In winter quarter of 2006 I took a class called “The Creative Process” With Professor Ann Woodworth. This class, among other things, encouraged fearless creativity. The final for the class was a 15-minute, two-person performance of anything. Faced with such an open-ended assignment by partner, Matt Sheelen, and I narrowed our focus to “comedy” and “maleness.” With this brewing in my mind I one day found myself coming up with rhymes in the shower. It was a Sunday morning and I still had a few hours before I had to head over to N.U. Radio Drama. So I started writing down the lyrics I had just come up with and within an hour I had most of the lyrics for three of the four That Guys. Only two were performed as part of that class but I knew that the song would have life beyond the Struble Theatre.

Over Spring break I wrote the entirety of “That Guy Who Always Wears Sandals” while driving alone from Milwaukee to Madison. When I got there I told Addy Stoiber, the friend I was visiting that I had written a verse for a rap song in the car. Her response was one that I have heard often throughout this process: “Why, what for?” After I performed for her the lyrics I had written she did ask “why” again. This too became a common response. When I asked Matt to do the beat, when I asked Travis to sing the chorus, when I asked Ian to do the video the all responded with an optimistic skepticism. After reading the lyrics or hearing the song they no longer asked why.

It’s hard to say whether or not I would have continued writing this song on that Sunday morning in February had I known of all the difficulty that faced me ahead. I did not foresee the deletion of all the vocal files or the challenge of throwing a party in a college town in the summer. What initially started as a one time performance for an audience of seven people has become a six-month odyssey that I want the world to see the result of. For six months I’ve had people asking me why I was making a music video. I knew the answer from day one. Now that answer is visible to all.