3AM - DRAMA

This was the track I needed and didn’t even realize it.

It’s funny. I’ve been playing drama on repeat for the last few weeks and I couldn’t figure out why.

‘Billy’ came on and it took me back to this year’s Outside Lands - when I made the girls leave the main stage to see DRAMA. They had never heard of them but I said I couldn’t miss it. And DRAMA did not disappoint - dancing to those beautiful beats, those silky vocals, and those heart-wrenching lyrics in the sunshine was everything.

It took me back to hearing them for the first time back in 2016. Going “who the fuck is this?!”. And after finding out they were from Chicago everything made sense. It took me back to hearing their cover of Everything But the Girls’ ‘Missing’ and feeling they were the perfect group to touch that track - if anyone was going to take the torch of house heartbreak, it’s DRAMA.

The past few weeks reminded me that listening to DRAMA feels like home - so much of what they’re about and what they put out there is so much of what i’m about and what I put out there.

And then this track came…at the perfect time.

Today was the first day I woke up in my new place.

After leaving California, the state i’ve lived in for 20 years, I’ve been feeling a little lost. A little displaced. But waking up in my new place for the first time made me feel grounded.

And then I realized it was the 3AM video premiere.

And in an instant DRAMA brought me back home again. They brought me back to the streets of San Franciso. They brought me back to dancing in the streets of San Francisco, in the parks of San Francisco, the apartments of San Francisco.

They brought me back to the city that I’ve loved for decades.

And reminded me that I’ll never really leave it…or it will never really leave me.