What do you get when you put a musician in a house with a few vintage mics, a tape machine from 1977, and a government mandated “stay at home” ordinance? Well, that really depends. For multi-instrumentalist Isaac Anderson, that scenario wound up being an opportunity to rework songs from his past. Anderson, who is behind the solo indie musical project State of The Secretary, has been hopping around the Raleigh, North Carolina music scene for some time now. Chances are, if you have seen a local NC band play recently, he was in the crowd, jamming along to the tunes. In 2019, Anderson decided to throw his musical hat into the ring with State of The Secretary’s debut single, “Toxic”. Since that song was released, State of The Secretary has been coming up in the Raleigh, NC, musical scene.

Anderson, 23, has been involved in music for a large portion of his life. He was put in front of a piano at the age of 6, and since then, he’s been obsessed with all things music. Growing up in a Christian family, with a Southern Baptist Evangelist father, Isaac has been playing at churches across NC ever since he can remember. As he became a teenager, he became involved in playing in a multitude of bands, and eventually, buying a 16 track tape machine to record records. During these formative years, Anderson wrote many songs in a school notebook. Some of those songs became the musical catalog of State of The Secretary. Others wound up being lost to time (or possibly just put in a desk drawer somewhere), or thrown away.

In March, after Covid-19 brought the world to a halt, Isaac was stuck at his home in Zebulon, NC. As Anderson cleaned out his home studio, that old notebook full of songs reared its faithful head. Filled with notes from 11th grade science, math equations, and the occasional crude drawings made by Anderson’s friends, there lied the original copies of many State of The Secretary songs. As Anderson flipped through the discolored pages, a few forgotten things caught his eye. Specifically, songs that were written around the same time as the other State of The Secretary songs, but never expounded upon. Having gone through college, broken relationships, and the growing pains of becoming an adult, Anderson found new meaning in the words he wrote in his younger years. He then sat down, fired up his 1977 Ampex 440C 4 track tape machine, and reworked the songs into something new and exciting.

The EP starts with the tender “A Letter to Alexa”; a song Anderson wrote for an ex-girlfriend, when she moved to her home state of Florida. The soft 12 string guitar chimes away, as Anderson’s honest vocals drive his analog tape machine into subtle distortion. The song ends, and immediately plows into the melody driven “Charming”. Being one of the oldest songs on the new EP, Anderson pulled memories of his teenage years into every note of his performance. Pounding drums, swirling organs, and jangly guitars all work together to create a catchy indie rock tune. The final song, “I Gave Your Song to Someone Else”, starts small, with a subtle acoustic, vocal, and Wurlitzer keyboard. Anderson’s lyrics, “...I made it in a lonely place, and I left it there,” draws from his failed relationships in the past, and having to face the world without that love. The song blossoms into a wall of ethereal instruments, driven by Anderson singing “...you wanted this, but I needed fear to rest.”

Since “Thrown Away” was Anderson’s way of coping with cabin fever, he now plans to follow it up with a full length Album. The self-title debut is currently in progress, being chipped away slowly at different studios around the United States. While travel isn’t a great idea in today’s CoVid-19 climate, the full length album remains a giant question mark. No matter what the future holds for Anderson or the NC music scene, one thing is for certain; music can be created even in the most uncertain of times.