Kai Straw

@rosna Thank you!

@KaiStraw I love listening to this song. Your music is superb, like you. Thanks for the music and for the songs. 🎶🩵🦅

Here's my new song, 'Ultraviolet'. This one was born the following month after my time in Fargo, ND, while I was in Carolina Beach. I'd met so many people who'd struggled with addiction while in Fargo; all of their stories had impacted my heart. I had this image in my mind of this guy - someone who just didn't see the point of life anymore. I wrote this for him, essentially. I wanted to remind him that purpose still exists even when you feel lost. There is a road even if you can't see it. You have a path ahead even if, right now, it's invisible, ultraviolet. Stream: music.empi.re/ultravioletkai

Stream: music.empi.re/kingdomofthelie

My new song, 'Kingdom of the Lie'.

@bobbyegg7 Glad to hear it, brother.

@KaiStraw I know you won’t see this but this song gave me great belief to continue my sobriety Thank you brother

I just dropped my second podcast. It's part memoir, part meditation. Part interview, part investigation. It's an exploration of addiction, false purpose, and redemption. All from my time in Fargo, North Dakota. Recorded on the road. Play it like a record, not a single. Play it on a long walk or with a cup of coffee. Huge thank you to Jayson, Nic, and Bear for your openness - and to Officer Zach Robinson for your courage. You guys all inspired me, and hopefully through your stories other people will pull their bow across the strings of their violin for the first time and hear their song. Listen: kaistraw.fanlink.tv/podcast-the-fa…

@Gejowykawosz Thank you!

listen to this, it's so fire

@PonyBoiWonder Thanks, brother!

@KaiStraw Fuckin fire

Just dropped my new song. It's about the moment you see the role you've played in your present darkness; when you stop pointing the finger, when you realize - 'I am ultimately responsible'. The title sounds like self-loathing, but seeing yourself or a difficult situation truthfully, even if it's ugly, is a dramatic first step toward freedom. Stream: music.empi.re/allthatihate

There’s a stark brutality to Fargo. There are no mountains on the horizon. It’s flat. Your eyes see Fargo and only Fargo and then the sky. Like maybe Fargo is all that exists. It’s cold. A Local said, “I don’t know why anyone lives here,” as a half joke.   The lonely cold makes any warmth you receive even warmer, though. When I shook someone’s hand and had a nice conversation, or when I stepped back into my apartment, the warmth embraced me more than it would’ve had I stepped in from weather less brutal.   In the cold, and without mountains on the horizon to remind you you’re part of something greater, maybe it’s like you have to be that for each other here – each home has to paint mountains on its own horizon and light its own fire. Maybe that’s where the midwestern kindness comes from. “It’s cold outside, and there isn’t too much going on, but it’s warm in here, and we have a seat for you.”

I just left everything behind. No keys to a home in my pocket. Nomad, fully. My old apartment’s empty. My family all got together to have some pizza together. My Dad and Mom grabbed this selfie at the airport. And now I’m writing this from a city I’ve never been, in an apartment I’ll never come back to, on a street that - before this - I didn’t know existed. I’ve never lived outside of the bay in my life, and moving forward I’ll live everywhere. Lose your life and find it. If a vision lands on your heart, commit to it. Step into whatever unknown somewhere, or unknown something, you are called into by that still small voice - and be free. In Fargo, ND. 🚶🏼📍

