The waterfront where you might find Brad Neal today is a long way from the waterfront where he spent his time as a kid.
Brad grew up in rural Missouri.
“My mom and I were born in the same town,” he said. “I grew up working on a farm. It was the family thing.”
While Brad remembers being worn out from the work, he said he learned a lot from being a part of a self-reliant family.
“We especially had to rely on ourselves during the winter when you couldn’t reach anyone else because of the icy hills.”
During the summer, Brad would escape from the farm.
“All I had to do was walk down a big hill through the tree line, across a field and through the set of trees, and there was the river. I have a lot of memories there.”
The setting was idyllic, but Brad struggled with living in a small town.
“Growing up in Missouri was one of the best and worst experiences of my life,” he said. “I didn’t really fit in there.”
Brad described himself as an idealistic kid with a different way of thinking than the people around him.
“Everyone was set in their ways,” he said.
Brad didn’t fit the mold, and he faced bullying and a reputation that was hard to break out of in a place where everyone knew one another. At his high school graduation, Brad remembers thinking, “Why did I put up with this?” and he decided to chart his own path.
After living in several Midwestern states, Brad made his way to Oregon five years ago. He has been in Portland the past six months, and he has finally found a place where he can have his own way of thinking and that is not stuck in the past.
Brad particularly loves Portland’s music and art scene. He enjoys the experimentation.
“If you just try, you can find people doing really interesting stuff all over the place,” he said.
A musician himself, Brad rails against the commercialization of music and believes “music is starting to lose its touch.”
In school, a friend introduced Brad to electronic music and he realized “I want to do this.” While music is Brad’s biggest passion, he doesn’t want it to be his job because “that wouldn’t make me happy.” He gives all his music away.
“Music should be a free art,” he said. “It’s like graffiti artists; they’re not looking to make a buck off of something. They just want to show art. I think that’s the way it should be.”
While Brad continues to pursue his music, he also plans to go back to school. He’s not sure what he will study, but he wants to get the credentials to get a career that “I can stand long enough to provide a better life for my daughter. That’s all I care about. It’s not about me anymore.”
As Brad prepares to return to school, Street Roots has become a classroom for him.
“You hear a lot of people talk, and you can tell a lot of people are from different places, and that is a positive experience because you are always learning,” Brad said. “That’s what I like about being here at Street Roots: learning.”
Brad loves the openness he’s found here in contrast to his hometown, and that is what he hopes to receive from others.
“Don’t ever judge a book by its cover,” he said. “Not everything is what it appears to be, ever.”