of Abraham. The words are heart felt. And because we also have insight through his rants, we have a great deal of certainty that the writing is authentic.

But, let’s imagine there was a lot of psalmists then because an Office Max opened in Israel with camel loads of scrolls and plumes. And Psalmists Magazine launched with a contest for the best psalms of Israel for year 1026, BC. And let’s say David really wanted to win that contest. Would his writing have been pure? Would he have sweetened up the rants so they wouldn’t put off the contest judges?

Or as the father of 2 children, let’s say I held a contest every year to see which of the 2 wrote the best Father’s Day poem.

WTF?

In the late 90’s I played a show in Chicago with my band of the time. It was an all day event with a dozen or so bands. Some of the bands I respected were on the bill after us. Backstage, I overheard a few musicians chatting, and one of them said, “Dude, we should do a worship record. Worship is hot right now!”

Worship is hot? How can anyone string together a set of words that is more disgusting than that. Worship is hot?

Another thing, record labels knew they could count on a number of sales for every album published strictly because of dweebs like me, willing to shell out every single time a new record dropped. Because it was all we had. And they knew that.

I would never go on record as saying the above is a blanket statement for all contributors or behind-the-scenes folks in the Christian music industry. But the assholes running the show, for the most part, are the lowest form of human on this planet. And many of the artists as well.

There are so, so many other stories along these lines in my experience. I looked the other way for a lot of years because I believed in what I was doing and chalked it up to a few bad actors. Eventually, I could no longer. Things were shifting inside of me. Tension was building. And not just from the industry, but from a lot of people and places associated with Christianity.

I’ll leave you with a quote from a t-shirt of one of my favorite musicians, Dug Pinnick of King’s X. That band was put through the mill. They started in the Christian industry and wisely moved on. Dug’s shirt read: “Jesus, save me from your followers.”

Amen, and amen.

That’s me in the spotlight

Losing my religion.

Speaking of religion. Ooooph.

I have a policy about my online presence, and that is to avoid creating or interacting with content related to politics or religion. I have never heard anyone say, “I used to think this way, but I saw this post online and now I’ve changed my mind.” It’s fruitless to share about these topics because ~80% of communication is nonverbal, and with simple text on a screen that 80% is 100% lost. It’s also destructive because deeply held beliefs… people will go to their graves for them. And I’m not trying to be in a grave because of someone’s reaction to my beliefs.

But I can’t not create this post, because this topic is one of the biggest plot lines of my life, and of my becoming SAGRADOSE. So I’ll try keep this factual and brief. Those who know me understand my journey, and that has weight.

I was born into a church-going, twice on Sunday’s, once on Wednesday’s family. The denomination, Nazarene. In that era, the church was doubling down on holiness, on saving the world that was going to hell in a hand basket that was already drenched in fuel. The fuel was political and economic upheaval around the world. It was racism–so ugly I struggled to reserve my American pride when I learned of it. People turned to sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Troubling characters and events, like Charles Manson and the Vietnam War, were not far enough in the rearview mirror to be forgotten.

I could write a short book on my issues with the Nazarene denomination. The sum would be that, at least at that time, they had a manual of rules on top of the Bible. Things like, no swimming in public with members of the opposite sex, no to playing cards, dancing, going to movies, listening to “secular” music, and on, and on, and on. The emphasis, in the eyes of a young person, was on all that you shall not do.

What could we do? Hang out with our church friends. And eat. Sugar, a known killer, was certainly welcome. Somehow. Whatever.

I know that I know my parents, in their simplicity and ignorance, were making the choices for how to raise my sisters and I based on their beliefs and guidance from the church. I don’t blame them. I just wish they were curious enough to ask a few simple questions. But those questions, I later learned, would’ve meant dismissal from the church.

And that, that right there is my entire issue with any of the Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) religions. All of them derive from the same story. All of them declare with 1000% certainty that their way is the way, and all other people will not enjoy eternal security.

Really?

I finally (much too late in life) drew the line and walked away from all of it. I will not listen to any person, especially a white male, whose income depends on me believing what he’s shoving. I know there are legions of “pastors” who, deep down inside do not believe what they are selling. But they have no other skill and no other means to feed their family. To show the slightest doubt or curiosity would lead to financial ruin.

It’s sick. Gross. I hate that not many people can see this.

I do not believe that the Source of all of Creation would devise a plan, give it to one person to carry out, and the only hope for all other humans on this vast planet is to somehow discover that person and plan before they die. Bullshit.

