On New Yr’s Eve 2020, aspiring singer-songwriter Nick Whitman made a decision — to write down and file an album of his authentic songs.
He had all the time performed guitar and sang as a sideline, however he’d by no means taken music that critically, as a substitute having fun with it as a diversion from his actual job in know-how, together with a stint as a profitable app entrepreneur. At one time a decade in the past, the apps he created have been raking in $50,000 a month, enabling him to purchase a home in San Rafael’s Santa Venetia neighborhood.
When he determined to make a debut album, he was already coming into his 40s and had by no means carried out professionally or performed in a band, so he had his doubts in regards to the efficacy of such an ambition. However he felt he had one thing to say in his music and cast forward, writing and recording a four-song EP in his residence studio.
“I used to be effectively on my manner, writing a music a month,” he says. “Then, the pandemic hit and the entire thing goes south.”
On the identical time the world was shutting down, his private life was in shambles. His marriage had been on the rocks for a while and subsequently led to divorce. He stop a 9-to-5 job with a tech startup that he hated, bought the home he’d shared along with his former spouse and moved right into a duplex condominium, engaged on his music in a studio he rented in an industrial part of San Rafael, monitoring his vocals and taking part in all of the devices himself. He admits he had loads to study songwriting, recording and mixing his tracks, however he had a imaginative and prescient all his personal and wished folks to listen to his songs and inform him what they considered them.
So, when he noticed different aspiring songwriters and musicians acting on Chillavision, a video streaming service on the social information website Reddit, he launched his personal weekly Chillavision present on Saturday nights to showcase the songs he was engaged on and chat along with his viewers.
“For no matter purpose, it acquired tremendous fashionable actually shortly,” he remembers. “For a time, we have been pulling a pair hundred thousand viewers each night time.”
Drug struggles
A rambling and discursive conversationalist, Whitman says he holds the file for the longest Reddit stream, 20 hours and 20 minutes. After taking part in his songs on his present, lots of them with a type of alt-country rock sound, he attracted the curiosity of a European unbiased file label, which supplied him a contract. To this point, he’s most popular to place out the 14-song album, “Down in California,” himself. It’s accessible on Spotify, Amazon, YouTube and different streaming platforms.
For a few years, he had been combating a drug drawback, an habit to marijuana that he partly blames for the breakup of his marriage. Initially from Buffalo, New York, he felt responsible about his failure to see his father earlier than he died of most cancers in his hometown a 12 months in the past. That was when he hit backside.
“I used to be so checked out,” he says. “After I’m smoking, that’s all there's.”
Mourning his father’s demise, he determined that it was time for him to get straight, looking for assist in a restoration program that led to what he describes as “a non secular awakening.”
“I felt a lot reduction,” he says. “My life utterly modified from that second. The distress and loneliness type of disappeared. It was a miracle in loads of methods.”
Yr of sobriety
As he celebrates his forty third birthday in April, he’s additionally marking a 12 months of being sober. He wrote a music for the album, “Love with a Capital ‘G,’” that he says “encapsulates my journey in sobriety.”
Whereas his non secular life was blossoming, he had been involved for a while about his bodily well being, dropping 80 kilos in a 12 months and affected by gastrointestinal signs.
“I used to be telling my physician that the whole lot in my life was nice,” he says. “I used to be dwelling my dream, recording music, doing yoga each day. The one factor is I've this bizarre GI factor.”
In early January, after a sequence of exams and scans, he was recognized with stage 4 rectal most cancers that had unfold to his liver and lungs.
“My physician mentioned, ‘Look, with out therapy you get six months, possibly a 12 months,’” he says. “‘With therapy, on common, about two years.’”
A number of weeks later, he broke the devastating information to his on-line neighborhood of followers in an emotional phase on his Chillavision present.
“You’ve meant a lot to me,” he advised them, wiping away tears. “I like you all.”
In response, one in every of his loyal viewers posted: “I’m censoring my reactions, however I'm past sorry. I'm at a loss.”
Dedicated to music
As a result of his most cancers has metastasized, the one therapy his docs advised him was accessible to him was chemotherapy. After some debate with himself, he determined to go forward with it and is now in his second spherical of chemo.
Whereas his album was largely carried out earlier than he was recognized, he wrote a brand new music, “Besides You,” that reconfirms his dedication to his musical creativity regardless of the most cancers that threatens his life.
“The self-esteem of the music is that I’m going to maintain making music until you cease me,” says Whitman, his voice cracking.
Alongside along with his music, he doesn’t understand how he might take care of his prognosis with out the non secular awaking he skilled when he was engaged on his sobriety.
“The most cancers has given me an opportunity to essentially take a look at the place the rubber hits the highway on my spirituality,” he says. “Are you going to show tail and run due to this dangerous luck, or no matter you wish to name this dangerous state of affairs, as a result of it could be simple to forsake the whole lot? I went by slightly of that. I haven’t been excellent. I’ve had moments of doubt. However, I’m attempting to take care of the sunshine. The truth is, I’m writing a music about that now.”
Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.internet