'Precious' evolved from a beat. The wild rhythm came to me as a groove which I beatboxed into my iPhone. I then demoed a version at home which kept me rockin for months. During sessions in early 2019 with Roots producer Rick Frederick and Philadelphia music legend Chuck Treece (Billy Joel, G-Love, Bad Brains) the song evolved into its current form. It's an example of the current state of my evolution, danceable, funky and fun, combined with something deeper and vulnerable. Video release 05.14.

Precious

Are We Giving Up?

The blackness was total. It was my 10th straight day without light, without food and without human interaction, sitting alone in a small room in an Ashram in west Germany. I had no plans for the future. My music career had collapsed and my ambitions along with them. I had been wandering around Europe for the better part of 2 years with no direction, no momentum, no ideas, and no clue that I was about to land the biggest score of my career. Nor could I have intuited then, that within a few short weeks, I would be in Philadelphia making the best record of my career and hearing the producer of my favorite Roots album and hearing him say, "You're exactly the kind of artist I want to work with”. 

But let me layout the context of this weird and unlikely turn of events.

In 2016, I was fraying, burning out and getting close to the breaking point. I had just spent twenty five thousand dollars to transport my band back in time and record an album like it was 1965. The result was my analog masterpiece, Unreal Fire. It was a new apex for me as a producer and pop song writer. Simultaneously, I had been finalizing a deal with a UK label (whose name I will kindly omit here) for the release of the new album. The deal included a handsome advance for the record. I had already spent good money on lawyer's fees, and we finally agreed to terms after a few months of negotiations. The plan was to ink the deal, fly over to London and play some gigs on the other side of the pond. I booked a flight to Heathrow and put my signature on the line.

And the radio went dead. Without a word (all emails left dangling) the label walked. With no advance to cover the budget, my disenchanted bandmates relinquished their option for points on the record and instead all requested fees for the recording sessions. There were arguments over money. People quit. The past 7 years of booking, promoting, touring and managing a 9 piece band independently had taken its toll on me. It seemed like the writing was on the wall. So I called forth that universal mantra of all addicts everywhere and said, "Fuck it."

Bosley was dead. I sold my van for cash, paid my debts, and was quickly in the wind. 

From 2017-2019 I made my way through a half a dozen countries in Eastern and Western Europe and North Africa. I collected stories. I collected travelogues. I collected new tastes and smells. I collected notes. I scribbled drawings and poems endlessly in pubs, cafes and market squares from London to Morocco to former soviet Georgia. I collected soundscapes. I recorded endless voice memos on my iPhone wherever I went, Fajr prayers at sunrise across Western Moroccan fishing towns, bottles clinking rhythmically on an old woman's bicycle in Spain, darkly romantic traditional music drifting through tenebrous, serpentine alleyways of Lisbon, folk singers in bars in the Caucusus mountains, birdsongs everywhere. Ocean waves. I collected laughs. I confronted some old heartaches. 

Without a band, I was once again, just a loner with a guitar. Something like how I started. I began to reach back to that time and without any intention of making a Bosley record. I started singing from the heart again. The result was something like slowly getting honest with myself. Like closing a circle. Like reaching back and putting my arm around that younger version of myself. I  didn't feel any pressure to churn out hits. I got reacquainted with my melancholy side. It felt authentic to write like that again, vulnerably and without conceit. 

All of the experience I gained during, this time were channeled into the album Waves. My highest hope has always been that my songs reach people and find a place in their hearts and lives. Thanks in large part to your support, I've already achieved that goal in a large degree. Thanks so much for helping make that possible. I hope you, yes you, enjoy this music and that it may accompany for some of the way you on your own journeys.

With Love From Berlin,
Bosley

WAVES~Full Album

"Hey Hey Ramona" was written on the run. After years of touring in America, my career had run into a blind alley. My band was falling apart; relationships were fraying; I was personally and emotionally at a dead end. I fumbled a deal with a big UK label, and after months of negotiation, it fell through at the signing line. It cost me what at that time would have been the biggest score of my career, an advance that would have settled my debts for the record and set me up for a while --not to mention given a proper release to the still my bombastic (and still unsung) analog masterpiece, Unreal Fire. It wasn't meant to be. I guess they could feel what I felt: I was at my wit's end and the vultures were circling already. Bosley was dead to me. This chapter of my career was over.