The key word is “believe.” Facts can and must be proven to be called such. Beliefs cannot be proven. But the Christians I tend to slide away from the fastest speak and act as if their beliefs are facts. Bullshit.

Christianity taught me how to judge people. How to judge myself. How to think that anything good that happens in my life is because of something outside of me, but anything bad was my fault. Bullshit.

I have tremendous respect for the scriptures. It is a miracle that the scriptures endured through some crazy history. But a major part of the reason why it endured is because the biggest, wealthiest and most populated empires in the last 4000 years of human history chose to embrace Christianity for economical and political reasons.

Jesus was Jewish. He didn’t come to start a new religion. Read his words. Carefully. He and many around him believed that he was the messiah… for Israel. Nothing about that says, “I’m here to start a new thing and thereby separate the people that my father sent me to save.” It’s not difficult to see, but it’s rarely presented as such from behind a pulpit.

Finally, it is one thing to make a decision, as an adult, for yourself to get “saved” and baptised in the name of one of these religions. To be born into a religion like this, though… is job security for therapists and psychiatrists. For a human’s formative years to be spent in that environment is to create deep grooves of hatred toward others, judgment of self and others, and the spirit of “I’ll never be good enough.” The 60’s, 70’s and 80’s produced a shit ton of people, entire generations that will never fully untangle from the damage done by people misinterpreting the Bible in the name of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed… You cannot know these things. You can believe. And at this point, you can believe and keep it to your self.

All of this to say, yeah, religion is a big part of my story, and while it would be convenient to ignore, to tell my full, true story… I can’t.

I guess this is the brief version. Trust that it’ll be mentioned in many, if not most of the posts to come.

Face to face, human to human, heart to heart. Only in that context will I consider a conversation about this topic. All of the people in the room, including myself, would have to display an open mind and heart. Otherwise, let’s call the above my opinion and move on.

Peace.

Uno Dose

Track cover art for ‘Uno Dose’

There are many benefits that I’ve realized from my experience with the cohort I joined in July ‘25, the Ancient Future Collective, founded by Savej. A biggie… a mother load of tools to help producers get from ideas to published music. I’m talking a production template for Ableton (the software for electronic music producers), the how-tos for creating, mixing, sound design, understanding synthesis… and on.

The very weekend the course ended, Amy and I were on a plane to Panama. It took about 6 weeks to get settled and set up to begin creating. In that time, I had started a handful of projects with my newfound tools and knowledge.

In that same gap of time, Amy had begun connecting with our new community in Boquete. A go-to for community and amazing products is the Tuesday Market. It’s a farmers market with locally produced goods, arts and crafts.

A favorite stop for Amy and I was the CHOX table for chocolate products made from cacao sourced here in Panama. The coolio that runs CHOX, Bariş Ger, was born in Turkey. He and his wife, Nina, had moved to Boquete around 2016. We struck up a conversation every time we visited… and we visited a lot, because we’re human and humans love chocolate.

At least a month into these frequent visits, somehow the topic of music came up in conversation. Turns out Bariş had been classically trained on flute and clarinet.

“Wait, what? You should’ve led with this!”

I had already nearly finished the track that would go on to become ‘Uno Dose.’ But after seeing some of Bariş’ reels on Instagram, I knew he would completely torch it with his incredible talent.

Bariş came to my condo to track with a flute he made (that’s right, he makes flutes). I rolled the track from the top 4 times through, and each time he played along. Gold. All I had to do was locate the shiniest pieces, place them here and there (the sacred “sprinkle dinkle”), mix, and off it went to be mastered.

‘Uno Dose,’ like all published works, is a snapshot in time. It’s a reflection of my capabilities as a producer at the time of the self-published release date, January 22, 2026. While I’m still finding my sound, I can say that I’m super proud of the track.

I’d love it if you took ‘Uno Dose’ for a spin. And to do the shitty marketing shit that is required to be creative in the social media era, please like, follow, subscribe, whatever. Hey, I didn’t make the rules.

The Prayer Chamber

The idea of SAGRADOSE was not a thing before July, 2026. In June of 2026, had you told me what my life would look like today, I’d ask for a bump of whatever you’re smokin’. The path here is just crazy enough that I wanted to capture it here, if for no other reader than myself.

