Poolhouse - Poolhouse (2016)
DELUXE EDITION

Originally released May 30, 2016

Featuring 6 new tracks + 1 track from our 2015 EP

A time capsule of an era long ago that feels just like yesterday.
with love, Jacob, James, Scott, Kellen

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THE RISE AND FALL OF POOLHOUSE

"Poolhouse" was a collective of musicians from Barrington, Illinois that was born in the fall of 2015 from the ruins of a few different music projects (see: Repo Depot, Northwest Line Septet, et al.) for the initial purpose of creating a music production portfolio for myself - although it became so much more than that.

It was senior year of high school, and I thought it was a brilliant idea to align my college & career goals towards professional music production, even though at that point I had never recorded with more than a Logitech desktop microphone. But alas, music was my escape, both listening and creating.

Music is also what connected all four of us. We were all in the Barrington High School "Rithum Machine" senior jazz band together, and we were also all in BHS's select jazz combo. James, Scott, and Kellen were in symphonic band, marching band, and pep band together while I was the odd one out playing the cello in the BHS chamber orchestra.

Needless to say, it would make sense that after convincing my parents to loan me $1000 to purchase an entire home recording studio, there were so many reasons for us four (or a subset) to all be at my house, in my basement, making and recording music. First it was to record me & James's dying ska-fusion band Repo Depot, then to record the the jazz combo, then to record some of my own solo ideas.

There wasn't a specific day that Poolhouse started; rather, Poolhouse grew out of each of our individual ideas. Looking to avoid a $1,000 sunk cost, I found any excuse to get us into my basement studio, aptly dubbed "Cuckhold Point" by Kellen. If any one of us had a musical idea that we wanted to capture, we did it, even if it was just a half idea.

And that is exactly what Poolhouse became: a collective of individual ideas expounded upon by the rest of the group. Being all in the studio together was just as frequent as only two of us being there - in fact, there were long periods of time where there was high tension between some of us. But who is to blame? We were all quickly approaching the threshold of childhood and adulthood that we had been preparing for our entire lives, which was both thrilling and terrifying.

Each of us at the time was also going through something incredibly difficult and incredibly personal, and that is what kind of brought us together. We were brothers in arms, so to speak. I won't speak for the others, but for myself, senior year marked the beginning of a long faith transition from the Mormon/LDS church. I was beginning to see cracks in the paradigm I had built over the previous 18 years, which was a terrifying feeling for one that was about to be thrown into the uncertainty of adulthood.

For that reason, "Cuckhold Point" became somewhat of a haven, a safe space to be vulnerable with some of my best friends. James would often bring his Gamecube over and we would switch off between recording, writing, and playing Monkey Ball (with the usual trip to Little Caesars, of course). The energy of that small basement studio was contagious - by spring of 2016, all of our friends, musician or not, would want to hang out with us at Cuckhold Point (Jordan, Sam, Ben, Eli, Samit, Ryan - peace and love to all of you <3).

By that time we had also settled on the name "Poolhouse" and had around ~25 songs or ideas recorded. With the end of high school approaching, we had big plans to start playing live shows, to make merch, and to just enjoy the rest of the spring and summer together before each of us parted ways. At the time I had committed to go to University of Wisconsin, James to Depaul University, Kellen to University of Illinois - all pretty far but close enough to allow for recurring meetups.

But alas, May of 2016 threw several curve balls that started the fall of Poolhouse. First, I found out that my family could only afford for me to attend Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, over 2000 miles away from home. Knowing that my faith transition could potentially lead to me getting kicked out of BYU, I knew that I had to set myself up to be able to graduate as quickly as possible, so at the behest of that fact (and also my parents), I committed to BYU starting June 2016, just 7 days after my high school graduation was planned.

With our plans to play shows squashed, we would be even more disappointed to find out that my Windows 7 laptop reformatted to Windows 10 and deleted absolutely everything that Poolhouse had ever recorded. Even after several attempts at recovery, all we managed to save were the audio files we uploaded to Dropbox to listen to on our own time.

At that point we were considering not even releasing what we had. What was the point? All of it was rough, raw mixes of half ideas, many of which were vocal-less. But I knew that our work couldn't go to waste. So, on May 30, 2016, 7 days before I left my hometown and arrived 2000+ miles away in a city I had never visited before, I published Poolhouse LP1 onto Bandcamp.

~~~

Looking back, this collection of songs means so much to me on a personal level because it captures so many different feelings, memories, and moments from that extremely pivotal time in my life. But what is so funny to me is that while so much has happened since these days, my life really hasn't changed that much. I'm still talking with James, Kellen, and Scott, and still making music with them in Cuckhold Point (c h point).

Peace
Jacob