One year ago, I got a call informing me of Megann Schmitt's death. I was halfway through a tour on the east coast with Nina Joly, in a small town in New Jersey, getting ready to drive to Philadelphia and play the next show. I didn't know if I would be able to perform that night. I still didn't know when I started singing the first notes of Gen Y from offstage. But I kept going, and from that performance onward, the song Gen Y became indelibly linked with Megann.

Since that morning call in New Jersey, I have wanted to do something to memorialize Megann; an encapsulation of the ugly struggles with inadequacy we similarly shared. After returning from tour last summer, I started working on recording the two pieces that comprise this EP. It has been the most difficult recording project I have tackled. I thought many times of giving up and leaving the tracks unreleased. Megann approached many events and projects in her life expecting much more of herself than was realistic, and was sometimes immensely hard on herself for what she perceived as failure. I berated myself for my lack of audio engineering skills, my lack of funds, my inability to complete arrangements as the months passed.

I was extremely fortunate that Daniel Sharkey agreed to step in and direct, shoot, and edit Gen Y with an understanding of the difficulty and delicacy of capturing the content of the song. His support in the project helped push me to complete the recordings and mixes.

A huge thanks also goes to Ben Chisholm for mastering both tracks. And thank you to Blue Hawaii for writing the original version of Try to Be, which I included on a mix for Megann years ago.

All proceeds from the EP will be donated to the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ youth.

Disclaimer: This track was written in 2013. It is solely from my own perspective and based on my own struggles.