Scotty wasn’t just my brother. He was part of who I was before life got complicated. Before courtrooms, addiction, homelessness, police lights, motel rooms, broken relationships and all the shit that eventually became calXdo.
When you lose a brother, you don’t just lose a person. You lose history. You lose the bloke who remembers versions of you nobody else ever got to meet. The stupid memories, the arguments, the laughs that wouldn’t make sense to anybody else, the things you never thought you’d need to remember because you assumed there would always be more time. Then suddenly there isn’t.
Losing Scotty left a space that never really gets filled. You learn how to carry it, but you don’t replace it. Some days it sits quietly in the background. Other days a song, a memory, a place or one random thought can bring the whole thing straight back.
There are things I wish I could tell him now. Things I wish he could see. I wish he could see what came out of some of the darkest years of my life. I wish he could see calXdo growing from something I was doing just to survive into something that is reaching people who are struggling themselves.
I wish I could show him the music. I wish I could play him a track and hear him tell me whether it was good or absolute shit. More than anything, I wish he could see that I kept going.
Because there were times I came dangerously close to not being here either. That changes the way I think about losing him. Death stopped being some distant thing that happened to somebody else. I understood how a person can reach a point where everything feels too heavy. I understood what it feels like when pain gets louder than hope.
And that is part of why this music matters so much to me now. I can’t bring Scotty back, but I can make sure the people I love know what they mean to me while they’re still here. I can make music for the person sitting alone at 2am thinking nobody would notice if they disappeared. I can say the things men sometimes don’t know how to say to each other until it’s too late.
Scotty will always be part of my story. Not because I want my life to be defined by loss, but because the people we lose still shape the people we become.
There will always be songs I wish he could hear. There will always be moments I wish he was standing beside me for. And no matter where calXdo goes from here, part of my brother comes with me. Every milestone. Every stage. Every person the music reaches. Every time somebody decides to stay another night.
That’s why the tribute means more than a song title. “I’ll Be Missing You” isn’t me pretending I’ve moved on. It’s me admitting that some people leave a hole you carry forever.
Scotty was my brother.

He still is

And he’ll never be forgotten.