mission. “We were very, very 
cautious and spent most of 
our time at home,
” he recalls. 
“Being at home afforded 
you the luxury of having all 
the time to make work, but 
I was not inspired at all. I 
think around the middle of 
the pandemic I was starting 
to get antsy. I was just feeling 
like I hadn’t been productive 
enough, and I didn’t have 
enough to show for my time.
”
Epstein “buckled down” 
and connected with Gus 
Seyffert, a producer who’s 
worked with Beck and 
Michael Kiwanuka, among 
others. 
Working under a philoso-
phy that “if you’re gonna do 
a different project, it should 
feel like it exists for a fully dif-
ferent reason,
” Epstein set out 
to make music that “sounded 
like it was coming from a 
different planet,
” employing 
compositional and technolog-
ical techniques that blended 
sources and influences into an 
idiosyncratic kind of pop.
The first single “Blah Blah 
Blah,
” for instance, is pure 
power pop, while Here I 
Go’s title track starts as rich 
chamber pop before blast-
ing into a ferocious chorus 
fit for a punk club. “Good 
Time Guy” hews closest to 
JR JR’s musical mélange, but 
“Waiting Around” incorpo-
rates jazzier flavors and “Can’t 
Relax” sails in the direction of 
sunny Yacht Rock. “Human 
Machines” makes use of vin-
tage voice-altering vocoders 
and “Long Time Coming’s” 
surging, barely-hinged rock is 
a counterpoint to “Hit Man’s” 
bouncy exuberance and “Vast 
Sea’s” gentle, acoustic ambi-
ence. 
“I think it’s a balance and a 
fine line,
” Epstein says of Here 
I Go’s range. “Each song has 
a very specific vibe and calls 
upon other ideas. Hopefully 
they exist on their own but 

feel like something when you 
hear them all together.
”
As for the PJ Western char-
acter, the name takes its ini-
tials from his grandmother’s 
name, while Western was 
the surname of one of her 
friends who babysat Epstein 
when he was young. “To me 
the identity of PJ Western is 
a gentleman outlaw,
” Epstein 
explains, “someone who could 
have existed in any era. I did 
so much brainstorming and 
conceptualizing … down to 
What does he drink? Does he 
have children? All of that.
“Honestly, a big thing for 
me is I’ve always had a little 
bit of stage fright. The first 
time I played PJ Western 
shows with the wig on and 
glasses, it was really fun to 
step into this character and 
not be me. In terms of writ-
ing, that helps, too; a song 
like ‘Hit Man,
’ I never would 
write that, but as PJ Western 
it makes total sense. That felt 
really freeing.
”
Epstein already has a sec-
ond PJ Western album in 
mind, while JR JR remains 
active; he and Zott recently 
did a weekend of retrospec-
tive storytelling shows at the 
Loving Touch in Ferndale 
and also released a new song, 
“<1000>,
” last month. Epstein 
expects the duo will start 
working on its next album 
soon. 
“I love to create, so it’s great 
having another way to do it,
” 
he says. “I’m hoping this (PJ 
Western album) goes well and 
the label wants to me to make 
another, and we can play 
some shows. That will be the 
dream, but we’ll see. It’s defi-
nitely been challenging find-
ing an audience, and finding a 
way to reach an audience, but 
it’s always been like that. 
“The main thing is just to 
keep creating and making 
music and then see where it 
goes from there.
” 
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