We were lucky to catch up with Crusasis recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Crusasis, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I was getting into music around 10 years old, my dad would buy me a cheap snare drum and I’d bust through the heads, then he’d buy another one cause we didn’t know you could just replace the heads, so I had a grave yard of snare drums. I asked for a bass instead of a guitar at around 12 years old because Les Claypool could do it all on bass. My brother got me into some of the music I’d love forever, hes 12 years older then me. He gave me Clutch’s self titled album at around 13, my highschool friend and I ended up seeing them a dozen times. I formed bands because I wanted to do what my favorite bands did. When I started discovering ‘good’ music instead of radio music in my early years, I was just so inspired to do what they did. Nothing in life was as interesting or powerful. I remember crying hearing Opeth’s The Drapery Falls at 13, thinking how could music be this beautiful. A similar thing happened with Radioheads Hail to the Theif album.

Today thinking back, it started so organically, just wanting to spend my human experience involved in the most incredible realm I discovered in my life. Once I got older and needed to make money and took gigs doing shit I didn’t like, stressing over money, comparing with other artists and bands, the whole thing became at odds with itself. I’ve tried to box my artistic bent for stability and money, but that doesn’t work out so well for me. Still trying to figure out some balance, all the time, but I am grateful every chance I get to perform.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My act is based around a fictional word Crusasis. I made up the word to title a song in 2010. The songs vibe reminded me of elephants marching triumphantly in a parade or army, see The Elephant Riders by Clutch , or historically Hannibal crossing the alps with war elephants. So I picked the name for my musical project in 2013. I guess to me it describes like my personal crusade with music. People have told me it makes them think of a disease, because of the ‘sis’ ending like, cirrhosis or something. So to me its crusading disease, adventurers disease, its the addiction to keep struggling to create even into bad health and squalor. It’s certainly fatalistic, like a war parade is triumphant, but when the fighting begins its hell. It summarizes the blessing and the curse of dawning the artist cap and living the lifestyle. At this point in my 30’s, I can confidently say it’s not much of a choice for me to be an artist, the urge forces itself upon you and directs you, either against your will or you can align your will to it, those are the options.

I am proud of the people around me who play my music. I am so fortunate and lucky. I’ve always been grateful for my bandmates, but my girlfriend (Francie Moon) introduced me to a whole slew of people who I would have balked at playing with and felt like I was annoying with my tricky, underwhelming tunes. Despite my defeatist attitude, we started playing together, and these people who play bass or drums or guitar with me boosted me up with confidence I never had before. They genuinely enjoy learning and playing my music and tell me so, and are eager to be apart of a gig. Honestly, I can’t ask for more than that, I just want more of it.

I want to share my stuff with the world and hope some people resonate with it deeply some how, some way among all the other infinite creatives and other distractions in life. I can’t compete with anyone else, I can’t do anything better then anyone else in how they write or perform, but I can play and perform from my perspective unlike anyone else and thats my mission.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

One of my music-adjacent goals has been to explore and understand life from many perspectives. I’ve achieved this to a humble extent; by living in diverse places, working many different occupations, traveling extensively, meeting and living with all different walks of life etc. This is a somewhat rare pool, people might dip a toe but then jump back in the money making/career pool. Creative people often are in a separate pool from the money driven one. It astounds me with how much authority non-musicians give out advice, even though they’ve just looked at or seen the pool, not even jumped in. I’ll have to continue with pool analogies now, I’ve gone too far.

Anyway, in general people could benefit from listening and having empathy with anyone in front of them, that’ll help non-creatives understand creatives, and any group to begin to understand another group. My goal of exploring and understanding life from different perspectives shaped me, but beyond learning distinct stuff from other cultures, it taught me HOW to learn from people. I practiced how to listen, how to absorb everyday, how to see grey instead of black and white. This skill might not help anyone make money, so its not very sought after, but it might help save the world.

So my round about answer is, there is so much non-artists struggle to understand about the artist life. I’ve tried to open up to non-artists about it (mainly my mom) but what is often missing is the stuff I mentioned above, and artists can benefit from those skills as much as non-artists. Maybe its all futile though because I’ve been with my girlfriend 5 years and still don’t understand her hardly at, but I think its the trying that counts?

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I was working full time construction, practicing martial arts afterwards and not sleeping great in general so needless to say I was exhausted all the time. I had a gig booked for a thursday in NYC 2 hours from my home in PA. We scheduled a rehearsal that wednesday and I would crash in the city with friends that night to rehearse, and play the gig the next day. The drummer was a fill in who never played the songs before.

That wednesday I got up at 630, worked a full day of construction and got in the car to drive to the city. It took nearly 4 hours to get to Brooklyn because of traffic and breakdowns during rush hour. I was so tired, and I get unhinged pretty easily with no sleep. My bass player had a friend pass away and needed to make the wake, so he called and said he couldn’t make the rehearsal. The gig is a benefit show, so I’m losing money going in, and taking off work, the bass player can’t make our one rehearsal with the new drummer, and I’m exhausted sitting in traffic for hours. I was extremely close to turning the car around. I had no faith it was worth all this.

Some how I made it to rehearsal. The drummer learned the songs really well, and I knew we’d be ok. The night of the show we played good, then the drummer, who also books shows in NYC parks, offered us to play the next day (friday) in washington square park because a band dropped. We all moved our schedules around and ended up playing 2 sets in washington square which was a literal dream of mine years before when I lived in Brooklyn. I wanted to set up and have my metal band play without cops shutting it down, and probably 8 years later I ended up achieving that through our drummers booking. I couldn’t believe it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2d8Ozg4F4hv5IeRfaG4JP6?si=ktpsCEKgR0CwPuiFLAwGPA
• Instagram: @crusasismusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNpDdwxHhPw

Image Credits

Live shots by Susan Hunt
Paints by Crusasis