“In 2023 I moved to Manchester, England with my partner at the time. I brought over all the recording equipment I could fit in my carry-on and as soon as we landed I went to a pawn shop and bought an all black acoustic guitar. It didn’t sound that great but it felt nice to own something during a time that felt very temporary.

 

Unlike any other record I've made in the past, I wrote this album in order. ‘Five Months In Manchester’ became my journal. I wrote ‘Start From Scratch’ during the first week we spent in England. We were staying with some of my extended family in Droylsden (a small town in Tameside, Greater Manchester). I had only met them once briefly when I was a teenager. Despite that, they took us in until we could find our own place. They were some of the most hospitable and kind people I’ve ever met. Although the circumstances were ideal, I was struggling to find work and I was feeling very disconnected from my life back at home.

 

A month later we moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Withington. After applying to nearly a hundred different bars and restaurants, I finally found a job on the bar team at a place called Dishoom. When I wasn’t working long night shifts, I was sitting on the ground in my Airbnb writing. After settling into my new routine, a few friends of mine from back home came and visited me while they were backpacking through europe. I decided to join them for a few weeks in Amsterdam and Berlin. I got back to England feeling like I was able to romanticize everything around me. I had a newfound appreciation for the situation I was in.

 

Two days after landing back in Manchester I was out for a morning run and I noticed there was an orange and white cat running through traffic right outside my flat. He was a stray who had been living on the streets for some time. With the help of a very kind lady and the employees of the Sainsbury's under my apartment, we were able to catch him. His name was Dusty. During this time I was working on— what would later become one of my favourite songs on the record, ‘Passenger’. Dusty would sit quietly on the floor beside me as I worked on it, we were best friends. After a couple weeks he was adopted, a month after that my partner and I were headed back to Canada.    

 

Reality set in quickly once I was home. A close relative of mine passed away and my partner and I started to slowly drift apart. While dealing with this rude awakening, I was still running off endorphins from this life changing experience I had. I decided to continue writing more for the album. The first song I wrote while being back was ‘Death, Disease and History’, a bitter-sweet synopsis of the last five months of my life. I finished tracking the album a year later (June 2024) when I wrote the song ‘Endless’.     Everytime I listen back to these songs I’m transported back to this other life I had. Although the food was bad and the weather was worse, there had never been a moment in my life where I had felt more alive.”

 

-Cam