When I was a sophomore in high school I joined a band. A friend at high school introduced me to a whole new sound that was too obscure for the run-of-the-mill radio stations in the Midwest like KZ93. The sound was coming almost exclusively out of the UK from acts like Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, The Cure, YAZ, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and so on.

The Christian culture I grew up in was such that I had next-to-no access to art that was deemed “secular,” meaning worldly. My parents allowed a slightly more lax approach than the church rules (literally rules written in a manual as an addendum to the Bible) allowed. So my sisters and I were blessed to have records in the house from Barry Manilow and Kenny Rogers (I hope you’re detecting the sarcasm). What would not have been allowed? Pipelines to modern thought through art, and Mtv chief amongst them.

For someone born into a church-going family, Christianity seemed to me to be a set of things you could (should) not do. This is a whole other topic for another time, but put a pin in this nugget as it does play into this story of how SAGRADOSE became a thing.

OK, back to the band, The Prayer Chamber. The lineup included a singer, guitarist, bassist, drummer, and me playing a monophonic 25-key keyboard rented for $25 per month from the local music gear store.

We wrote original songs and performed all of maybe 2 or 3 “shows.” Our run lasted for less than a year or so, but it was more than sufficient time for me to develop a taste for creating and storytelling with music.

The hook was set.

Music has always been central to my window into life. Regardless of the stage of life I was in, I was generally on stage. This has taken many forms over many years.

What took place in the summer between my junior and senior year of high school would shape my music creation path for years to come.

Stay tuned for the next chapter. Speaking of, the following is the list (so far) of chapters of this story.

Religion
7th Angel + Lawman
Leaderdogs for the Blind
Bouncing around
Live Coal
3Flow
RCBand
Logic Pro
Middle of a Dream
Acoustic music
Bangupstate
Leaderdogs pt. II
Separation (marriage, and the church)
Rogers Park
Walkers Point
Lyndon Perry Music
Reggae
Asheville
The pharmacist
The journey
Universal Sines
Journey playlists
DOGE
AI
All signs point to
Liquid Bloom + Porangui
FlowJam Festival trip
Savej remix
The Ancient Future Collective
Supposed to Be
SAGRADOSE
Mariposa Azul -> Panama

What’s this “sagradose” you speak of?

What’s in a name, really?

Like when I see the words “Depeche Mode,” I am not thinking about what that means, though the meaning is pretty cool. Instead, those words elicit thoughts of the characters in the band, the music that shaped my experiences while coming of age, the sound, the look, the vibe, the catalog.

But sometimes it is different. As an artist, your mission, your “why” is clear… or at least pointed in a specific direction.

When I met Amy, a few months later we came up with the name Universal Sines for what we thought at the time would just be live music yoga. I create the set and setting with music to support the main character, Amy, of those experiences. I was researching the power of frequencies to heal. That research reminded me of what I’d known, that music–all sound, actually, is made up of sine waves. The name was a play on “universal signs,” but it has now taken on a whole new meaning.

Fast forward a year, and I’m joining a cohort of bass music producers-in-waiting to learn from one of my favorite producers, Savej. The program is the Ancient Future Collective, combining the voices, instruments, and teachings from ancestors with electronic, head bobbing music. I say that listening to Ancient Future music is like Flintstone vitamins; you get the vitamins and it tastes good (in theory).

Day 2 after I joined the cohort, Amy asked, “So what is your producer name going to be?”

Me: “I hadn’t thought of that.”

But I started. I was drawn to Spanish words knowing that we would be living in Panama, even if temporarily. Mono, meaning monkey, has incredible symbolism and the tie to the jungle sound. I had a short list of combinations with mono and other words. Amy suggested “mago,” which means magician. While I love the word, it felt like I was thinking of myself as a magician. And, at least to this point, I do not.

Meantime, Amy was re-launching her site, Journey to You, with a new brand and purpose. She is a sacred plant medicine guide, so I was seeing that word “sacred” a lot. And it was sticking to my ribs like a Thanksgiving feast.

Sagrado. That’s the Spanish word for “sacred” when it’s describing a masculine subject. Sagrado. Something + sagrado. Sagrado + something. I wanted it to be more than just “sagrado.” To uniquify it.

One day I had my pal, Nico, over to show him what I’d been talking about, this new Ancient Future, bass music thing. And trust, it was all new to me. So I’m showing him a super early track, and explaining the things. Then I told him I’m trying to lock in to a producer name. I think I shared “Tono Mono” (tone monkey), or Mono Sagrado (sacred monkey), and Uno Dose (one dose), which has the added clever touch of sounding like “uno, dos,” a familiar pattern even for most English speakers.

