His new song, “Bring All Your People,” is a high-energy party song that will have you dancing in your head. It’s got a lot of fast-moving parts — the music, the individual instruments, the lyrics.
It is mastered and ready and scheduled for a July 4 release.
The artist known as OuterBloom, born Francis Alexander Bloom, doesn’t quite know how to categorize it.
“You start off with rock, but we use a couple of weird sounds in the beginning, so I would consider it pop rockish, but it doesn’t have rock like the electric guitar. So it’s upbeat, kind of pop upbeat, but not acoustic either,” he says.
Then, after about a three-beat pause, Bloom adds, “Between pop acoustic and rock, and maybe even a little bit of funk.”
It is all that and more, but the song, like Bloom himself, defies categorization.
Like many of his songs so far, “Bring All Your People” was written years ago, but Bloom is just now launching a recording career. He has performed, he estimates, in about 30 different countries.
“This one I started writing with a friend, Project Magic, forever ago,” he said. “It’s like when you are in college, and you and your friends are very poor. You buy like, a $2 Colt 45 or something, and you start drinking. Then someone else buys another one. The next thing you know, you’re all in the parking lot drinking and then it’s ‘Okay, let’s make this a party.’ So, you set up beer pong and flip cup, and you’re drinking and mixing and inviting all your friends.”
We started this thing without asking,
Why ask let’s just call it a riot
We don’t care how it got started
All I know is
Everyone bring all your people
He is from Maryland, but lives in Thailand, where he teaches physical education. He moved on a whim, he says, to Korea in about 2007. He started a band there, which made it to some big venues and even made it to Korean MTV.
From there, he went to Taiwan, Vietnam, England for a little while, but mostly in Asia.
“In the process,” he said, “I would perform at different places, small venues, bigger venues, bars and clubs, and, in between moving and transitioning, like if I was on the way from Laos to Vietnam, I’d find a bar or something and play there.”
He has played piano all his life, played jazz trombone from fourth grade into college, where he learned guitar. His entry into bands and pop performance was accidental. His college roommates played guitar and, unknown to him, also had a band which was going to perform in a university battle of bands.
The first year, they needed a piano player and asked him to join. He did, they won and got to open for the bigger bands at the university’s annual music festival.
He was pumped. The next year, he asked if they needed a piano player, and they said yes.
“So I’m super excited, like, “When’s my chance? When do I get to play and perform?’ And then, two weeks before, they’re, ‘Hey, we don’t actually need you anymore.’ I was heartbroken.”
But he messaged a friend who played guitar and asked him if he wanted to compete. The guitarist knew a someone who could add bass. So, they played a couple of Sublime covers and, he said, “We made up a couple of songs on the spot.”
They realized they needed a singer. “Do you sing?” they asked Bloom. “Well, sometimes I sing in the shower,” he said. “So, you’ll sing?” “Yeah. Sure. I’ll sing.”
They won, and a career was born.
He doesn’t have a lot of music out yet, three songs released this year, but what it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality, and in their composition they display an unnamed diversity of genre that matches the wildly various nature of his performing career so far.
“Insecure” and “My Way” are like a rock, Caribbean, flamenco fusion, and “Let’s Sleep” is a rock-pop-folkish song that two young nieces think was written for them but is actually about a girlfriend.
In addition to the multi-genre mix of music, the songs feature his smooth, expressive voice in intricate, intriguing, beautiful harmonies.
He plans to release a new song every couple of months. The next one after “Bring All Your People” will be a song called “I’ll Say,” “basically a cheery version of talking about why things don’t go your way.”
When I go outside it starts to rain
I wonder why it’s not a sunny day
But when I see the sun come out
We know what happened to the rainy clouds
And I’ll say, I’ll say why don’t things go my way
Over his years of performing and writing he has a lot of songs to record, and he is still writing, sometimes even in his sleep. Over the last year, he said, he has begun waking from dreams of performing with a new tune in his head. He grabs his phone and records it on video before going back to bed.
“Then I wake up to an ugly closeup of my face humming a tune, which I transition to piano and guitar. I’ve made a few songs out of them.”
His eclectic, multinational, accidental history as an artist has helped create Bloom’s omni-genre style.
“The one thing about my music, which is good and bad, is it is kind of hard to discuss my genre.” His friends and fans love that about him, but it sometimes makes it hard to get on playlists.
So, connect to OuterBloom on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts, and pick a genre.
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