When one starts high school at eight years old and college at thirteen, there is no choice but to see the world differently. The intellectual and social experience is completely alien to others. This creates the need to search for a bridge to connect one’s island to the rest of the world. Music becomes the engineer and words become the materials. Together they began construction.

 

Toby Ganger begins his musical journey as his successful acting career in movies, tv shows, commercials, and voice work began to fade, taking the dream of flying off that island with it. He would later make up half of the hip hop duo called Inverse. Together, Toby and his musical partner put out two critically acclaimed albums (So Far: The Collection and So True) working many of the top names in the industry. With a video on heavy rotation on MTV, multiple major labels began to pursue the duo and a few well known artists offered to bring them on world tours. The reward for eight years of building their brand had arrived. So Toby was caught off guard when his musical partner decided to quit making music. The journey had to begin again.

 

Toby set out to prove himself as a solo artist. He used his newfound creative freedom to experiment with new genres, new styles, and new subject matter in the making of two solo albums (Evolutionary and Evolutionary 2). Both received raving reviews and his reputation as an elite lyricist grew even more. Something new was taking shape.

 

However, in 2014, not being in a financial situation to afford beginning a new music project, and with his first child on the way, he made the decision to stop pursuing music and to focus on supporting his family. In early 2018, he watched his then two beautiful children discovering the things in the world that gave them joy. He began to feel like a hypocrite as he encouraged them to pursue those things while he was neglecting the things that nurtured him.

 

Fatherhood had changed him. This was now someone who understood who they were as an artist and as a man. He was ready. Toby called up an old producer friend in Finland (a multiple Finnish Grammy award winner and serial Billboard charter) that he had been discussing working with for at least fifteen years. This time circumstances were different. They begin work on the album.

 

Toby travelled twice to Finland to work on the project. In the process, he found himself returning to his childhood love for catchy pop melodies. These melodies start to serve as the musical foundation for connecting the broader audience to his lyrical and conceptual virtuosity. They served as the foundation for exploring what it means to be oneself in the world while being part of larger relationships and communities. To find a way to build that childhood bridge or perhaps even transcend it. He found himself breaking free into the crowd. He dove into the personal, relational, sociological, political, philosophical, and metaphysical waters that surround this bridge and used the melodies to bring the crowd along to experience his island at last.

 

Toby Ganger is here to stay. The album is Free Machine. The bridge has been built.