Ston grew up on a ranch on the Edwards Plateau, where the Hill Country turns into West Texas. His upbringing in a conservative, charismatic branch of Christianity while simultaneously being homeschooled limited his exposure to secular media, with the Beach Boys' early work being a notable exception. “You’re either a Beatles or a Beach Boys fan, and we were a Beach Boys family,” Ston said. 

Ston’s father and brother attempted to teach him guitar at a young age, but their efforts were short-lived. “I think they got frustrated with my lack of capability, hurt fingers, and possible lack of interest. I remember my dad showing me a D chord and saying it looked like a race car. I said, ‘Sure,’” Ston recalled. 

Eventually, Ston taught himself to play bass, driven by curiosity and his homeschooling experience. He approached music similarly to his homeschool co-op’s coursework and referred to his playing as “just making sounds” in part because it sounded so terrible. 

“Oh, look, there’s a bass guitar in the corner. I guess I'll pick that up. What does a square sound like? What does a triangle sound like?” Ston said.

As a teenager, he joined a group of fellow homeschoolers in a death metal band. For years, he only listened to music with screaming or howling. His fascination with growling led him to practice in the woods of his family’s property, only to realize the woods were not as safe as he thought. 

“While riding on the tractor with my dad, he asked, ‘When you're off in the woods doing what you're doing, (are) you worshiping the devil?’ I said, ‘No, sir,’ and just nodded a few times. He said, ‘Alright,’ and we continued riding in silence.”

A conversation about Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb with another teenager in a trailer park, and while wearing a White Chapel t-shirt, is what made Ston first ponder the dichotomy between genres. Although they are different sonically, hardcore and country music are surprisingly similar in substance. Hardcore might be described as three power chords, a dream, and something to say aggressively, while country is often about lost dogs, unrequited love, and broken-down pickups. 

“There’s a Venn diagram of people who enjoy both of these things,” Ston said. “I was really into emo music, and it occurred to me that, spiritually, it was kind of the same thing.” 

In 2016, Ston predicted that country music stylings would have a comeback in popular music. This came true a few years later with the popularity of Little Naz X’s “Old Town Road,” Kacy Musgraves's “Golden Hour,” and others. 

“I kept waiting for people to do country vocalization over emo music, and that just didn’t happen. The first time I saw something like that was Alex G on ‘Bad Man,’ but with different instrumentation,” Ston said. 

Ston’s move from San Antonio to Rochester, New York, aligned with a deeper exploration of country music. Moving north only intensified his desire to explore more country music as a way “to reconcile things inside of myself—my history, who I am, where I come from.” 

“I definitely rewatched all of King of the Hill,” Ston joked.

In particular, Ston spent his time in New York focusing on the avant-garde nature behind so many country music vocals. In effect, Ston was hoping to write music that felt distinct from what he wrote for his previous band –– A process he knew would take some added effort to figure out.

“The first time I took music seriously was with death metal. That was the foundation I had to work with. How do you make country music from that? You don’t. You fail,” Ston says. “But like any real artistic effort, you’re just failing towards something, trying your damnedest to create something.”

Then came a significant turning point in Ston’s life and music career came when his friend was diagnosed with cancer. 

“I was moving back to Texas because Tim was dying. I got a text one morning asking if I could come back sooner,” he recalled. 

He quickly made arrangements to fly back to San Antonio. But his journey would include tribulations that rivaled the Old Testament. A plane fire and rerouting due to tornadoes turned what should have been a five-hour transit into sixteen. Tragically, Ston did not see Tim, who died only 30 minutes before his plane finally landed. 

“His death affected me profoundly,” Ston said. “I’m still processing it.” 

During my conversation with Ston, he self-described music as a “more primal language” to communicate visceral sensations. Sometimes, the words just weren’t there following Tim’s death. Ston nonetheless experienced many visceral emotions that were difficult to express in a fashion that is acceptable in everyday life, yet desperately needed to be released somehow.

“I realized that in everyday life if you stand up in the middle of a room and start screaming, no one is particularly happy about that, but if I do it on a stage, instead of being frowned upon, suddenly I have people applauding and cheering,” Ston said. 

One song in particular from his 2023 album “Loper” is a prime example of how grief transforms us, whether we are  willing participants or not. The lyrics of "Cowboy Killers” were originally written with a different intention, but as time has passed, so has its meaning. 

“That song is about dreams, books that didn’t make it into the Bible, and my friend dying of cancer,” Ston says. “Dying was an active verb when I wrote it, not just dead of cancer. The closing lines are, ‘Cancer, cancer, no, you can’t take my friend.’ I meant it as a rebellious fist in the air, but then he died. It became an ironic sputtering, a powerless whisper. The song was about him, but it changed. His death changed me.”

Ston also noted the jarring emotional whiplash he experienced upon receiving praise for something that was always just meant as an outlet for his indescribable feelings. 

“At some point, I found myself in a situation where I wasn’t supposed to have big negative emotions or express them, but now I’ve been thanked for putting words to grief. I don’t even know how this music is supposed to make someone feel because my feelings about what I’m writing about are complicated. I was just processing, I was just in pain. I'm better about communicating negative emotions, but probably not great at it. Music has always been, especially because for such a long period of my life, music was a completely personal thing to me.” 

Ston’s journey with this musical project is a testament to the fact that although we change, our grief remains with us in ways we cannot always grasp with ease. Yet his personal lyrics and raw vocals evoke the primal urge to communicate that we all share and ought to engage with whenever we can. 

You can listen to Ston’s album “Loper” on Spotify and Bandcamp.