On 31 August, when Aaron Stauffer sent back his answers to my questions about “Last March,” he had already logged surf session #111 for the year. He caught 13 waves that day. Wipeouts have their own accounting rules, and a wave can still count if he makes it through the bottom turn before going down.
Aaron counts because he likes counting. He says it gives him peace. Surf sessions, waves and songs all end up with numbers attached to them. He loosely traces the habit back to quitting drinking and smoking pot more than 20 years ago. He says he “became stranger” after that, and counting was one of the things he picked up.
The same instinct sits behind 100 Songs Before Death, his long-running solo project. “Last March” is #32.
Loose, psychedelic, a little fucked in the head as usual, slow-dragging and half-asleep, but with that scrappy lo-fi art-school charm. This time Aaron circles around things drying up, washing away and quietly going to shit, moving through disapproval, distance, windshield reflections, dead petals and saltwater until something that seemed manageable turns out way worse than expected.
At #30, “Caught Behind Your Luck,” he was already joking that the project might take another 25 years, with surfing slowing the schedule while giving him ideas out on the water. Two songs later, the number still means exactly what it says.
“100 or more is definitely the target,” Aaron said.
He can imagine a point ten years from now when he works much less and records much more, which could cut the remaining stretch down to 15 years. It could take 25. He might never finish it.
“the future is unwritten and that is ok”
“Last March” began with Aaron’s voice and nothing else. He was travelling in Denver, where his grown-up daughter lives, and recorded a batch of vocal-line ideas into his phone. One of those became the new song.
He later moved the melody onto piano. That process usually changes what he originally heard in his head, and this time was no different. After recording the music, he waited until he was actually recording the vocals to write the lyrics.
Aaron has used that method for several years. He likes protecting the original vocal line until the end, without forcing a melody around words that already exist.
From there, the recording went to Will Rice of Wax Roof.
He waited. Rice eventually sent recordings back, Aaron asked for changes, and they passed the song between them several times before arriving at the finished version.
The final recording credits Aaron with the song, vocals, guitar and keys. Rice plays guitar, bass and keys, and handled production and the mix. The song grew from a vocal melody captured on a phone to piano, then into that guitar, bass and keys arrangement.
Aaron picks collaborators according to who is interested and who has time. He expects their versions to surprise him.
Sean can take that approach a long way. Aaron says Sean has deleted every instrumental track he was sent, kept Aaron’s vocals and recorded an entirely new song underneath them.
Aaron loves it.
That freedom has been part of the project for years. Different people take his starting points in different directions, and “Last March” gives Rice his turn at it. Aaron self-releases these songs, so the dates can move around his own schedule. “Last March” arrives on 17 September 2026.
Surfing is one reason those dates need room.
Aaron lives in Northern California and keeps returning to Washington, where his parents still live. Most of the year he flies because it is cheap and easy. In summer he sometimes drives, a trip that now takes him about 17 hours.
Washington changes his routine. He plays and writes a lot there, partly because he is away from the water. His parents still have the old piano he learned to play on, and he goes back to it when he visits.
With no surfing available, music takes over as the outlet.
Back home, the hierarchy is clear. Surfing is the main thing that slows his recording and release schedule. Writing is different. Time in the water helps him come up with songs.
“i will always blow everything off to surf or chase a good swell so….things in my life get delayed”
There are physical receipts for that habit too.
He has three surfing scars. The most dramatic came in 2020, when he ate his board during a duck dive on a big day and hit his face. It healed completely, and the remaining mark is small enough that you have to enlarge some of his photos to spot it.
Each shoulder has one as well. One came from a reef in Mexico on a tiny day. The other came from a rock at Point Arena on a much bigger one.
When Aaron initially said he did not really have any photos from the water, scars were what he could show instead. He connected the joke himself to the Seaweed song “Antilyrical” and its line, “only scars to show.”
Tacoma keeps returning in a different way.
Aaron has already been clear that another run of Seaweed reunion shows is not in his plans. Old friendships and old musical relationships are still active. In our earlier conversation, he said he continued to see Clint several times a year and that their friendship went back to before Seaweed.
He also keeps playing with Atkins.
“I love to play music with Atkins,” Aaron said. The two have what he calls “a musical chemistry and language that now spans decades.”
Around a decade ago they had another band, Major Treasure. They recorded songs and played exactly one show, in Tacoma.
Now there is The Modern Stauffers, a Jonathan Richman cover band with Atkins and George. They have been practising, with a first show currently looking more likely for spring or summer. George is playing bass in the project.
The choice of Richman is simple. Aaron, Atkins and George are all huge “JoJo” fans, and there is a large catalogue to pick from. Aaron is going to see Jonathan Richman in Petaluma in December. It will be his first Richman show since the 1990s. Atkins still goes to see him regularly.
George has his own long history with this circle. He did three or four of Seaweed’s early tours, roughly the second through the fifth, working as a roadie. That included their first European tour, which Aaron remembers as one that “went on and on forever.”
These days George also plays with Atkins in Black Smoker. Aaron is a big fan of the band’s album and especially George’s singing and songwriting. He wants people to go listen to it.
Stu, Black Smoker’s drummer, has been playing in bands with Atkins for roughly 25 years. Another of their bands is The Fucking Eagles, another one Aaron points people towards.
Then the counting brain appears again. Aaron notes that George is actually the second George that Atkins has been in a band with.
For him, these connections make complete sense in Tacoma.
He points to Girl Trouble, who have kept going since 1984. Aaron says a Girl Trouble show in Tacoma can still have 10 or 15 people in the room who have been fans since the beginning.
“Tacoma is a town that has pride and we enjoy sharing it with the other Tacoma peoples”
Aaron will keep moving between that world and Northern California. Washington means his parents, the piano he learned on, old friends and long-running musical chemistry. California means the ocean is close enough to wreck whatever recording plan was supposed to happen that day.
He already has two more songs written and thinks he can finish another before the end of 2026.
That next number matters to him. #33 is what Aaron calls a “magic number,” and it puts him roughly one-third of the way to 100. He is considering recording most of it himself, returning to the way he made the first couple of songs in the project, when he played everything, including the drums.
Whether the remaining 67 take 15 years, 25 years or never get finished is currently another number he cannot count.
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