I grew up in Louisiana. Music was everywhere — in the air, at every gathering, woven into the family in ways that felt both close and just out of reach. My grandfather, Wild Bill Pitre, was a name in Zydeco. My Uncle Robert Pitre and his kids carried that on. There was real musicianship on that side of my family, the kind that gets passed down through rooms and instruments and watching someone play something they built their life around.

On my side of life, I rarely got to touch an instrument. I absorbed music without being able to make it. I didn’t know it then, but that distance was probably what made me want it so badly later.

I ended up in school for 2D animation, which eventually pulled me into motion graphics. That path landed me in New York City, working around other artists. And it was there — in offices, of all places — that I started seeing people with guitars. People who played well, casually, like it was just part of how they moved through the day. Something about that got to me. Around 2007, I picked one up and started trying.

The guitar was the door. The piano was where I actually started to understand music. I sat down at the keys and decided to learn theory in a way that would give me something useful — not just scales and rules, but the ability to write what I actually hear in my head. Soul music, mostly. But learning soul music means learning about chords, about tension, about how to make someone feel something before a single word is spoken. That took me into cinematic music too. And from there, things kept branching.

A number of projects later, some finished and some not, I can now play guitar, bass, and piano well enough to take an idea from nothing to something real. I release music under a few different names depending on what I’m making. I run everything through my own LLC. And somewhere along the way, this stopped being something I did for myself alone.

I have two daughters who love music. They’re learning, asking questions, picking things up. And I think about that a lot — how the more I grow at this, the more they see what it looks like to build something steadily, without giving up on it. That matters to me more than I expected it to. Part of why I keep going is because I want them to see what the other side of that commitment looks like.

The In Between is where I’ll be talking about the work — what I’m making, why I’m making it, and the things I’m learning along the way. If you’re a listener, I hope it gives you a clearer picture of what’s behind the music. If you’re a producer or a fellow creator, I hope some of it is useful. Either way, glad you’re here.