Former Darling Waste Singer-songwriter Lance Waste left his band after 17 years of touring and performing. He took a year off before returning to music with his new project, Frozen Lakes. He got off to a…weird…start with the single ‘Do The Shuffle’, a bizarre pop and dance song about his own impending death.

“Last year, I got sick. Really sick. My intestines were ripping and I was being poisoned from the inside by my own body. It was very painful. I was very weak. I got to the point where I was walking on a walker and most days couldn’t get out of bed.” Waste says, “Because of our bullshit healthcare system, I had to wait almost six months before I could have surgery. During an extended hospital stay, my wife went into labor and had our second child. They wheeled me into the delivery room in a wheelchair, watched her have the baby, and was wheeled back to my room. Everything was red and pulsing. I felt like my eyes were going to pop put of my head. Back in my room, they told me I might have has a stroke. I ended up having to have several procedures, including a 7 hour surgery. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it, so I wrote a will, some notes to friends, and the song ‘Do The Shuffle’. I wanted what could be my last song ever to be a fun, light, celebration of my death.

While recovering, Waste released Frozen Lake’s second song, the hip hop sounding, chill ‘Vital Signs’, a song about growing old. It was much better received.

“That song was about time marching on, whether you want it to or not.” Waste explains, “It’s specifically about music scenes and friendship groups growing up and moving on. Even more specifically it’s about how the Lower East Side New York music scene changes so much every few years. You can’t get it back and it’s time for the next group of wild young things to make their mark on the city.”

Frozen Lakes followed up ‘Vital Signs’ with ‘Love Theme For An Apocalypse’, a piano based, Covid-19 themed love song written for his wife. The single still had some of the production value of the first two Frozen Lakes songs, but sounded more like Darling Waste.

“‘Love Theme’ happened out of nowhere. Right when I started to get better and recover from my surgeries, the world fucking fell apart. For me not much changed, and had already basically been home bound for the past year or so.” says Waste, “But it was weird, while quarantine was devastating for a lot of families, it actually brought my little family a lot closer. We started taking early morning walks with our masks on, playing board games and having family dinners. With life slowing down, we were able to reconnect as a family unit.”

According to Waste, Frozen Lake’s new single ‘Keep In Line’, will be the last single released for the project, at least for a while. The single is another gorgeous piano ballad, this time taking aim at all of things that bother Waste right now, Christianity, Patriotism, Borders and Capitalism.

“This was actually the first song that I started writing for Frozen Lakes, but I just never really figured it out. I think I had to write the first three to get comfortable enough in this new space to finish this one.” explains Waste, “The song just kind of explores modern society and whether or not we are allowing creatives to create. With a 40 hour work week and all of the bullshit dogma we have to slog through, are we repressing the next great innovator? Is there a Galileo out there working in a factory? Is the next Da Vinci busy busting his ass to get out of a predatory mortgage? Is the next Newton to worried about what her husband and priest would think about her crazy ideas? As a society, we greatly value one’s ability to produce more than their ability to create. We aren’t placing any value on education and freedom to express one’s self. Everyone is valued by how well they can fit in. Self worth is determined by job, marital status, income and things like that. It just seems backwards to me.”

As for future plans? Nothing yet.

“Yeah I don’t think I’m going to do anymore Frozen Lakes songs. At least not for a long time. It was a genre I wanted to play around in and I’m glad I did. I may do some solo acoustic stuff at some point but not for a while. Time to take another long break and recharge for a bit.”