Bedroom Melancholy

About Bedroom Melancholy

So, what poor excuse could justify why it took 6 years to come out with 11 minutes of music?

Truthfully, Bedroom Melancholy is truly not that deep of a story itself. I had my first “real” relationship in summer of 9th grade, which as it does for majority of people, turned into an absolutely catastrophic event (we broke up) and forever changed my life (I gain money from streams). The short story of BM is that I got dumped due to my lack of control in my own worries and problems, and compounded by the fact that we lived different lives. BM is organized intentionally in reverse of the simple story, starting with Lavender.

I spent around an hour writing Lavender on August 1st, 2019 at 10:51pm. It was a last ditch effort to save my failing relationship of two and a half months, and resulted in me sending my soon-to-be ex an awful voice memo with me and a ukulele, pouring out my heart and soul through the sheer poetry of, well, a 9th grader. For those who struggle with anxiety, this was in my own feeble-teenage-male-brained way to make something bigger than myself without really knowing how to pinpoint my feelings at the time. At some point after this Ripple came about, and quite frankly, I have no recollection on the specifics of which. The only note I have on the song is that it came about soon after Lavender.

On August 19th, 2019, I had followed this absolute banger of a song by starting the writing of Morning Sun based on a dream I had about growing old with this girl. Quite frankly, I don’t remember any details pointing back to this song outside of the vague idea of us on rocking chairs being a main point of the dream, spiraling the song into what it is now. Later in the fall of 2019, Robert and I started to put this song into production and started our first attempt at recording this EP.

Soon to follow this, on April 1st, 2020, I started the writing to Skadoosh in the frustrations of my own destruction of the relationship. Skadoosh is, truthfully, the song that holds up with any sort of valuable story. Verse 1 addresses my then frustrations post breakup, Verse 2 being the effect of such, Verse 3 trying to dig myself out of the hole I had created originally, and Verse 4 accepting the fact that it’ll never be resolved and leaving it as it was. The name Skadoosh was given to the song to both signify the end of the story (for all my Kung Fu Panda fans out there), as well as in reference to my friend, Alex Andrade, who encouraged me to finish this project for all 6 years it was worked on, and who mutually closes every interaction with me saying “Skadoosh, Skadosh, Yeeeee”.T

Originally, the idea was to have BM as a serious project for One Banana 4 Jesus (my boyband including myself, Robert, Jackson, and 5 other friends of ours at the time), shifting the joke of a boyband into something serious. Between summer of 2020 and early 2021, there was tension between myself and some of the guys in the band, both because of the personal frustrations and drama that comes with being a high schooler, as well as me trying to shift this and future serious projects into my own name. Our unspoken breakup in February 2021, in combination with a lack of any quality recording gear led to the first scrap in recording BM. This resulted in Robert, Jackson, and I starting the second attempt of the project, and in Winter 2021 scrapping that attempt because of inconsistencies and a lack of desire to put the work into a shallow project.

For the latter of 2022 and all of 2023, not a lot happened. Jackson and I primarily worked on other songs and projects, eventually circling back to the EP and starting attempt 3 of recording. Robert and I started to work on the foundations of the project, followed by Jackson and I jumping in with the extra details. In Fall 2022, Robert started school for music, Jackson started school for Film, I changed majors twice, and all of our projects got put on the back burner and worked on in spurts. In Spring 2023 we entirely put aside the EP to work on other projects, only to circle back to it in October of 2024.

At this point, it had already been 5 years. We had slowly circled back to the EP, landing on the band name, Cottonwood, and in December we set the release date for January 2025. We did not meet this date, and instead released Evergreen with no promotion until February. We treated this as a burner demo in order to have something released under the name. It wasn’t until February 2025 when we shifted back to the EP, deciding to finish it up and have it ready to release in June. After realizing that the 6th year anniversary of starting the project was both approaching and on a decent timeline, we shifted our date to August 1st, 2025, with plans to have it finished in July. In reality, this isn’t any of our full-time jobs. When July came around, barely anything had changed.

Therefore: Jackson and I cleaned up the EP the best we could, and with 3 days to release, we officially finished and submitted the EP to stores.

Though that is the gist of how Bedroom Melancholy came to be, there are still plenty of specifics and minor details left out. Because of this, I would like to reiterate the credits to this project. Jackson, Robert, and I can do a lot of crap on our own, but in reality, it would’ve taken infinitely longer to finish the EP if it weren’t for all the love, support, and help from our friends and family-

Raegan, who (I hope) is proudly our 4th member who holds us to actually working and getting things done vs cracking jokes the whole time,

Marco, who encouraged me with the early phases and scraps of the project, and helped make goofy sfx in Ripple,

Josiah, who is an infinitely better guitarist than I am, and helped spark ideas in the final phases of the project,

Jake and Josh, for being both cheerleaders on the sidelines and self proclaimed “Mr. Wood’s #1 fan”,

and my brother, Elijah, who from the beginning of my recording had encouraged me to take it seriously, and is the only reason why I was ever to see the potential with both this project, and music as a whole.

Now, I am bound to have details out. After all, this was a 6 year process (and at the time of writing this, it has been 6 months after the release).

If you have any personal questions about the Bedroom Melancholy, the music, lyrics, story, confusion, how to make the world’s greatest smash burger, etc. I encourage you to ask by emailing the band directly at yourmom@cottonwoodtheband.com. With all of that to say, I also encourage you to sign up for our newsletter for more updates from us, as well as many other surprises!

With love,

-LT

(P.S. if that original version of Lavender is still out there, I really hope it never sees the light of day)L