Just dropped my new song. This one was born as I was baked homemade bread in a little apartment while the cold slowly pushed through the windows. It was made with cotton candy pink mountains on the horizon as the sun set. It was made while we saw a young moose on the side of the road. “It’s far enough along in the season,” said Caleb, our guide, “ – if she made it this far alone, she’ll live.” It was made under a sky full of stars and in waist deep snow with my sweat freezing to my face as I trudged through it. It was made beneath the Northern Lights and while hiking through the Matanuska Glacier. It’s called “Man on the Run” and it was made in / Anchorage. One year before this if someone told me this is where I’d be, I wouldn’t believe them. As someone who has been most loyal to process, to habit, to structure – this project, in general, has been a mutiny against myself, and this song is ultimately about that rebellion. Sometimes our best decisions are locked behind our own made up idea of who we are or who we should be. Sometimes our purpose is buried beneath the expectations of others. Sometimes the truth is locked behind ridicule. Sometimes as we escape our prison, we are booed. Sometimes as we find our freedom, we wish we could lock ourselves back up. Sometimes the familiarity of our old cell is more appealing than the fear of the unknown that our new life will require we make known. To grow, to expand, to blossom, you must become the man, or the woman, on the run. Freedom requires exodus. Though I hope this will be the soundtrack to a broad collection of moments for you, for me this not only represents all of the above; it’s also about my becoming Christian – which has been my most internally rebellious act since I quit drinking in my early twenties. I’m going to release a commentary for this song as my first podcast episode which’ll drop soon, and there I’ll get to pull that apart with you. For those who don’t know, I’m traveling the world making music inspired by every city I stay in. This project is called ‘Made in / Place’. Stream: music.empi.re/manontherun

New song this Friday!

@Gejowykawosz Same!

@KaiStraw Can’t wait <33

My new song comes out on November 15th. It's called 'Man on the Run'. I'll drop the pre-save link in the replies. 🎶

@BumblebeeOwns Yes!

@KaiStraw does this mean new music soon!?!

