Apollo Strum Music

official artist website

For the Record

Brief stories behind the songs of Apollo Strum Music

From Shine Despite the Madness (2022)

From Leave It To The Professionals (2023) – with guest lead vocalists

From All’s Been Sung (2023)

From So Many Choices (2024)

From Single Releases

SONGS FROM A – Z (In Alphabetical Order)

80s Retro Pop Love Song (Leave It Mix)

When I was 4 or 5 years old, my mother would sometimes walk too fast for me to keep up in crowded public places. The resulting chest-deep disorientation of suddenly realizing I was separated from her was a full body and mind sensation. I hadn’t felt like that in decades. Not until she passed just before the global pandemic. Strumming these chords with a heavy chorus effect in a dimly lit garage on a new Stratocaster partially soothed that ache. And soon thereafter, I wanted to send it back in time to my quasi-suicidal periods of adolescence, and forward to my own children if needed once I’m gone. <back to the top> <back to album>

80s Retro On Apple Music – On YouTube

Brother Sisyphus

About the weight of experiencing, concealing and trying to manage depression or other mental health challenges on your own – especially from the perspective of a young Black man trying to avoid a cloud of social stigma. <back to the top> <back to singles>

Sisyphus On Apple Music – On YouTube

Bryan

Remembering a lovely, spontaneous day trip spent down memory lane with a childhood friend whom I hadn’t seen for years; and how when he passed away unexpectedly a decade later, the fact it didn’t register for my ailing mother was a compoundingly sad reminder that she’d all but left us as well. <back to the top> <back to singles>

Bryan on Apple Music on YouTube

https://open.spotify.com/track/7evg1JYrfax02qdymka8oE?si=6b667d0b7f3947cf

Declaration 2020

Part rallying cry, part cry of astounded despair. Since its inception, the USA has been brought kicking and screaming to live up to its better ideals. How much life, how much energy has been expended, extinguished in that pursuit? In truly perilous political times, will our country’s basest foundations allow us to save it from itself? <back to the top> <back to album>

Declaration On Apple Music – On YouTube

Despite

Despite disrespect, despite debasement, and above all despite our disillusionment, we must not concede the struggles for progress — particularly against misogyny — in this country. At least that’s what I’ve tried telling myself when I felt most discouraged. So I wrote this song starting in 2020 in hopes of buttressing those self-persuasive efforts by channeling the voices of women far more brave and resilient than me. <back to the top> <back to singles>

Despite on Apple Music – On YouTube

Dragons

In the context of the social reckoning of #MeToo, this song aims frustrations at just how fast and how far most men run away – whether from the right, left, and center – from our collective responsibility to make amends for the incalculable harm we’ve caused women. <back to the top> <back to album>

Dragons On Apple Music – On YouTube

Dragons (Acoustic)

See above for #MeToo-related content reflections. Contains pretty clearly the best vocal performance I’ve ever produced on a released track. <back to the top> <back to singles>

Dragons (Acoustic) On Apple Music – On YouTube

Five Years

There’s probably no more emotionally satisfying Apollo Strum Music track to me than this one. It’s adapted from my mother’s poem “You Had Not Come to Stay” – about her father’s emigration from Haiti to the USA in the mid-1960s. And soon after her passing, it connected my children to the Haitian grandmother they barely got to know. <back to the top> <back to album>

Five Years On Apple Music – On YouTube

Had to Go (Leave It Mix)

A child can bear the unfair emotional brunt of an adult’s heartbreak and selfishness, yet not be privy to the full story. What might they each do with an overdue opportunity to express their feelings years and years later? “Had to Go” is intended for a stage production. <back to the top> <back to album>

Had to Go On Apple Music – On YouTube

Haitian Roots Rock

The thing that hurt me the most about losing my mom to dementia was that she and my daughter – based on what I know of their personalities –would have gotten along so, so well. At 6 years old the latter heard me practicing the first rock’n’roll power chord progression I ever “wrote”, and opened the garage door to share some encouraging words. In return, I’m replanting some of the roots both my parents brought with them for my generation and beyond. <back to the top> <back to album>

Haitian Roots On Apple Music – On YouTube

Last Call

Featuring more than a dozen musicians and singers, who recorded independently across three continents during the global pandemic, “Last Call” presents as a light-hearted, carpe diem pub anthem in five languages (English, French, Kreyol, Portuguese and Spanish), or as a Summer festival jam session directed at all the naysaying haters and trolls. But on a deeper level it’s about an individual longing to be able to channel the good times when the involuntary internal voices of negativity refuse to be kept at bay. <back to the top> <back to album>

Last Call On Apple Music – On YouTube

Last Call (Finale)

While the full 11-minute version noted above is dear to me for the aforementioned mental health subject matter and the improvisational contributions of multiple musicians across the globe, the marching band-style finale makes feels so triumphant. Proud to have written and arranged the entire horn section and the collective vocal rounds, and this version sans drums makes it easy to just skip to the end and put it on repeat. <back to the top> <back to album>

Last Call (Finale) On Apple Music – On YouTube

The Light

About the enhanced and ever present specter of just desserts felt by many men during the #MeToo era. <back to the top> <back to album>

