Caleb Miller - Portage (2021)

Cleanly stated, this is my "covid record"... When covid-19 hit me and the Columbus community surrounding (Mid-March 2020), I started recording "something" almost everyday. Anything... Truly anything... almost impulsively...

The energy behind this push was filled completely with survival from the uncertain. At the time, I felt if I could at least bring myself to do "something like this," I might feel connected to the world outside of my own experience. These were feelings I very much did NOT want to feel. Often while recording, I found myself with impressions I've often thought those in outer-space have. "I'm here on the moon and I can't leave anytime soon"...

In all I ended up recording until the end of May 2020 and had about 110 recordings. "Portage" is 67 of those tracks that I tried to whittle into a collection. The order is not chronological but a sequence I thought best fit my mind-state at the time. Dominate words that I think describe it include: unrelenting, never ending, overwhelming, edge-riding and "quite close to the sun".

This record can be listened to or "dealt with" in anyway you want. Let it ride, skip some tracks, skip a BUNCH of tracks or sit back and "sip it" all. I intended the order of the record to feel similar to the state in which I made it. Somewhere between "does this ever end?" and "something with strong convictions".

Many music videos were made for the record with friends/ heroes Nick Weckman, Trek Micacchione, Alex Burgan, Caleb Heron and others (check my website/ Very Much Recording's channel for them). The album artwork is a true expression of the record. It is a culmination of topics that literally fell into my life at the same time: my relationship to sleep, portaging and "The Great Black Swamp" of NW OH/ NE IN. Like the record itself, if covid-19 hadn't happened when it did, these topics would not have emerged to me... it lives and breathes as a literal expression of the time.

I am extremely proud of this album and feel OH SO SO fortunate to have been in the position to make this album during the pandemic. I know many many many many people who were not and I try to live each day with this gratitude/ fortune. I hope you enjoy/ love it/ hate/ are annoyed by it/ everything in between! Thank YOU for the support! Without other people, friends, and family... I don't know how this music would've ever happened. Heroes are real people.