Independent musician Caleb Rudy releases his debut EP, My Own Volition

Being a self-funded music artist isn’t easy, and indie musician Caleb Rudy knows all about this struggle.

Having started out with a demo in 2016 with producer Scott Smith, Roddy has tinkered with his vocals on his first four tracks. While he wasn’t sure how to navigate the world of music, he posted his tracks on SoundCloud before eventually releasing his debut single, “Burn,” in 2019.

Throughout 2023, Rudy has been building one song at a time on the EP one at a time, with a visual accompanying each track.

“I wanted to tell the full scope of the relationship,” said Rudy. Outside from the project. “You can expect these characters to go through different, very different chapters in their time together. They were already kind of in love, but he was showing them being in love.”

Rudy finds a mobile home in the Santa Monica Mountains and hires actor M. Taylor Hall to make the scenes more believable and intimate. The first two tracks cover the couple in their honeymoon phase, and in the third track, things start to take a darker turn. As for creating the fantasies and financing the project himself, Rudy said, “It was a really big swing and it was hard to do. We shot the whole thing in one weekend.”

Rudy’s journey has been full of ups and downs, with a darker period in his life finding him struggling with sobriety. “It explains the gap between 2016 with the demo and 2019 with ‘Burn,'” he said. “I got sober on January 2, 2018, so the release of that song was in memory of that year.”

After his sobriety, Rudy joined a songwriting group and entered into a relationship with someone who pushed him to achieve what he wanted.

“He was the type of person who was like, ‘Okay, let’s figure out how to do this.'” By the end of that relationship, I was ready to really pursue things, and he and sobriety really helped me.”

Rudy is dropping the EP’s third single, “Tornado (Lie With Me),” onriday, March 17th. This new song joins previously released songs from my own will EP: “Mess” and “Eighteen”, released over the past few months. Rudy hopes to see all of the tracks from this EP by the end of the year.