Exclusive Interview with Mack Holland

​Podium Butterfly left music for years, but he is back and releasing on July 5 “We Got This,” a sweet, wonderful, swinging carriage ride of a love song to the boyfriend who, since the song was written, has become his husband.

“About seven or eight years ago, I was starting to see this guy,” he said. “We were dating for a good number of months, and there was a great connection between the two of us. I was inspired to write a song about becoming boyfriends.”

“We Got This” is one of eight tracks on an album, And Here We Are, which will drop on September 13.

Yes it’s taken me so many years just to get here
And I don’t care no more
I feel I’m ready now
To be with you

The string beats and melodies carry the lyrics and the listener along at a fast trot.

“And it was a very special thing to do,” he continued, “because it took a very long time for me to be ready to be with someone who was a great person for me, given all of the discrimination against marriage equality for gay people.”

Sean Chapin, artist name Podium Butterfly, now in his 40s, was a singer and songwriter for years, primarily in the battle for marriage equality. He lived in California when the infamous Prop 8, a ballot measure passed and put in the state constitution a ban on gay marriage.

“I’ve been writing music for many years in my life. It was like a hobby for me for a good while. I ended up writing a lot of songs for gay rights, queer rights. I was very prolific around that time,” he said.

“And then, when I started seeing Matt, who is now my husband, I put down my music hobby for a good while just to focus on having a life with him, focusing on my career — I’m in accounting. Music writing fell back into my lap at the beginning of last year.

“The way that I’m living my life and with more awareness of who I am, and all the experiences that I’ve had and how much personal growth I’ve made, I felt that maybe this is a really great time and opportunity to dive back into writing music and try to help make a difference to anybody who can benefit from listening to music.”

And here we come to two things people really should know about his music. One is that it is pretty much futile trying to do something else while listening to “We Got This” or any of the other songs on And Here We Are because the pounding, driving beats, the fluid melodies and the lyrics take over the nervous system and pulse.

Such that, for instance, while trying to type you find your fingers turning the keyboard and desktop into drums.

And the lyrics are singable.

“My music, I like to have energy to it. I like my music to be uplifting, fun, poppy, not too serious. I feel like I’m able to express myself fully through music,” he said.

The other is the voice. It is a voice that Sean has created with the help of AI.

“I am a singer as well, and I’ve sung over the years. The previous music that I released, I sang.”

But after his years out of music, he struggled for months to get his voice up to the quality he wanted for his first song last year, “Inaccessible,” which will also be on the album.

“So I went over to a program called Synthesizer V because my voice is not as good as I’d like it to be, and I really want my music to have the highest quality out there.”

He didn’t want to go with another singer “because I wanted my music to be authentic to who I am as a person and how I want to express myself.”

If he couldn’t get the quality he wanted from his physical voice, with AI he could get a voice close to his and then work with it, tweak it to make it perfect for the song, “the way I’d like to have it.”

He could be the voice behind the curtain.

“I love the way the voice sounds,” he said.

He is between jobs, focusing on passing his CPA exam (he just passed and received his license) and working on his music.

He says, “I honestly have no idea where my music is going, but if I can make a positive difference for anyone who listens, that’s what matters to me.”

The project now is promoting “We Got This.”

“For this year, it’s going to be three singles, all within the album. This is a passion project. Going forward, next year, the year after, I could be creating singles or making albums.”

The songs on the album will be accompanied by lyric videos. He and Matt star in the “We Got This” video.

“There’s a lot of darkness in the world,” he said, “and the kind of music that I write gives me a lot of joy. Joy, I feel like, balances out the hard parts of our lives.”

Go ahead. Take the ride and connect with Podium Butterfly on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.

“We Got This,” the single:
Spotify
Apple Music
Music Video
Lyric Video
YouTube
Instagram
TikTok