Blog by Riley Smithson (aka Shrimpnose)

My name is Riley, and I make electronic music under the name “Shrimpnose.”

Communicating with the world around me has been challenging - as I’m sure it’s been for other speech-impaired people. I started to stutter around 5 years old. Growing up in different social environments was difficult, mostly because of people’s lack of education on the subject. I was hyper-sensitive to the perceived ridicule and mockery I would receive from other kids, teachers, or people out in the real world.

I remember countless times trying to order something while out to eat with my family and feeling guilty and ashamed that the server had to take extra time to witness me humiliating myself in front of them when they had a full restaurant to attend to. If I thought I might have a verbal block, I remember not contributing to conversations with people I wanted to be friends with. I would not participate in classes, even though I wanted to. These are all feelings that are still with me today at 30 years old.

Around the same time my speech impediment developed, I was getting into music. My parents are in a band together, and my dad got me a drum kit when I was about 4 or 5. I  banged around on my own for a couple years, took a few years of drum lessons, and in middle school started to really commit myself to music after discovering that I could communicate the ideas in my head with full fluency, through music.

I started to teach myself bass and guitar in middle school. I often found myself alone at home, and playing my favorite songs on my iPod helped me feel connected to something larger than myself for the first time. I had new-found confidence in being able to play a song the way it was meant to be played - something I wished so badly I could do with my speech at the time.

In college, my speech got worse for a few years. I had always wanted to be a musician, but the intrinsic financial difficulties that come with that scared me away. I was studying psychology and Spanish to be a bilingual therapist. I wanted to connect to the world around me and thought that would be my best opportunity. By my third year, I found myself too often unable to contribute to my classes that were mostly communication based. I started to neglect my academic responsibilities in favor of exploring sound design in Ableton. I found myself at a crossroads of continuing college and struggling through the shame and embarrassment I was feeling in my studies and devoting myself to something that made me feel confident, expressed, and ultimately something I was more in control of than my speech. I decided to drop out and pursue making weird computer music and kind of just hoping it would work out.

It’s been ten years since then, and I cannot express enough the importance of speech impaired people - and everyone, for that matter - pursuing something that legitimately excites them. At first, it felt like I was running away from my problems that made me feel small and ostracized, rather than running toward opportunity. Simply through dedication (or obsession, I suppose) over time, I have come to accept my speech as a part of me. It’s no longer a big scary monster looming over me every time I open my mouth. Having music as an outlet allowed me to grow into the person I wanted to be. If somebody makes an insensitive comment, it’s no longer a big deal to gently inform them I have a disability.

Through music, I’ve been given the privilege of actualizing some of my dreams like releasing music on some of my favorite labels and collaborating and touring with some of my favorite artists that I grew up listening to. I’ve also made the best friends I could ask for. I guess my point in saying this is to emphasize the importance of embracing who you are. As a stutterer, it can be totally disabling and isolating to the point where we feel unable to contribute to or communicate with the world around us. If we pursue the things that come naturally to us - the things that excite passion inside of us - we will find the people and situations that make us feel connected to the world in the process. Success can’t be thought of as a single event, because you will never stop chasing. Success is loving the process.

Shrimpnose’s album is available here: https://shrimpnose.ffm.to/theworldpushedagainstyou

View his documentary here: https://youtu.be/_moOD1J5uic?si=0wd_s9x59DVGjQ29

Posted Feb. 6, 2025