Tariq Shihadah splits his daily life between writing, recording, and performing music around the Midwest, producing his independent arts community-focused podcast, The Local Glow, and working as a full-time traffic safety engineer. With his mind caught in tension between the right and left brain, Tariq’s texture-driven folk music sits at the intersection of formulaic creativity and raw expression. It draws influences from a colorful cultural background, blurred religious and spiritual roots, and a fascination (if not a subjection) to emotional frailty and social awkwardness. Tonally gentle but lyrically immediate, his writing acts as film to flash frantic moments, humming affections, and sidling doubts against, capturing days and seasons through a balance of chemical reaction and technique.
Tariq's latest release, "Hum", is a brief, three-track EP about the little vignettes that seasons of life get boiled down to in our minds as we age and our time for reflection gets busy-ed away. Half-imagined and fleeting images of ghosts zipping down the hall, splintered, dusty brown olive branches, and sunset-crowned sandboxes in the fall; this album is a short pile of nostalgia-tinged photos for you to flip through any time you want to take a moment, take a step back.