The Light On Apple Music – On YouTube

https://open.spotify.com/track/4P3l2pzuvKmJplgNGEYMcY?si=bb4e688ed9e641e9

No Place

About being fiercely protective – perhaps overly so – of a terminally ill loved one during their final days. <back to the top> <back to album>

No Place On Apple Music – On YouTube

The Other Way

Frustrations aimed at the “alt-right” men who unironically claim to be disproportionately oppressed, while dragging our society and institutions back in time for authoritarian, white supremacist and/or misogynistic aims. <back to the top> <back to album>

Other Way On Apple Music – On YouTube

Out of a Fire

About finding a passion late in life that might be saving you, while simultaneously threatening to unravel your life. <back to the top> <back to album>

Out of a Fire On Apple Music – On YouTube

Passion Play

In producing, publishing, and performing poetry at an almost frantic pace, my mother found in mid-life a passionate vehicle for the pride and love she’d always felt for her homeland. Unconsciously processing the terminal illness that stole her voice and cruelly robbed her of memory and time, I found myself following a possibly parallel creative path at a comparable phase of life. Intended for a stage production. <back to the top> <back to album>

Passion Play On Apple Music – On YouTube

Passion Play (Leave It Mix)

Despite being based on intensely personal material, I think I pretty much always envisioned this track sung by a real rock opera actor – a la Hedwig and the Angry Inch. So when I had the chance to work with a talented young professional singer during the global pandemic, I jumped at the chance to take a first exploratory crack at it. <back to the top> <back to album>

Passion Play (Leave) On Apple Music – On YouTube

Ride

A cross between surf rock and motorcycle rock with story/lyrics inspired by a parenting freak out I had on a mountain that sparked a three decade-old flashback to my own teenage rebellion. <back to the top> <back to album>

Ride On Apple Music – On YouTube

Ruse

Frustrations aimed at the hypocrisy of the men on the left who identify as gender equality supporters, but nonetheless prove incapable of challenging their/our own women-harming behaviors — conscious or unconscious. <back to the top> <back to album>

Ruse On Apple Music – On YouTube

Something of the Marvelous (Lullaby for Jean-Felix)

Pretty much what I’d consider the most beautiful melody I ever “wrote”, or that just came to me. Originally plucked it out on a guitar, and it helped me through a grieving process. This version combines several recordings which will be used at various sections of a play/musical that is in development. Minimalist piano accompanies almost ancestral voices providing lullaby comfort and messages passed down in the afterlife.

Songwriter’s Block

An homage to my favorite dance electronica songs, this track centers on an intrusive, stifling thought I had when first attempting songwriting at such a late stage of my life: “What if all the melodies, what if all the stories have already been written? How can I possibly write anything new?” In the end, it was such incredible fun writing and producing this one, almost like the sample-heavy cassette skits I used to make for class or friends in junior high. <back to the top> <back to album>

Songwriter’s Block On Apple Music – On YouTube

Undeserved

A You Oughta Know-type song, but perhaps more frustrated or exasperated – rather than bitter or angry – that any embers still remain. <back to the top> <back to album>

Undeserved On Apple Music – On YouTube

Undeserved (Leave It Mix)

While I wrote the song hoping it could be sung by exasperated souls of any gender, I think it can really hit different in the control of a soulful female vocalist. This was an experiment with that. <back to the top> <back to album>

Undeserved (Leave) On Apple Music – On YouTube

Undeserved (Reprise in G-Minor)

A different perspective on this song, the instrumental reprise explores the bitterness and the anguish, but even more so, the doubt on whether or not either emotion is justified. <back to the top> <back to album>

Undeserved (Reprise) On Apple Music – On YouTube

Until Then (Rosana)

A song of gratitude inspired by a heartfelt connection I felt for an Afro-Brazilian person who replied to my unexpectedly viral social media post in 2019 on racial exclusion and inclusion. Contrasts the madness, the senselessness of racism (and other social exclusions) with the almost unfathomable beauty and happiness that will result when we finally shed ourselves of them. Laments the waste and senselessness, while trying to latch on to the love we glimpse when we connect along the way. <back to the top> <back to album>

Until Then On Apple Music – On YouTube

Until Then (Reprise)

A bit more melancholy than the original, but racism and other oppressive madnesses bring such heaviness, it’s sometimes difficult to deliberately let our spirits “shine” optimistically in spite of them. But it’s worth it “for [our] future, past, present tense”. <back to the top> <back to album>

Until Then (Reprise) On Apple Music – On YouTube

Till (Leave It Mix)

An ode to love that develops differently from the typical molds we’re taught to covet. A true gift to build together, rather than some inevitable fated connection. <back to the top> <back to album>

Till On Apple Music – On YouTube

Who Else But You?

Inspired by Christine Blasey Ford, I wrote this melody about four days before she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the Bret Kavanaugh hearings. You can hear one of my original voice memos from that September 2018 day below, and compare it to the finished audio released in October 2025. I adore James Graham’s keyboards work in the finale. Most of the lyrics came much later than Blasey’s testimony, and in the latter half of the song in particular, are directed to the disillusioned defenders of democracy.