CLOUD KEITH BLACKWELL. 28. CIS MAN. HE/HIM is here! Theyâve lived in Cascade for 10 YEARS and currently reside in OLD CASCADE. CLOUD is the LEAD SINGER, GUITAR PLAYER & PRIMARY SONGWRITER OF HIS BAND COSMIC ATTRACTION and frequently hears that they look a lot like JOE KEERY. Funny, huh? If ever caught by Letterboxd, theyâd say DEAD POETS SOCIETY is in their Top 4 and the theme song to their lifeâs soundtrack would be LINK by DJO. / jack, 31, he/him, est, animal abuse/harm/death.
STATS.
FULL NAME:Â Keith Blackwell Cloud NICKNAME(S): None/tbd BIRTHDAY: May 11th AGE: Twenty-Eight BIRTHPLACE: Chicago, Illinois STAR SIGN: Taurus GENDER: Cis Man. PRONOUNS: He/him SEXUALITY: Heterosexual OCCUPATION: Lead singer, guitar player, and primary songwriter for the band Cosmic Attraction (Lord Huron Sound claim) THEME SONG: Link by Djo
PHYSICAL.
FACE CLAIM: Joe Keery. HAIR COLOR: Brown. EYE COLOR: Green. HEIGHT:Â 5 foot 11âł TATTOOS: various. PIERCINGS: None
PERSONALITY.
POSITIVES (+): passionate, creative, adventurous NEGATIVES (-): impulsive, stubborn, resentful MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic good. FEARS: failure, living an ordinary life ELEMENT: Earth. HOGWARTS HOUSE: gryffindor. DRUGS/ ALCOHOL/ SMOKING: yes / yes / no AESTHETICS: the crackle of an old neon light, inspiration found in the sounds of the world, bars crowded to capacity with people singing the words to your songs, laying on your back and staring up at the vast expanse of the universe
BACKSTORY.
Trigger warnings: emotional abuse, misogyny, drug use, religious extremism
Culture Rock Fan Magazine Interview
June 2026 Edition of The Spotlight Column by Frankie Demarco
Hey rock'n'rollers! Welcome to another edition of The Spotlight: the monthly column where I sit down with local musicians on the scene and pick their brains like guitar strings! My subject this month is one that so many of you readers have written in to request over the past several years, and a guy that I myself have wanted to sit down and have a chat with ever since he and his band first took over the scene here in Cascade after winning The We Will Rock You Battle of the Bands over in NYC way back in the summer of 2016. And wouldn't you know it, now that their latest single âWho Laughs Lastâ is out and being listened to and talked about by seemingly everyone I know, he's finally said yes to sitting down for an interview with me! So without further ado, here's my exclusive interview with Cloud: guitar player, vocalist and primary song writer for Cascade's hottest band, Cosmic Attraction!
I: So glad to finally have you here, Cloud. Thanks so much for doing this!
C: No problem at all, man. Iâm glad to be here. I figured, if nothing else, this would stop you from emailing me every other day!
I: Don't count on it! No, but seriously, you have been a highly requested interview by our readers for quite a long time now, so I'm really glad we were finally able to make it happen.
C: Me too, man. It's definitely long overdue.
I: So, I wanna start by asking you about the name Cloud. I've always wondered: Is it just a stage name, or did your parents actually name you Cloud!?
C: Ha no. Itâs not the name I was given at birth, but itâs not really a stage name either. It's the only name that I go by.
I: Would it be pushing it too much to ask what your real name is?
C: Cloud is my real name, man. Like I said, is it the name I was given at birth? No. But itâs the only name I acknowledge. It's the only name I've gone by for over ten years. The guy I used to be is dead, and nobody is gonna miss him.
I: Oh damn. Okay. Why do you say that? What makes you think nobody would miss the old you?
C: There really wasnât much to that guy to even miss.
I: What do you mean by that?
C: I just mean that the life I had as that guy wasnât really much of a life, and I wasnât really much of a person. See, I grew up a part of this real illustrious, but also really conservative and extremely religious family, and yeah that meant that my life growing up was a life full of wealth and privilege, sure. But it also meant growing up with the strictest of expectations and standards weighing down on me constantly.
I: What kind of expectations are you talking about? I gotta say, it's hard for me to imagine you growing up in a conservative family!
C: Ha! I'll take that as a compliment man, thank you. But yeah, the family that I grew up in? I don't know man, it was fucked up. Boys are expected to grow into âgreat menâ and leaders, and bullshit like that. Thatâs just how itâs been for generations. A lot of politicians in the family. My father is a State Governor. So it was drilled into my head over and over and over again that the boys in that family donât fool around with trivial pursuits like art, or music; they leave that stuff to the girls, and they study law, and politics, and math, and most importantly, The Bible, and they prove their dominance and inborn right to lead through excelling in athletics. Real textbook misogyny and patriarchal bullshit. Men in that family are expected to be alpha males, in the truest and most fucking toxic definition of the term. If youâre not drawing crowds of admirers and followers with natural charisma and social dominance, and ensuring that everyone knows youâre at the top of the food chain, then youâre a fucking disappointment to them.
