BACKPOCKET FRIENDS

LISTEN

VIDEO

RELEASED

October 7th, 2019

CREDITS

Written By: Zach Sapita, Peter Rielly

Recording & Production: Zach Sapita, Peter Rielly

Mixing: Zach Sapita

Mastering: Zach Sapita

Artwork: Zach Sapita

OFFICIAL ARTWORK

LYRICS

I need you now more than ever before
You take your time but you said you need more
I keep in touch with you, don’t push me away
But you’ll still leave me at the end of the day

Old friends I’m never seeing
Gone missing like AWOL
These time crunches and meetings
Now my back’s against the wall
Heart beating while I’m sleepin’
Can’t believe I missed your call
Did I meet you for a reason?
Or a season like the fall
They say you’re gonna miss it
You just can’t believe it
While I’m caught up in these feelings
And I’m staring at the ceiling

I need you now more than ever before
You take your time but you said you need more
I keep in touch with you, don’t push me away
But you’ll still leave me at the end of the day

I just can’t fight the fall
I gotta to lose em’ all
I just can’t fight the fall
I gotta to lose em’ all
I just can’t fight the fall
I gotta to lose em’ all
I just can’t fight the fall
I gotta to lose
“Forget it”

Old friends I’m never seeing
Old friends I’m never seeing
Old friends I’m never seeing
Old friends I’m never seeing

STORYBOARD

January 27th, 2021

There are many projects where you basically just have to force yourself to “put something out” for a lack of a better term. Backpocket Friends was one definitely of those projects.

This song was pretty much saying, “hey, I need to figure out how to even put music on Spotify, let’s find something to put out, it doesn’t even have to be that good.”

This song started on a chord progression I had to randomize because I was experiencing such bad writer’s block trying to write anything that was going to fit the new name. I ended up drawing a progression into Ableton and then added a random instrument and thought it actually sounded really solid.

I wrote this song in the basement of my first apartment in Chicago. I co-wrote it alongside my friend Peter from college who currently lives in Boston, he is releasing music under the alias NameIsFrancis. I think we had 3-4 Facetime sessions total where he pretty much nailed the top-lines and I just continued trying to write the instrumental and structure around the vocals.

This is really dumb but the first version of the song was titled “Who Can Love Me” based on some random pitched up vocal I had added at some point. It became Backpocket Friends for the absolute dumbest reason, which was because I had started putting my phone in my back pocket when going to work and that made the idea of friends that I can’t see (because they’re not in front of me) pop into my head. I think it’s pretty dumb- also, not even sure backpocket altogether is even a word, so there’s that.

The song probably took us 3-4 weeks from beginning to end, which is actually faster than it takes me to write songs at the time I’m writing this.

The general vibe of the song is about adaptation, mostly from college life to post graduation where everything feels like it speeds up, and time is no longer on your side. I remember feeling like I was so bummed I couldn’t just go hang out and catch up with my friends on a daily basis anymore. People were all across the world, taking on new jobs and meeting new people I may never meet. It was overwhelming in a lot of ways, so I just tried to capture it best I could.

This track sounds pretty horrendous from a mix perspective, which is alright for an initial release. The bridge part is hard for me to listen to nowadays but I don’t really listen back to my stuff too much so it’s all good. I mixed and mastered it all on my own and I def think I needed to give it to another set of ears to make it compete on DSP’s but it’s whatever.

I adopted this philosophy that everything I release needed a visual component nowadays in order to be promoted well in the wild west of social media, so I just walked around Chicago with my camera shooting videos of buildings and skylines.

It was cool to me at the time, and it’s crazy how nowadays these are things I don’t even notice because I’m so used to being around them. It’s pretty wild how much you take for granted when you’ve been so used to an environment for so long, I try to remind myself this as often as I can.

I was getting up super early on weekends because I was working full-time and tried to do as much music as i could when free so I literally made it down to the lakeshore at about 5:30AM one fall Saturday. I actually caught one of the most badass sunrises ever when filming for this. Literally nobody else was there. It was awesome, highly recommend if it’s not too cold.

I made the artwork with one photograph that I changed to black and white because I wanted my color scheme to start neutral. I pretty much intended to keep all of my artwork neutral from the start because I didn’t want color in anything until I thought it was actually decent.

This was of a RGB neon sign near the Armitage stop at a bar called Kincade’s if you’ve ever heard of it. It says “Hot Wings To Go!” – I’ve still never had these wings. I’ve had their burger though, it’s pretty bad.

The font for the text is in Highway Gothic Expanded, which is a variation of all road signs in the U.S. I did this to symbolize life as a journey, and starting this project was more or less the beginning of that journey. I thought that was clever.

I released this track in October of 2019 and tried to promote it best I could. At that point I didn’t even know a lot about ad campaigns, sponsored posts, etc. It was just like “hey, I have something I think is cool, how do I tell people?” Insert the only living social channel I can reach friends on. Not gonna’ lie, the relationship between music promotion and Instagram still remains one of the most toxic parts of being a creative for me.

The release went okay, I only really talked about it for a day or so because I don’t like talking about myself or to come off as a sales person. It had like 500 streams in 2 days, which was sorta cool. My parents liked it and shared it with their hometown network, and my friends were generally supportive to watch me put out anything. It became the first song to reach 1,000 on Spotify, whatever that means. I don’t think it’s a good song at all, but it’s starting point to look back on.

END

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