Blød Maud started after I moved to Pittsburgh in 2013.

Emily Crossen had also moved to Pittsburgh from State College a year or two before, but we were not close beforehand.

It was my girlfriend at the time Shana, a long time friend of Emily, that discovered Emily's "secret" soundcloud page. It turns out that without ever really telling anyone that close to her, Emily had been writing and recording songs as "Blød Maud" for some time, and that shit was good.

Shana was always neck-deep in whatever music scene she was around so she immediately found a show for Emily to play to try and show off her writing:

“I didn’t want to play by myself,” she says. “So I was like, ‘I gotta get some dudes.’”
- Margaret Welsh, quoting Emily Crossen, PGH City Paper

Blød Maud only lasted an album and 2 EPs as Emily moved to Philly, Pat Coyle got very serious about his solo stuff, and our 2nd bass player Eli got into economics and math, the band just kind of drifted as the writing slowed down.

I will always be very proud of this band – we had so much fun writing and hanging out together and brought a fun energy to the stage. Selfishly it was also fun to not have any "song writing" responsibilities but to mostly get to write lead guitar melodies on top of Emily's already hypnotic tracks.

If any of the bands I was in ever had a shot at larger appeal, this was probably it. Sometimes I wish we could have stuck to it and worked a little harder, tried touring...but maybe that would have not been Blød Maud anyway.

I still keep in touch with Emily frequently, though I don't visit often enough. Same with Pat. Eli and I had a long-running "joke" (honestly I don't think he liked me enough to be good friends with me) about never having each other's phone numbers but I think he's doing well teaching somewhere. Rob, our first bass player, sometimes reaches out as well – that dude rules and I miss him.

Shana tragically passed in 2016 well after effectively forming the band, she is missed and remembered so often, but especially when I think about Blød Maud.