I: And you werenât like that?
C: Itâs not that I wasnât like that; I played the part just fine. Itâs just that I was never really comfortable with it. . I mean c'mon, no kid wants to be a disappointment to their family, right? So I gave it my best shot and tried to be exactly what they wanted. But looking back it's obvious to me that I always kind of resented the fact that I wasnât allowed to choose my own path or figure out who I was on my own. But I buried those feelings for a long time. Too fucking long.
I: I think I understand what you mean. So when you say there wasnât really anything to who you were before, youâre saying that you didnât really have your own identity outside of who your family wanted you to be.
C: Exactly man. I didnât come by any aspect of who I was honestly. I was molded in the image of what my family wanted me to be.
I: So how did you come to find yourself and become the person you are now?
C: The answer is every bit as cliche and cringe-worthy as you might expect, but itâs the truth: The genesis for who I am today was finding music. Let me take you back alright? Boarding school, little fourteen year old me was told that I had to take a mandatory art class, and so I reluctantly signed up for Freshman guitar with Mrs. Elliot. Iâll never forget walking into that room on the first day of the semester; probably the most nervous Iâve ever been in my life. Mrs. Elliot had a reputation for being hard on her students; something Iâd only learned after Iâd already signed up to take the damn class and it was too late to pull out of it. I remember, I sat down, and some of the other students around me already had their guitars out, and were playing something that, at the time, to me, sounded really good, but then Mrs. Elliot walked into the room and scolded them for their poor and sloppy technique, and I remember wishing right then that Iâd signed up for Freshman Art instead. I thought Iâd made a huge mistake.
I: Really?!
C: Oh yeah absolutely. I thought I had absolutely no business at all being there. But then I took the guitar Iâd been assigned out of its case, and I canât explain it, but it just felt right in my hands immediately. Then I started playing what Mrs. Elliot taught us in that lesson, and liked the way it felt and sounded, and even though I was still nervous, there was some excitement in there too; something I was not too accustomed to feeling at that point. Iâd never really felt all that excited or passionate about anything before that. Not like that anyway. Even sports. I was a great athlete, but I really only played the sports I played because my dad expected me to. I think I thought I liked them at the time, but like I said before, I buried a lot of what I really felt just to make my family happy. Anyway, playing the guitar made me feel excited like nothing ever had. But I said to myself right then âBoys in my family donât waste time with useless pastimes like musicâ and I promised myself that once the class was all done and over with, Iâd put the guitar down and try to focus on what was âreally important.â And even when it turned out that I was actually good at the guitar, like naturally had a gift for it, I kept telling myself the same thing. But let me tell you something: I was fucking lying. And you know what? I knew it from the minute I picked up that guitar. I knew I wasnât putting it back down again if I could help it.
I: And of course, you didnât.
C: Nope, sure didnât. When the semester ended, I didnât return the school guitar. I hid it in the back of my dorm room closet and claimed Iâd lost it. My father, furious as he was, ranting about the stupidity required to lose an instrument, still ended up paying the school to replace it. It was the first time in my entire life that I had ever done something in direct defiance of my parents; the first time that Cloud peeked out from behind that obedient kid that Iâd always been. With guitar in hand, I really began to feel like myself for the first time. This was something that was strictly mine. I loved the way that playing and making music made me feel, and guilty as I felt for enjoying it, I canât deny that there was a thrill that came with knowing that I was doing something that my family wouldnât approve of. It made me feel empowered in a way that I had never experienced before, and my confidence started to grow as a result. I figured as long as I continued doing the things they wanted me to do, I could have it both ways.
I: So what happened after that?
C: Freshman year after that is a bit of a blur in more ways than one. Probably a mix of the constant thrill of having this secret and the fact that around that same time was when I first got introduced to the wonders of sweet leaf and started indulging pretty heavily. Good timing, because I donât know if I could have handled the nerves of trying to hide everything I was doing from my dad without it. I do know that I binged hard on any and all music I could get my hands on. My stack of vinyls got taller by the week, and by the time the summer came, I realized there was no way I was going to be able to hide them all in my suitcase, so I stashed them in a hollowed out log in the woods near the school. They were, unsurprisingly, gone by the time school started up again.
I: Aw no way!
C: Yeah way. (laughs) The idea came to my when I was high as a kite and in a bit of a panic about what I was gonna do to keep my dad from finding them when I got home. Some of them he might not have cared about but most of them he absolutely would have. Like I said, my family are ultra conservative Christians, and they take that to the extreme, so any rock and roll music is considered the devilâs work to them. If Iâd brought home my Sabbath or Stones or Beatles records and they found them? It would have been bad. But it was still stupid of me to think I could hide them in a log for the entire summer and they would still be there when I went back for them.
I: What about the guitar? What did you do with that?
C: That was harder to try and hide. And honestly, I didnât want to be without it for the entire summer. So I sent it to a family friend through the mail and asked her to hold onto it, and went over to her house any time I wanted to play. Probably should have just done the same thing with the vinyls.
I: This is fascinating! Your old man sounds like a real Thomas Oregon, if you catch the reference.
