Phoenix singer/songwriter/emcee, The
“This album was written while moving from my hometown of Phoenix to the busy streets of Los Angeles California with starry eyes and a guitar slung over my shoulder.”
“I remember walking to a show in downtown LA and was struck by the polarization of poverty and wealth that co-existed in this strange land. Homeless people asking for money and food while tourists shuffled past them as if they were ghosts. All with a backdrop of Five-star hotels, luxury brand stores, skyscrapers and Teslas,” said The Kaleidoscope Kid remembering the inspiration for the album title. “The words ‘nothing for free’ echoed in my head as I thought about all the money and politics that infest the music industry. I had often been contemplating how and why as a culture we had found ourselves perpetuating the perversion of art for money. I couldn’t help but feel as though we had taken something so beautiful and corrupted it at its core all in the name of the all mighty dollar.”
The Kaleidoscope Kid‘s own story is just as crazy as the music he creates.
The Phoenix-based musician was Diagnosed with Reiter’s syndrome, a disease that ravages the entire body with crippling arthritis, and inflammation, causing blood blisters inside of his mouth and throat leaving him unable to eat or drink. Losing faith in traditional Western medicine and baffling doctors who gave countless misdiagnoses, The Kaleidoscope Kid turned to Eastern medicine and psychedelics while living off the grid in a Sedona cabin with his guitar and dog, Blue. Finding reprieve in music. He wrote songs and learned guitar while he focused on healing with reishi mushrooms, organic berries, and Sedona spring water. His holistic approach to recovery worked. He eventually started to experiment with hallucinogenic mushrooms sometimes tripping for weeks at a time.
Through this journey, he found his calling, music. He returned to Phoenix and lived in a recording studio where he recorded the first demos that eventually got him signed to indie powerhouse label Suburban Noize Records.
Kaleidoscope states, “Writing music for me is medicine, through my own growth, self-acceptance, and healing. I can learn to be there better for myself and others, and show up fully to life. There is magic to any creation but for me writing music has been a way to alchemize even the most difficult moments of my life and turn them into something beautiful.”
The Kaleidoscope Kid “Nothing For Free” Album Tracklist:
1 – Bite The Bullet
2 – Hollywood Funeral
3 – Moth To A Flame
4 – Shots Fired
5 – Death By Radio
6 – Nothing For Free
7 – Sling Shot
8 – Turbulent
9 – Say Goodbye feat. River Rios
10 – Settle Down feat. The Real Khiry
11 – Cut Me Loose
12 – Hailey’s Comet