Nico says, “It’s too bad you couldn’t do something like… sagradose.

Eyes wide, I turned back to my laptop and checked to see if the URL for sagradose.com was available. It was. ✅

I quickly checked to Spotify and those places to see if there were artists named sagradose. There were none. ✅

I replied, “Duuuuuuude… I think you just named my producer project!”

I love it. I love it not just because of the ✅s above, but because of the aforementioned rib-sticking situation. It resonates with me. But most of all, I love it because it’s simultaneously my cool-ass producer name AND something I want to become.

I am SAGRADOSE.

And I am becoming SAGRADOSE.

GOLDENROD - Part of the mystery

“Why am I here?” This is the question I’ve started asking myself on the regs these past 3 years. There will be many a post about the eras, fortunes and misfortunes that led me to be open to even ask that question.

To frame the question, it’s not from the perspective of: “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, so tell me.” It’s more like, “OK, YOU. My path led me here. YOU know me. YOU know my values. YOU know what drives me. How shall I proceed at this time in this context?” Replace “YOU” with whatever label you use for the SOURCE.

When I moved to Asheville in June of 2023, my perspective began to open. A lot. I was asking this question almost daily. I can say with the clarity of hindsight that I now know for sure why I was there. Again, many a post forthcoming.

Before the move, my existence was 99% Midwest ‘merica. The south was a space that challenged my previous ideas about certain genres of music, folk and bluegrass chief amongst them. Turns out those genres are like all others, in that there are gems and there are stinkers. I’d never been properly introduced to the gems or their creators. And it turns out that, just like every other genre, the real stuff isn’t on the radio. And, like all genres, that is a shame.

Enter Rising Appalachia. Their work is soaked in desire, love, pain, joy, and heartbreak. From there I learned of other acts (too many to list) that evoke all of the things I’m drawn to in other genres. I felt cheated. But, at least I didn’t go to my grave without realizing… like, the banjo, for example, can move me to tears.

Asking the question, “Why am I here?” is the first step. The next is to be open to the answers. By June of ‘24 I was on a trip with my partner, Amy, to a yoga festival to perform live music yoga. I never thought I’d say those words strung together in that order when speaking of my life. Who even am I? Seriously.

It was on that trip that 3 very transformative epiphanies dawned. One of those… switching to Ableton (a software for producing and performing music) after over 20 years using Logic Pro. Game changer.

In July I joined a 12-week online cohort with the Ancient Future Collective, founded by Savej, a producer whose music was another of the epiphanies from that trip. I learned more about music, production, connecting spirit to craft, and about myself than all of my Logic years combined.

The third epiphany is a whole blog series. In short, move somewhere to make resources last longer while you essentially take a sabbatical to dive deep into this new craft. Amy and I were drawn to Boquete, Panama. And it has been amazing in ways we couldn’t have imagined. The timing, late September ‘25, was perfect, except for one thing. I had tickets to see Rising Appalachia on September 30.

I gave said tickets to some very dear friends. Gratifying, to say the least.

By the time we settled, I had a studio set up, Ableton humming, and time. I happened to see this Instagram post from Leah Song, one of the 2 sisters, leaders, power houses that are Rising Appalachia. I instantly captured the video of Leah singing “Goldenrod,” an interpretation of “Fall Down as the Rain” by Joe Crookston. I didn’t exactly know how I was going to “flip” it, or what a flip even is. I just knew her voice and lyrics were a palette to explore.

“As part of the mystery, as part of the mystery,
turn myself around again as part of the mystery.”

Holy shit. Could those words be more prescient? As for me, it’s a solid no. No they could not.

Cover design for ‘Goldenrod', the SAGRADOSE flip

My version of ‘Goldenrod’ is live on SoundCloud. I’d be super honored if you would take a listen, like, and share it!

Be well. Be inspired.

Here’s the thing

You can’t make this shit up.

I’ve said for months now that I’ve got to write this story, because even I can’t believe that I ended up here, in Boquete, Panama, producing music. This is where I’ll relay the full story of how SAGRADOSE came to be, piece by piece.

In the mean time, get a DOSE on Bandcamp and/or SoundCloud. IF you deem it to be good medicine, consider doing all the things (like, follow, share, whatnot).