C: (laughs because he did in fact understand my truly amazing reference) Thatâs exactly what he was, yeah. My life really was like a rock opera. Or at least it felt like one to me. I unfortunately didnât have a spaceship shaped like a treble clef though.
I: So what happened next? Iâm on the edge of my seat listening to this!
C: Well, Sophomore year of high school is where things really started to change, because sophomore year is when me and some other dorks who loved music just as much as I did decided to start a band. Well, okay, to consider us a band at that point, you need to have a very loose definition of the word, but we were playing and writing music together and thatâs what matters. We did, eventually, get to be pretty alright too. We were good enough that when we found out that a local pub near the school was hosting a band night, we lied about our ages and snuck out of the school to go and play there. I wonât name the pub in question just so that they donât run into legal trouble.
I: That sounds a lot more like the Cloud that we know! Were you scared of getting caught?
C: Oh fuck yeah. But I also desperately wanted to do it. Iâd never had the chance to play music in front a crowd before, and I wanted to see what it was like. I was definitely afraid of getting caught though. So much so that I told everyone to call me Cloud. (laughs) Yeah, thatâs where the Cloud name comes from. I was smoking a joint at the time and had just exhaled a cloud of smoke when someone asked me what my name was, and I panicked and said Cloud. But yeah, that first time playing in front of a live crowd really awakened something in me. It was really a transformative experience. It was totally worth the risk as far as I was concerned, and I was dead set on doing it again and was a lot less worried about getting caught after that. Of course, we eventually did get caught
I: Oh shit. What happened?
C: I donât really know. I figure someone ratted us out. How we didnât get caught until senior year, I have no fucking clue. But when we did, the consequences were swift and severe. I was only spared from being expelled because my parents pulled me out of school and made a huge donation. They were planning on sending me to an even more rigid school where students are kept under constant supervision. I also had to watch as my father burned all the music Iâd written and frantically muttered some prayer about redemption for my soul.
I: Damn. That sounds pretty extreme.
C: It was. But it was also exactly what needed to happen for it to become clear to me that I needed to get out of there. I think I'd always hoped that if my parents found out about what I was doing, I would be able to talk to them and make them understand, but that night I realized that was never going to happen, and the best thing I could do for myself was to get the fuck out of there. I realized that I was going to have to make a choice between my family and myself, and I chose myself.
I: How did your family take that?
C: I know itâs not what you want to hear, but I donât actually have all that much to say about it. What youâre imagining is probably spot on, honestly. It was fucking terrible. There was a lot of yelling and crying. But it needed to be done. I've never had more clarity on anything in my life than I had that night in making the decision to walk away from my family
I: So that was the moment when you really became Cloud then?
C: Yeah I guess in a sense it kind of was. I had already been Cloud for awhile by that point, but in walking away from my family, that's when I fully embraced it. I signed a paper and changed my name legally not long after.
I: Thatâs an insane story! So what did you do after that?
C: Well I got as far away from Chicago as fast as fucking possible, which is how I ended up here in Cascade. I'd always heard that this city was a haven for artists, and if I was going to try and make a go of it as a musician, it seemed like the perfect place for me. It turned out to be exactly that, and the rest is pretty much history. Started Cosmic Attraction, entered the big Battle of the Bands in New York in 2016 and won that. Over the years, have built a pretty good national following. Toured the whole country a few times, and the West Coast a lot more times than that. Cascade is home for us, and I don't think we'll ever leave this wild and wacky place.
I: Well, this has already been a pretty long interview, and I didnât even ask half of the questions I wrote down before hand! This definitely took a turn I did not expect, but Iâm sure our readers will be fascinated to hear your story! But I guess my last question for you today is: what can readers expect from you in the future?
C: They can expect more music. People reading this mag have probably already heard a good chunk of what will become the next album from seeing our live shows, but trust me when I say thereâs still a lot that nobody has heard yet, and once we get it all recorded itâs going to be mind-blowing.
I: I for one cannot wait to hear what youâve got cooking. Readers! if you havenât already, go listen to Who Laughs Last, the latest single by Cosmic Attraction, available wherever you get your music! Anything youâd like to add, Cloud?
C: Yeah! If you havenât had the chance to come see Cosmic Attraction, we play pretty much every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night!
Tldr Version: Cloud comes from a highly conservative Christian extremist family who are highly respected and are known to produce âgreat men.â Cloud grew up doing his best to be the person that his parents wanted him to be, always being dutiful and obedient to their wishes, the perfect âgolden boyâ of a prestigious family. This continued until he went off to boarding school and discovered music. Through music Cloud found his confidence, his identity, and the courage to break free of his family's control, putting his birth name of Keith Blackwell firmly to rest, and pursuing his dream of being a musician. His band, Cosmic Attraction, have been a staple of the local music scene in Cascade for the past ten years, and the city is their home hub. Their sound claim is the band Lord Huron, and they've released all of the LH albums that have come out to date (though the order of release was different, but that's only relevant if you happen to care about those details lol) except the most recent album The Cosmic Selector Volume 1, which is the album that, in game, Cosmic Attraction are currently working on and have released one single for. That single is the song Who Laughs Last, which can be found here.Â
