Today we’d like to introduce you to Cecil Lockwood.
Hi Cecil, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The more I experiment with magic and music, the more I remember how I arrived on the earth plane. One early memory of my infatuation with music puts me in a small city in New Jersey called Jersey City. I didn’t tell my parents, but I ran home after a day of elementary school as if possessed, trying to watch the premiere of a new Michael Jackson music video on the TV. I was probably 7 or 8 years then. I got beat for it, but the music was stuck in my head the whole time. To this day, Michael Jackson is still one of my all-time favorite musicians and inspirations. But living in that city, I was around so many different hues of people that all came with different sounds natural to them. It was a very diverse community, some of the sounds I heard daily were hiphop, reggae, dancehall, salsa, merengue, gospel and house.
There’s this whole dramatic series of events that got me to Austin. I started producing music in high school, at this time, I’m living in Broward County, South Florida. I found a cracked version of FL Studio on Limewire. I probably made hundreds of beats before I graduated and used to cut class a lot to sell them to rappers in my school. I moved back to Jersey (NYC area) solo after high school cause I was kinda not respecting my parent’s home (my dad kicked me out lol). From that time, I crashed on family members’ couches, just tryna find my way in the big city (not yet 21). After getting off track for a few years, I enrolled and was the highest in my class at my audio engineering school IAR, but I couldn’t graduate at the Apollo because I was short on my payments. I then took on two internship positions, one at SOB’s learning live sound in the nightclub world. The other at Water Music Studios in Hoboken, NJ. After about six months juggling both internships and a job, I focused in on working at the recording studio. That was a wild exciting time in of itself, from working on sessions with David Byrne to recording violin through beefy distorted stomp pedals. Also Hurricane Sandy demolished the studio and we I was there as the water crashed through, luckily the studio had two floors with residences where owner Rob Grenoble and chief engineer Sean Kelly and I waiting for the storm out. At this point, I’m only an intern watching my workspace and career wash away. So I decided to stay and rebuild which took a hard couple of months to get one room of the three-room studio back up and running. I was proud I stayed but not really seeing any real, sustainable money coming my way at the studio, I decided to part ways and take a new path into teaching myself how to DJ and began throwing my own parties.
My business partner and I started packing out local dive bars in our neighborhood of Jersey City. Over the next couple of years of us throwing our curated events and Kanye West actually stopping by one of them, this got the word out about my DJ style, allowing me to get booked around the NYC area. This led to me meeting the manager of Jordan Bratton, who invited me to audition as his live show DJ.
Fast-forwarding to Austin… I moved to Austin after being on two national tours as a DJ for one of the most musically gifted humans I know, Jordan Bratton. After the 2nd tour, I didn’t get back on the plane with everyone else back to NYC, instead I listened to the inner voice telling me to stay in Texas for a while. Lucky me, my parents have moved to Austin a couple of years prior. This is around 2016. This time was another spiritual awakening for me when I received insights and visions of my future and purpose. I produced a collection of songs with a phone app since my laptop had been stolen on tour. These songs were motivational in context. I just now realized I was writing them to uplift myself during an uncertain time. I moved out of my parents just after this and started meeting my new tribe going to music shows around Austin.
Some of the first artists I met and really connected with were Riders Against The Storm. I immediately fell in love with their style and mission. They were really doing what I wanted to do as far as merging the magic and music and not compromising their uplifting frequency. Huge inspirations and fellow aliens. They connected me with staff at Creative Action and I was teaching artists for a few years here in Austin, teaching Elementary and middle school digital music production. From my connections at Creative Action, I formed a little collective with some other teaching artists and together, we produced an event called Manifest at The North Door, just before the pandemic hit.
Fast forward to now, I have two children and officially founded the company Singata. Which will ultimately be a platform for other independent artists to workshop ideas, help produce content and strategize how to get their art to their respective fans.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Some of the main struggles I’ve faced as an up-and-coming artist. And I use that phrase up and coming meaning to make my full living from my art. But I’ve been an artist since I was about 5 or 6, designing buildings and structures and drawing my favorite musician’s portraits. But the road has actually been smooth in hindsight. Because each undesirable moment or time actually progressed me further on my path, which is unique to me. There of course were some speed bumps I would call them because I don’t see barricades.
For instance, I’ve been so low on money living in the city that I’ve had to pawn or sell my music equipment to pay rent. Dealing with family who don’t quite understand the hustle required to become a success. And neglecting my mental health as I chased my dreams. So yea, its a real struggle when you know you have value to share with the world but you have to juggle basic living essentials, navigate the music industry that has its own codes and rules with no connections and low funds. Ha, yea its hard, but I’m built for it. And now being a parent of two, the stakes are just higher personally now, and with them being so young I have to be so hands-on. Which often times leaves me feeling emotionally and mentally stretched thin and drained. But we got God and magic to help smooth it out. All praise to my ancestors assisting me and the Highest for the perfect divine system.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I consider myself a lightworker, a digital griot, a high-frequency cultural curator. Navigating the darkness (or uncertain, low-frequency areas) to uplift through art style. I specialize in mergings genres, since I have such a vast eclectic love of music, I love seeing the similarities in different genres and cultures of people. And the most fun I have when creating is looking at this vast palette of influences and seeing what combo or texture I wish to paint with to express a feeling or tell a story. I’m proud I haven’t given up by now and that my visions have only gotten clearer and closer to that high operating level I see myself, where I’m able to affect the world in a positive way through art. Because honestly, finances and volume, I feel is what separates great artists from the ones we all know of who might not be actually sharing art that’s nourishing or uplifting the consciousness of our home planet, Earth.
All that said, Facade HQ is the place I first landed as an Alien artist. Quazarz is my name, I’m kinda the resident protagonist in these creative play(s) that Facade HQ puts on. I’m more than an audio musician, so I take on different roles like an actor to get the message of the musical plays across. Think how Eddie Murphy played a lot of the key roles in Coming to America. That’s my contribution, to allow the beautiful people of earth to conceptualize art with different perspectives and styles from one main house, Facade Headquarters. Because I’ve come to the realization that the world within controls the world without. this is me doing my part to organize and make sense of my internal world and share the experiences of how they relate to our overall consciousness as a collective.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Yes, the urgency and necessity for residual passive income from art. I also took a few courses learning the world of getting music placed in TV and Movies. Also, shout out to unemployment for buying me all this new studio equipment and Covid for allowing me the time to really focus on my art for the 1st time in my life. Also, that we need each other as humans, I meditate almost daily and love quiet and solitude. but we learn and grow from each other, and being ordered to stay home kinda made us humans crave each other more. Its not really about the events but more about the people you get to meet and exchange life lessons.
Contact Info:
- Email: facadeconnect@gmail.com
- Website: https://linktr.ee/Facadeconnect
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/facade_hq/
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/facade_hq
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCVx9Y7T6CKEqJV3z-q9lTUQ
Image Credits
Tia Boyd shot the pictures with the records falling and the one I’m wearing the white jacket. She also was our photographer for the Manifest parties, the picture when I’m DJ’n in black jump suit she took also.
