At the age of 13, Justus Proffit was already playing in a group with his brother and sister. He went on to join and tour with several L.A. punk bands, and founded Topspace, an underground venue that was also his home. He had his own band for a while and, when they broke up, he decided to use the studio time they’d booked to make his first solo album, LA’s Got Me Down.
“Mostly I just record songs on the spot and then let them go, then and there, instead of trying to make them sound perfect,” Proffit says. “I get my ideas from life experiences. Every song is different. I pride myself in making different genres of music all the time. I like playing punk, death metal, goth, indie. Whatever I’m feeling at the time.”
His second solo album, Speedstar, releasing on August 20 through Bar/None, is another solid collection. The 10 tunes that make up the album were recorded at three different sessions, during a time when Proffit was transitioning to a life of sobriety.
“I drank and used drugs since I was 13,” he says. “Being sober has affected my songwriting and performing majorly. I really don’t take myself too seriously these days. I feel a lot less cloudy, just happy to be alive. All the music I write is reflective of my present time, so maybe [Speedstar] is a little bit more mature?”
The songs on the album took more than a year to write, record, and assemble. Some were cut at his home studio, others at a masked session in the state of Washington with engineer Nick Wilbur. Three more were cut with producer Sean Sakamoto.
“I recorded [with Sean] before the pandemic and just lagged on releasing them. I actually recorded almost a full record with Sean and just got burnt on the songs. It was my own issue, so [Speedstar] is more of a compilation. That was different than sitting down and recording 10-plus songs in a session. They’re mostly just singles, recorded in different places. I compiled them into a record later.”
Proffit’s chiming guitar hook makes the track “Upside Down Entertainer” sound like a rock radio staple from the ’70s. “There Goes the Sun” is a slow, funky meditation on mortality, its melancholy air intensified by Proffit’s wordless moans on the chorus. The mid-tempo rock of “Big Mistake” features Proffit’s falsetto vocals, and a tempo that suggests both do-wop and country music.
With things in California finally opening up again, Proffit says he’s ready to start performing.
“I couldn’t play shows for a year, so it completely affected my music career. I lived at Topspace and threw shows there. I like to rock a lot harder live. I like to play louder and make it sound like a big, live band. I just played live last week. It was really fun. As long as I’m having fun playing music, that’s all that matters.”
Watch the video for “Burning The Ground” here:
For more from Justus Proffit, find him on Facebook.
Photo courtesy of Justus Proffit and Camille Mariet.
