Singled Out: Young Buffalo

I was a freshman in college and I was studying abroad in Thessaloniki, Greece. I lived in this apartment on campus, but my roommate and I were pretty much the only students living in the building. the rest were teachers and interns, etc. At the time, I was suffering from panic attacks and having a tough time dealing with being so far removed from the life I had in the States. But, that aside I met some incredible friends and folks influential to my writing.

My roommate Richie and I would, on weekends, climb to the upstairs apartment and smoke lots of weed with an older girl who was interning at our school. And we would eat breakfast and watch movies like Purple Rain, a RHCP documentary, stuff like that. Except, I would normally get so anxious and freaked out (anxiety and weed don't really mix, oddly enough!), that I would run back down to our basement apartment and work on the song that ended up being "Nature Boy," along with other early Young Buffalo demos. It's gone through some different titles, but the lyrics have stayed basically the same for about three years now.

"When you wake up, sleep still in your eyes, your mind's made up everyone guess the surprise if it isn't clear for you"; just your good ol' fashioned wake 'n bake that freaked me the hell out at that point in my life.