Biography

Hailing from Southern California, Cockeyed Optimist is an original band bringing Rock music to the next generation. Fans describe their music as a cross between Paramore and Evanescence yet somehow “Timeless”.

In a world where rock music is no longer popular, Cockeyed Optimist crafts songs heavy in sound and subject matter. While many Alternative and Hard Rock acts rely on backing tracks and pitch correction, CEO brings honesty back to rock music, playing every concert 100% live and producing their recordings without autotune.

Singer Cynda Renae began writing the music that became Cockeyed Optimist in 2007 as a way of healing herself after being kidnapped at gunpoint and raped. After she found a songwriting partner and guitarist in Sean Pierce Johnson, they released some of those songs on their first EP Undocumented in 2011. Their second EP All That You Were, released in 2013, also inspired the band to film and produce two music videos.

The duo has performed two West Coast club tours and played at many California colleges, universities, fairs and community events with various drummers and bassists. In 2014, they started the nonprofit organization, I Am A Cockeyed Optimist with the mission to help others heal from pain. At the same time, they met drummer Nick Stone who has since brought his orchestral background and fresh perspective to the music. The organization has become their biggest source of pride, enabling them to perform their songs at SoCal high schools while bringing a message of hope to the students.

The band is currently releasing their first full-length album, Into the Night, as a series of singles. The title track came out New Year's Day 2018 and the follow-up “Manotheistic” was released for Warped Tour 2018. With many insisting that rock music is dead, CEO is proving that it just needs rediscovered. After every high school performance, students tell them “I’ve never listened to rock, but I love your music.” Cockeyed Optimist hopes that Into the Night will reach a wider audience and allow them opportunities to perform larger festivals. In the meantime, CEO will continue their mission by bearing the torch of rock music in the 21st Century.

The Season 1

The season of silence descended on a world that was asleep in 2020. You remember. Masks. Lockdowns. Censorship.


But the silencing began years, decades, even before. For me, it began in 2007. 


My experiences led me to utterly detest politics. I thought I was about 95% an anarchist with a little American revolutionary fit in. In retrospect, I would be more accurately defined as a political agnostic, but the American rebel in me was stronger than I knew.


I didn’t vote. I voted in probably a primary on an in-between year when I turned 18 to say I could do it, but it didn’t mean anything. After my attack, I really didn’t vote. I didn’t think it mattered at all. I knew there was corruption from the top to the bottom. I didn’t think anyone was willing to end it.


But I knew there was something wrong with society. It wasn’t one thing. It was a thousand things. A million things. Little moments that just fell off. The spirit was talking to me, though I didn’t know it.


Thoughts turned into phrases. Phrases turned into lyrics. Many of those lyrics never became a full song, but some of them did. One in particular, was a song called, bandwagon belief system. 


I remember sitting in a craft service tent at some random Hollywood extras call eavesdropping on the people around me. It wasn’t necessarily a specific thing someone said, it was the way they spoke. A know-it-all spirit that seemed to think they had the answers for everything. I didn’t have all the answers, but I knew they sure didn’t.


The feeling that society was just all wrong only grew over the years. More life experiences. More little moments. More thoughts, phrases, lyrics, and sometimes songs.


We’ll get into more of that if you continue on this journey with me. But today, I just wanted to give you the impetus, the start of my season of silence and how now is the time it must end.