Cameron Smith - Shine (2022)

A mid-fi collection of indie folk songs inspired by love, legacy, and life after death. The home recording process began as demos for a would-be soundtrack commissioned by the late, great artist, Jeremy Joel. Originally intended to be featured in a documentary about the closing of Joel's SAM Gallery due to complications surrounding the pandemic, plans for the film were scrapped after Jeremy's sudden passing in May of 2020.

As that summer crept on, those tracks began to evolve into the album Shine after Smith began sharing the demos with multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, Eric Osbourne. Collaborating remotely due to lockdowns and the ongoing pandemic, Smith and Osbourne recorded, arranged and mixed the album almost entirely on their phones. The fidelity of the recording, the unorthodox techniques, and the "by any means necessary" approach to creation quickly grew to reflect the character of Jeremy's work. Perhaps best illustrated by Joel's own words and voice on "Some Things Last a Long Time"; a cover of a song penned by fellow artist and Texas native Daniel Johnston:

"The first paintings I ever did, I didn't have brushes. I just used my fingers, y'know? It was very childlike--the process--it was very childlike.."