Seven-year-old Garrett Stone guides a crisp $20 bill into a coin machine. Blacklight illuminates the arcade in a dark purple hue, and the bill—much like the dayglo lines that criss-cross the arcade carpet—glows bright neon green. As the machine pulls in the last bit of bill that Stone received from his parents, it begins to churn with the sound of quarters tumbling toward the dispenser, a small chute in the front of the machine that opens toward a metal bucket. Twenty dollars’ worth of quarters fall, a clinking cascade of tinny plinks against the bucket’s metal bottom, and as they do, young Stone feels his excitement rise in bubbles that float from the pit of his stomach and into his chest.
Stone, who today is both a musician and the video production specialist for USM’s Office of Communications, recalled how the sound of falling coins was a constant at the Aladdin’s Castle in Biloxi’s Edgewater Mall. His parents would occasionally bring him and his older sister when they were young until the arcade closed in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina inflicted too many damages. Now that he is 26, it is a sound that the Hattiesburg musician remembers fondly, so much so that he attempted to render it through the synthetic drums of the opening track of his recently released album “Arcade Summer.” Sitting at a tight 23-and-a-half minutes, the album is a collection of 10 video-game-inspired songs that are indicative of the nostalgia Stone feels for his childhood.
“I grew up playing these games and listening to all of this retro-styled arcade type of music,” Stone said. “And I said, ‘That’s what I want to do; I want to take that feeling of being free in the summer and not having to worry about anything and combine that with the sounds that I had growing up of these video games that I love.’”
“Arcade Summer,” a lo-fi electronic album that Stone produced completely on his own, calls back to many of the games that Stone played in arcade cabinets as a child, such as Gran Turismo, Mario Kart and Wario’s Woods. Modern influences are present as well. For example, Stardew Valley, released in 2016, has a relaxing, mindful nature that inspired Stone to incorporate slower compositions into the record. Stone juxtaposed these moments of rest with rapid, heart-pounding synth drums in songs like the dynamic “Dungeon Crawl” and the climactic “Final Battle.” Stone believes that the differing tempos and moods of this album allow it to better replicate the video games that serve as its inspiration.
“I wanted there to be high moments on the album, and I wanted there to be slow moments—to give you a perspective of both ends of an arcade game,” Stone said. “You have your boss battles, and then you have your farming for beets or whatever.”
While “Arcade Summer” is fascinated with the sounds and structures of video games, the album is about much more than simply gaming to Stone. This is the first electronic album in Stone’s body of work, but after finishing the album, the 26-year-old musician is certain that this newfound genre of electronic music is what he is interested in producing as a solo musician.
“This is definitely a departure from anything that I have made in the past, but it’s something I’m good at, right?” Stone said. “I never really delved into this space before, and going into it now makes me realize that this is where I should be as a solo artist.”
‘Never Wanted to Write Something Happy Before’
Much like video games, Stone has had a passion for music from a very young age. He inherited this passion in part from his parents, who exposed him to a wide breadth of genres as a child.
“My mom raised me on alt rock and nu metal. I got country—like ’80s country—and ’80s rock and Weird Al Yankovic from my dad, right? And then my mom was into die-hard rock. So I had a very large spread of music that I listened to growing up,” Stone said.
As a child, Stone was homeschooled and sung in the Kingdom Seekers Choir, a competitive chorus the Christian Home Educators Association hosts that would regularly compete at William Carey University. Stone also took piano lessons as a part of his homeschool curriculum, an experience that would come to serve as the technical foundation for his current musical endeavors. However, Stone eventually lost his motivation for studying piano and decided to change musical directions.
“After about four years, I hit a wall,” Stone said. ”I just wasn’t progressing. And so I stopped taking lessons and just kind of started experimenting on my own, just making stuff.”
Stone ordered a drum set from Amazon for around $300—the same kit that he uses to this day in his band Anarchy and Stone—and began to teach himself how to play. Stone’s newfound interest in percussion signaled a change in his personal goals for creating music. He was no longer interested in singing in a choir or practicing classical piano; he wanted to become a rock star, something his mother’s love for nu metal planted the seed for early in his childhood.
“One of the earliest memories I have is from when I was 4 years old. I was singing along and dancing around the living room to ‘In The End’ by Linkin Park,” Stone said. “Every kid dreams about being a rock star, being on stage playing music, and so I wanted to be a rock star. That’s why I was learning to play the drums.”
The multiinstrumentalist officially became a rock star in 2018 when he released his first album, aptly titled “Beginnings.” Unlike “Arcade Summer,” this album is a mixed bag of genres like rock, rap, and electronic, showcasing many of the genres that the then-20-year-old would experiment with and develop further later in his career. To Stone, this album was not only an experimentation in sound, but in the form of an album as well.
“The whole point of ‘Beginnings’ was to tell a story of being hurt to being okay. If you look at the content of the songs, the way I laid them out, everything goes from hurting, hurting, pain, kind of getting over it to being okay. And that was the whole point: just to express how I felt at that time.”
So too was his goal in creating “Arcade Summer.” In the six years between the release of “Beginnings” and “Arcade Summer,” Stone has become a husband and a father, life developments that he claimed have led to the more positive tone of his new album.
“(‘Beginnings’) came from a place of anger, a place of hurt. It was about trying to be okay when you’re not. (‘Arcade Summer’) is from a place of, “I’m married, I have a child, a job, a house.” I’m a happy person. I am fulfilled in my life. And this album is a representation of musically where my head is. Like, I want to write something happy. I’ve never wanted to write something happy before in my life.”
‘More to Prove’
Going forward, Stone intends to keep producing electronic music as a solo artist. However, the musician is still enamored with rock and metal, so he uses his collaborative projects to scratch this creative itch. Such was the case with his first band, Anchor’s Dawn, which he founded in 2022 as a way to “play a bunch of rock stuff.” The band was short-lived, however, as before their second show, their rhythm guitarist Drew Hollander—who performs under the stage name of Andy Anarchy—was involved in a car accident that shattered his leg in three places. With one of their core members unable to perform, Anchor’s Dawn quickly disbanded.
However, Hollander, whom Stone called one of his best friends, collaborated with Stone to form their current project, Anarchy and Stone. While this band is still young, the two are already busy producing their first record, one drastically different from “Arcade Summer.”
“We are in the process of writing a full length album in that rock, heavy metal style that we both love,” Stone said. “That’s fulfilled me creatively on the rock and metal side. But I felt that I still had more to prove.”
What Stone wants to prove through his solo career is not that he can attain superstar status or find financial success in his music. His goals are humbler than that.
“That’s not what (‘Arcade Summer’) is for. This album was to prove to myself that I still have something musically to give, aside from just being a vocalist and a drummer,” Stone said. “It’s to prove that—no matter the adversities you go through and whatever your chosen field is—if you apply yourself, you can make art.”
Listen to “Arcade Summer” and more of Garrett Stone’s music on Spotify.
Know a Mississippian you believe deserves some public recognition? Nominate them for a potential Person of the Day article as mfp.ms/pod.