I’ve signed with EMPIRE. They’re a Grammy Award winning record label who played a part in the careers of Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, XXXTentacion, among several other household names, and I’m honored to be a part of that legacy. They’re an independent label, too – one of the most successful in the world – and this means, among other benefits, I maintain complete ownership of my music as well as my status as an independent artist; unbeholden to whatever obligations may come with the more aggressive agreements one can fall prey to in the industry. Though they have offices throughout the world, they were founded in and are headquartered in the bay – where I was born, raised, and where I currently live. Their studios are blocks away from the nightclub I used to run in San Francisco, from where my grandpa would take my siblings and I to tour the city as kids, blocks away from where I just recently went with my family to join my little niece for her first baseball game, Oracle Park, which is also where we (along with my cousins, years ago) watched Barry Bonds hit his record-breaking homerun. The roots that drive beneath EMPIRE are the same roots that drive beneath me. When my brother came along with me to tour their studios, he said, “I feel like I’m in your documentary.” I could understand why. It’s a beautiful space – a far cry from my first studio; a booth made of PVC pipe and sleeping bags in my parents’ garage – and I’m allowed to use it freely. It’s fitted with multiple recording studios, pianos, guitars, podcast studios, a bar, a beautiful kitchen. On top of that, the people there were passionate and genuine – and this shone more to my eye than the facility itself. One of them nearly came to tears as he was explaining why he’d dedicated his life to music. The song that drew them into my world was ‘Hole Hearted’. A song I wouldn’t have written had I not gone to Miami – a city I wouldn’t have gone to had I not started this traveling album project – Made in / Place – and also, a song I wouldn’t have written had I not met the girl who inspired it. In my last conversation with her she said something like, “ – maybe we were meant to meet each other,” to which I replied, essentially, “ – I don’t believe in that type of thing.” Yet, due to this project, and due to the changes in my life because of it, I need to retract that answer – and since this project is what amounts to a public experiment, I’ll do my best to publicly explain that shift. For years I’ve been living as a kind of materialist – anti-spiritual, say – convinced things were untouched by anything except what’s determined by chaos or combinations of random actions and reactions. When I made music, however, in private, though I’d been embarrassed to say it, I could feel something else – a deep communion with something outside of myself. I’ve told my brother it’s like I’m “hearing the song through the wall” when I’m writing music. To a great degree, this project – and the changes in my life because of it – have forced me to view life itself not as the result of random patterns of cause and effect but as another type of song that’s delivered through another type of wall. There is, maybe, some kind of perceivable truth or untruth in the steps we take; as if in the path ahead there are the imprints of what future steps are truly ours if we have the eyes to see them, and in every misstep there is a corrective hand guiding us home. As I was sitting on a couch at EMPIRE’s offices in downtown San Francisco – with windows looking out into the city and platinum records on the walls – I thought, neither of my parents were musicians, I was the only one of my four siblings to be excluded from piano lessons, I wasn’t taught how to use the equipment I have, there was no point where a particular someone or something inspired me to pick up a guitar and write songs – and I don’t listen to music too often myself; I’m no connoisseur. It’s as though the flint needed to start my fire was somehow sewn into my heart from the beginning. In our unmotivated interests, the direction we move when we are uncoerced, what we reach for without the prodding of greed or pride or envy or insecurity, may be the sign of our knowing there are future steps we have yet to take but should – truer steps than anything pressed on us by the expectations of this world. Other dreams and motives might be pushed into our hands, or we might be afraid of the road we know we should take, but what we were meant to do is there – held by an invisible hand – waiting for us to submit to it – and once we do, like the key that finally finds its lock, we find the entirety of our being utilized, and all of the sudden whatever money or fame or security attached to it no longer matters. A bird does not need to be paid to fly, nor a fish to swim, nor a redwood tree to stand. In all of us is a function, I think, a true function – it could be as a father, or a soldier, or a barista, or a musician, or a kindergarten teacher – but it is there, waiting for our fear to melt away, for our false dreams to lose their hold, and for our pride to unfasten from the wheel so we can slip into the mold that was cast for us. This is, to the modern ear, sort of a radical thought. “What do you mean? I’ve authored myself! I am the master of my destiny!” I understand, I used to think that; as my life unfurls, however, I’m not so sure. To say I at one point decided ‘music is my thing’ would be a lie. It just one day arrived as fact by the still small voice in the truest place of my mind – or maybe the truest place of my spirit would be more accurate. This phrase comes to mind; it’s a beatitude spoken by Jesus Christ. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Peace and purpose come from submission, not from pride – from servitude, not from conquest – from giving all you have to others, not taking all you want from them. In my submission to my deepest and truest inclinations, and my applying those inclinations to the service of others, I’ve felt peace and freedom, and in the stories I’ve heard about the positive impact my music has had on listeners – I have felt purpose. What I’m doing isn’t the result of ambition, it is the result of submission. It is not the result of goal-setting, vision-boarding, or trend-watching, it is the result of my aiming to help others in the best way I know how, etched onto my heart by a hand I cannot see. I have not carved my way or found it, I have yielded to it, like how the earth yields to the pull of the sun – and in the same way the earth finds its perfect position because of that submission, I have found mine; and yours is there, too – your truest orbit – where your peace and freedom and purpose are interlaced. Beneath a sky full of stars in Alaska, or on a bayou in New Orleans, or on the beach in Miami, or in the eyes of all those I’ve met, in the beauty both within and without, there seems to be a through-line – a great and invisible other-ness; a common divine thread. It has made me think, to what might we owe the result of our dancing across unknowable improbabilities toward their improbable ends? In what wind, I’ve wondered, do we unknowingly glide? My next song will be the first song I release with EMPIRE. I began writing it in Anchorage, AK. It’s called ‘Man on the Run’. If they can help me bring one more person into the light, I’ll consider it a fruitful relationship. Meeting them, even, and being inspired by the love they’ve shown me, has been a gift. I hope my music will continue to be the soundtrack to your rising sun. Kai Straw San Francisco, 2024 @EMPIRE

I just released the music video for my song Chokin'. It's about someone confronting and rejecting their own darkness. I'll drop the link in the replies. It stars Serra Naiman, Kyle McCarthy, Spencer Schultz, Mary Kuznetsova, and DJ The Bone Breaker. My assistant director was Luke Cho. The makeup was done by Nina Zepeda and Zachary Sweet. Huge thanks to my brothers, parents, Eddie Sumano, Allen Duncan, all the extras - and everyone else who helped out along the way. I wrote, directed, filmed, and edited it myself. Thanks for being here – watching and listening to what I put out there. 🍎 Kai