A.O. GERBER

DIGGING DEEPER A.O. GERBER

TRUSTING YOURSELF SO YOU CAN TRUST OTHERS...

As a kid, I never played music with others out of insecurity. So, when I was 14 and my singing teacher offered to arrange my songs and put together an album, I nervously said yes. Hearing the final product was a moment I’ll never forget. He’d turned my folk songs into cringey pop— bursting with drum fills and searing guitar solos. I hated every second and I couldn’t articulate why.

That experience solidified in teenage me that collaboration was dangerous. It was the only time I’d let anyone touch something I’d made, and it had gone wrong. It seemed easier to work alone even though I didn’t know the first thing about recording or arranging.

Then, in college, a friend asked if he and a project partner could produce a song of mine for an assignment. It seemed low-stakes enough, so I agreed despite myself. On the floor of my friend’s apartment, I plucked away at a song as they noodled quietly on their instruments. My eyes grew wide with recognition— the power of creating something new that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

Over the course of the next year, those friends helped transform my songs into landscapes I couldn’t have envisioned on my own, and taught me what’s possible when you trust the right people. But once our project ended, I felt frustrated by my dependency on them. I wanted to show myself I could do it on my own if I had to.

So, I recorded, produced and mixed an EP alone in my bedroom with very little

knowledge about how to do any of that. The process of muddling through it— reaching for sounds I didn’t know how to create—was painstaking. None of the songs ever sounded how I envisioned them. I released the EP but eventually took it off the internet.

By the time I moved to LA, fresh off recording those songs, I knew I didn’t want to suffer alone anymore just to prove to myself I could. But I knew the only way collaboration worked was if I found the right people—people I felt safe with. I wanted the music to always feel like playing on the floor of that apartment. Time has shown me I’ll always find myself there if I pay attention. Music is joyful, and there should be joy in the room when you’re making it.

Though I don’t love those first recordings I made, I realize now that I had to make them. I needed to give myself the experience of trusting myself, after years of only trusting others—to learn how to hear the sounds in my own head so I could appreciate

"THAT EXPERIENCE SOLIDIFIED IN TEENAGE ME THAT COLLABORATION WAS DANGEROUS."

Words by A.O. Gerber

A.O. Gerber’s sophomore album ‘Meet Me at the Gloaming’ comes out October 14 on Father/ Daughter Records and Hand in Hive.

Photograph by Nina Raj