I wasn't graceful about my exit. I was disenchanted and confused and wanted badly to disappear. I sold my van for cash and was quickly in the wind.
 
I traveled in Europe without a plan and over the course of the next 18 months found myself once again as a guy with a guitar. I lived in in Barcelona for a summer and a fall, which was where the genesis for Ramona came to me. Over the course of the next year or so I added pieces and played with verses. I kept picturing a girl running away from home, stealing out into the indigo predawn and walking briskly, napsack prepacked, through the Creamsickle glow and hum of the city streetlights. I cut all those verses as they were verbose and pretentious and ultimately, not about me. Call it ego, but I suppose you have to write what you know. And I was tired of corralling my listeners and my lines into convenient fictions. It didn't feel real. And so I found myself at long last, slowly and reluctantly turning towards that from which I had fled, trying finally to give my attention, as I believe we all must from time to time, to those enervating and painful realities which lie within. Of course in the end I realized that I was the one running away, and I put down some much less flowery lines but ones that carried the emotional charge of how I felt. I realized for the first time in a long time, that I had written a song about my own life. 

"Hey Hey Ramona" and the other songs which came together over the next few years into my forthcoming album, Waves, were never meant to be a Bosley album. It took my friend and (*clears throat) Grammy Winning Producer Harry Zelnick, who produced the song, to convince me that I should keep the name 'Bosley' drop the tongue and cheek schtick and lean into the vulnerable authentic vibes. The recording which you hear was fixed expertly by Rick Frederick at The Philadelphia Recording Company -- during this time I found out that Rick had worked on and Produced my favorite album by the Roots, How I Got Over and was flattered that he was taking an interest in my songwriting-- and played by me and some Philadelphia music legends Barney Cortez and Chuck Treece (with Harry on drums). The result have mesmerized me for the last year as I've kept Hey Hey Ramona- (named btw for an unrequited crush and now friend) close to my chest. I'm happy to share it with you and hope it finds its way from my dreams into yours.

With Love from Berlin,
Bosley

"But really, as a songwriter, the only thing I do is make jewelry for the inside of people's minds. That's it."                                                                                                                                   ~Tom Waits

Hey Hey Ramona

...Like, imagine the Rolling Stones piled into a candy-apple red 1969 Eldorado Covertible, and every Girl Group from the 60's Motown Stable in a Greyhound Bus plus Louis Armstrong riding the side car of a WWII motorcycle helmed by Tom Waits all screeching tires in a torrid, fiendish, madcap car-chase tearing through downtown traffic at night. Provocative.

Jungles

SharpShooter

Coca Cola

Just Like You

Neon Magazine

I Get The Feeling

Money Tree

Baby's Wearin' Blue

Too Fine

Waves

Splash

Morning Tide

Naked in the Water

Hundred Year Storm

TimeWaves

Love Game

Ripples (On a Wave Reprise)

Easy Feeling

Ni Cantar Ni Bailar

Moon Beach

On a Wave

The new single by Bosley, "Are We in Love?" #summerjam


Are We In Love?

Are We In Love? (RADIO EDIT)

Bosley (stylized "bosley") is the publishing name and soulful alter-ego of American singer, songwriter and producer
Thomas Humphrey. Bosley has appeared on bills alongside Sharon
Jones and the Dapkings, Galactic, Easy Star All-Stars, Dr. Dog, and many other contemporary rock/soul acts. His music has been featured on HBO, Netflix, MTV, Comedy Central, Warner Bros Picture, Nintendo and more. 

Bosley's musical style dances between the old and the new, taking the vintage soundsof Stax and Motown and combining it with contemporary Pop appeal. His debut album Honey Pig showcased a talent for eclectic songwriting and a stylistic range from early James Brown to Waits-ian jazz ballads, all channeled through Bosley's dynamic and powerful voice.

In 2012, bos came clean about a decade long struggle with Alcohol and drug addiction. After taking time off to seek treatment and recovery, Bos dedicated himself back to his music career and released the ecstatic Dirty Dogs Radio Show in 2014 and Unreal Fire in 2018. 

Bosley currently lives in Berlin, Germany where he is writing and recording. New singles are planned for release in 2020 and Bosley’s 4th album ‘WAVES’ is currently in production.

bosleymusic

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