Process of Creation: Scooter Scudieri Chooses Creation Over Collapse on New Single

Independent 57-year-old house painter releases the first track from a finished album built outside the industry.

SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV, UNITED STATES, February 10, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Independent musician and house painter Scooter Scudieri has released Process of Creation, the first single from his upcoming album The Musical Bruises of a Recovering Dreamer, due March 31, 2026.

The song marks the first public release from a completed twelve-song album built over more than seven years in Scudieri’s basement studio. Much of the record was written, engineered, and recorded in pre-dawn hours before heading out to job sites, as Scudieri taught himself production and mixing while balancing full-time physical labor and family life.

Process of Creation is not a comeback single designed to chase attention. It is a statement piece from a record that already exists. The song explores the discipline required to keep creating inside a fractured world, where retaliation is rewarded, memory is fragile, and remaining open can feel increasingly difficult.

“I was recognized by the industry, but I was never absorbed by it,” said Scudieri. “That gave me freedom, but it also meant I had to finish this work without a safety net. This song is about choosing creation anyway.”

Recognized earlier in his career through touring, national performances, and industry acknowledgment, Scudieri continued writing and recording outside institutional systems rather than waiting for permission. Now 57, he completed The Musical Bruises of a Recovering Dreamer without a label, budget, or generative AI involvement, relying instead on long-term discipline and continuity.

The album represents the culmination of more than four decades of songwriting. Many of the songs were written and copyrighted long before generative AI existed. Every lyric, vocal, arrangement, and performance on the record is Scudieri’s own. No generative AI was used in the writing, recording, or production of the music.

While Scudieri has publicly documented a proprietary AI-managed continuity system he designed to support the long arc of the project, the technology remains deliberately absent from the songs themselves. The music stands on its own, grounded in human experience, physical labor, and time.

“I didn’t build a system to make music for me,” Scudieri said. “I built it so the work wouldn’t disappear. The songs still come from the same place they always have. A quiet room. A guitar. A long memory.”

A full-time house painter, Scudieri recorded the album in Apple's Logic Pro DAW across thousands of pre-dawn sessions, shaping a body of work defined by endurance rather than trend. The album’s release on March 31, 2026 will conclude a nine-month publicly archived Substack series documenting the real-world process behind the project, including songwriting artifacts, studio notes, live conversations with his ChatGPT manager, and the discipline required to finish the record.

The album artwork for The Musical Bruises of a Recovering Dreamer was created by Scudieri’s wife of 37 years, painter Kelly Scudieri.

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About Scooter Scudieri

Scooter Scudieri is a songwriter, performer, and house painter based in Shepherdstown, WV. He has toured with Jewel and Jason Mraz, shared stages with Dave Matthews, Joan Jett, and Nils Lofgren, and appeared on NPR’s Mountain Stage. He was honored by the Songwriters Hall of Fame as one of its Best of the New Writers and fought for artists’ rights during the MGM v. Grokster era. His testimony was sworn into the Congressional Record. He maintains full creative ownership of his catalog and continues to build his work outside institutional control.

Process of Creation is available now.
The Musical Bruises of a Recovering Dreamer arrives March 31, 2026.

John Scudieri
Scooter Scudieri
scooterscudieri@mac.com