Personal, Music (& some Code) Highlights of 2020
By: Dan Hemerlein
Tags: 2020, Music, Personal, Code

TL;DR: Unusual year! I spent some time doing normal things like slinging code and music. I spent a lot more time changing the way I see the world and my place in it. I also went micro viral on TikTok back in March. Thanks to all who were a part of it 👾

January

January 1st: New Year’s Eve party with my friends at Peter and Kyla’s apartment.

first selfie of 2020

January 10th: The Good Few played a sold out show at Bowery Ballroom.

The Good Few plays Bowery Ballroom

January 11th–12th: Recording session with my friend Katie Glasgow, working on some of her solo music.

January 22nd: My Ableton Live and the Push 2 bundle arrived. This was an important first step in re-examining my relationship with music this year.

January 29th: minikit SoFar show at Kinfolk in Williamsburg.

January 31st: minikit released ‘400 Coffees (Ursae Flip)’. Thanks Andrew!

February

February 14th: Modern Diet released ‘Post Grad’. A song about life after college. I played bass guitar on it.

‘Post Grad’ artwork by Camille Petricola

February 23rd: Covey played a sold out show opening for Summer Salt at Music Hall of Williamsburg — my final live performance of 2020.

Covey plays Music Hall of Williamsburg

March

March 19th: A TikTok I made of my dad playing basketball gets over 100k views.

March 26th: A second TikTok I made of my dad playing basketball gets over 110k views.

April

April 3rd: Cannon released “CONVERSATIONS”. I co-produced and co-wrote this track.

May

May 1st: launched badtheband.com — a landing page for the Queens, New York based electronic funk band BAD.

May 21st: Cannon released ‘BROKEN MIRRORS’. I co-produced this track.

May 23rd: I posted a remix of ‘i finally understand’ by Charli XCX to SoundCloud. This my first (and only, so far) production made with Ableton to be released.

July

July 4th: Great hang in Prospect Park to celebrate my friend Peter’s birthday.

July 5th: Initial commits on a LifeOS / external-brain side project I’m very excited to continue working on. Please ask me about this if you’re curious to know more!

August

August 6th: my 26th birthday :’]

26 :’]

August 13th: Katie Glasgow released ‘Tarot Cards’ from the recording sessions we did back in January.

August 31st: Started reading/doing The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

September

September 11th-15th: Late summer / early fall trip to Cape Cod with my cousin Jess to unwind and catch up.

late summer Cape Cod Bay sunset

September 16th: Celebrated my official one year anniversary of employment as Junior Front End Engineer at Thinx Inc.

October

October 31st: Halloween. I went as: “Bridget.”

November

November 13th: Panther Hollow releases Songwiring. I played bass guitar on two songs from this album: “Landslide” and “Maine Coast.”

Songwiring artwork by Bernardo Ochoa

November 21st: Zoom Thanksgiving. Grateful to have spent the day at home with my parents.

Me on my way to Zoom Thanksgiving 2020

November 26th: Officially completed The Artist’s Way (and I’m still doing the morning pages & artist date).

December

December 18th: Notes from the Archive: Recordings 2011–2016 by Maggie Rogers is released. I played bass guitar on six songs from this album: “Celadon & Gold”, “Together”, “Steady Now”, “One More Afternoon”, “James” and “Anybody.”