Everyone has something to say. Everyone has this inner voice that yearns to be heard. We all take different routes of expression. These different channels allow us to be creative in our personal ways. We all fawn over different mediums of art, whether it be photography, music, design, painting, and other creative outlets. It is a goal to let this voice be heard and to show the world a body of work. Brian Connors spent a lot of his young life following in the footsteps of some of his idols. Heavily influenced by the punk and hardcore scene, his medium became music. Heavily influenced by a genre that has no problem voicing strong opinions, the travels music has taken him on, and the stories of others, Brian shares with us his story and what Cape Cod means to him.

Brian moved from Norwich Connecticut to Sandwich when he was 2. His mother spent a portion of her life here, and she decided this was the best place to raise her son.

“My mom and dad split. We moved here from CT to move in with my grandmother because that’s where half of my mother’s childhood was spent was in Sandwich. I moved to Sandwich, lived in Mashpee back to Sandwich. I’ve been all over. I had a pretty normal childhood with all of the normal kid stuff. Running around, biking, and getting into trouble. You know, all the good stuff. It was the beaches that’s the Cape specific thing that I really enjoyed.”

As Brian grew up, he noticed that his forms of expression weren’t like that of the other kids. He wasn’t necessarily into pop culture trends. Brian had his own strong personality. A group of friends started to surround him from different walks of life all around Cape Cod. They shared one love. Music, and music that does not have a strong presence on Cape. He touches on this quite a bit throughout his story.

“Staying out of drug use when I was a kid didn’t keep me out of trouble. I just didn’t have the excuse that a lot of people I grew up with had because I was a pretty wild child with my group of friends. I feel like that’s how I avoided some sort of crippling addiction. It was being this and knowing that I could still get in trouble and chase the dream of a lawless free childhood without needing to turn to something like that. Music was big with that. The straight edge movement through the hardcore scene when I was a kid (helped). I’m not straight edge anymore but I was pretty much my whole life. So through that I definitely stayed out of trouble. I put my energy into music. We were worried about touring. We were worried about booking venues, getting shows, writing new material. It doesn’t matter if it sucked. It kept us busy. I found a group of friends outside of my hometown pretty early on so throughout high school I wasn’t with a lot of the people. For the second half of my high school career I was not with people I actually went to school with every day. Most of the people I hung out with were from the lower cape. My best friend grew up in Mashpee. We kind of banded together because it was so few and far between to find people that were playing the same style of music. We all congregated in the juice bar in Orleans or the rec center in Chatham or the sons of Italy in Cotuit. It was always groups from all over the cape. It was never a Sandwich group of friends or anything.”

One of his bands signed with a label and they were given the opportunity to tour the world. This opened his eyes to new experiences and allowed him to have conversations with many people that were from all walks of life. These experiences started to shape his values and look at life and circumstance on a much more macro level.

“I played in Punk bands and hardcore bands from the age of 15. That gave me the opportunity to get off the Cape and tour Europe, tour the states, and head into Canada. It really exposed me to a lot of what happens in the world. A lot of what happens on the Cape isn’t pretend, but it's so easy for people to get caught in what’s happening around here because we are so isolated from everything. That was my big exposure to the real world. I always felt like I was in this race with the people I grew up with that I never got along with. People that I went to school with. They went off to college right away and then they came back four years later with a wife and children and they’re settled back into their spot. I was living out of a van in Budapest and Germany for a month. Seeing things, meeting people. Meeting refugees from war torn countries and all this wild shit. Then I talked to them and they are actually jealous of what I got to experience. I got to see this from the other way around. That was pretty cool.”

Brian struggles with the cultural scene on Cape Cod. It does not match his views and the enjoyment he receives while absorbing content that makes him think extremely hard on his own opinions and pushes his value system out of the comfort zone. His need for different pulls his desire for more experiences. Life to him is large and filled with situation and moments. These moments pull his heart to want to experience more and branch out.

“As far as opportunity goes, I don’t see a whole lot unless you want to work in construction, or the restaurant business which I’ve done both of those and it’s not what I want to be doing. I find that as fortunate as we are for having so much diversity here, there is such a clash between the idea of a prospering immigrant family, and the snotty this is my home. A lot of the kids I grew up with either aren’t alive or are in jail for drug issues and its really kind of crazy to see how a lack of care for the people that live here year round. You see how detrimental it can be to the generations that grow up and I just want more. I want more culture. I want more experience. I want more opportunity. The culture is the big thing. I feel pretty deprived of that growing up here.  I am planning my escape this September. The long awaited escape. “

He plans on finding a home in another city, and exploring a career in another one of his creative outlets, fashion. Namely street fashion. A long with being a talented musician, Brian shares an aesthetic eye for the trendy street fashions in the world, and he wants to make a splash by influencing those trends.

When Brian was asked about what he loved about Cape Cod, he was adamant in his answer like many others were.

“I would say the people. I don’t know if there is much else for me personally other than the experience I have gotten by talking to people, and working with people from different walks of life. That has opened my eyes and taught me to listen and not just speak all the time. Sometimes you have to take the back seat and let the people that need to say something, say it instead of us doing it for them.”

For some people, Cape Cod is just the right size with the correct amount of people. We are attached to it by family and deeper connections. It’s shorelines draw us in and attract the most interesting people. For others like Brian, its borders are too small, and the need to experience the world overpowers the environment that Cape Cod holds. We wish you well in everything you do.