Caleb Jerome Morales shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Caleb, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
I lead a varied and busy life, balancing a fruitful career as a Consumer Research expert, a loving family and home life, and my artistic pursuits in music. However, it is quite common that the balance between these three pillars shifts. Oftentimes, even just within my musical life, the balance shifts towards assisting clients in furthering their own professional goals over my own artistic goals. In times like that, I drift away from my base of playing my instruments, writing new songs, or furthering my own projects. I will sometimes go weeks or months without touching my favorite instrument – the electric guitar.
In a way, that is what my song “Face to Face” is about. “In moments of silence,” the times when I am not playing music and hearing, with my own ears, the abilities I’ve cultivated throughout my life, “I fall apart.” I forget that which validates my existence and affirms my purpose in this realm. My self-talk deteriorates, and I begin to feel like a drone, meandering and middling in space, neither finding my grounding nor reaching meaningful heights. It becomes easy to forget that I am a musician at all, even if I am playing music regularly with clients.
Yet, every time, just before I am about to break, the heavens gift me with a free evening when my mind completely empties. Instinctually, I wander into my room, finally plug in an electric guitar, step on a distortion pedal, and strum an enormous chord. It usually sounds like pop punk or nu metal or shoegazy noise, and I am instantly returned to my youth before career, obligations, or global affairs crowded my mind.
From there, it may be five minutes or five hours, but I play until I feel peace. There always comes the point when, like a fight against waking in effort to stay within a dream, life pulls me out of this trance, and I put the guitar down. But for those precious moments, I feel as alive as I ever have. I am reminded of my value and my worth. And I am gifted the strength to continue forward on this journey through waking life.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Caleb Jerome Morales, and I am a singer/songwriter, music producer, mutli-instrumentalist, and writer based in South Florida. I am in a transitional period in my artistry, shifting my efforts from a volume based approach, releasing a new song every two weeks and playing over four shows per month, to slowly crafting an album under a new project called Good Moraale.
I also work as a session musician, serving a number of artists and bands in South Florida and have built a multi-purpose studio called Foxy Dubs. Foxy Dubs will soon be open to my musical artist community as a hub for video and audio recording, and I hope that it will one day become a home base for musicians to roost, connect, and ultimately, present their gifts with the world.
I feel that the new music I will soon release as Good Moraale is a fresh blend of nostalgic electronic styles brought to new life with deep, thoughtful lyrics and clean acoustic instruments. The first single from that project, “I Swear to You,” released earlier this year, and it has been my most successful release to date. Go check it out!
Okay, so here’s a deep one: What relationship most shaped how you see yourself?
During my junior Fall semester at the University of Florida, I joined a business fraternity called Delta Sigma Pi in an effort to expand my network and make new lasting friendships. While I met many peers who would evolve into lifelong friends, one friend I met would change my life and shape the man I see myself as today.
Louis DiPaolo, also known as the artist Smüth, and I met in that Fall’s “Pledge Class,” or new members group. We spent virtually every day together, growing close over a mutual love of music at a time when both of us were distancing ourselves from our musical identities. At 19 and 20 years old, we shared a feeling that the world was ours and that our personas were like clay, ready to be twisted and shaped into something very different from our surroundings.
In a peer group where many individuals had a more traditional set of goals beyond college – get a job in the city, then buy a house in the suburbs, and ultimately start a family – Louis and I discovered that we were different. While we both studied business, we dreamt of our lives as artists, together leaning back into the passion we may have abandoned had we not connected. Our opposite tendencies influenced one another and shaped a middle ground to where both of us would drift over time.
Louis felt called to entertain, immersing himself in DJing, rapping, dancing, and drumming, always expanding his ability to direct the energy of groups of people. I felt called to influence, immersing myself in composition, singing, piano, and guitar, always refining my ability to elicit complex emotions from individuals.
From late nights in college to our two years living together in Brooklyn, like Yin and Yang, our opposing natures weaved together, influencing each other to grow more well rounded, dabbling in each others’ skills, teaching one another, and helping each other to become more complete as artists and as men.
When conflict infected our relationship, solitude reinforced the impact we had in each other’s development. In several years apart, we poured into and released our first albums. At a distance, the lyrics in those two albums continued to shape us and remind us of the fruitful path that chose us. Then eventually, the stories we told brought us back together.
From our younger days to now, Louis and I served as mirrors to one another, illuminating the endless possibilities of the humans we’d grow into, reinforcing with our words and actions who we could become, and affirming the path less traveled that chose us.
In me, Louis saw a talented individual that once lacked confidence and gall, pushing me to grow strong and skilled. I am forever grateful for his unwavering belief in me.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
As I briefly alluded to, I once came very close to quitting music altogether. By the time I was twenty-one, I developed a habit of using music solely as a vessel in which to channel pain. Throughout high school and my first few years in college, my participation in music and bands was dismissed or discouraged by my peers. While I had support at home, some key pieces of my life felt quite hostile toward my musical affinity, creating a feedback loop between me writing sad songs and hiding those songs from the world.
By my college junior year, I was ready to quit and take up what I thought to be the life of the company man. My goal was to finish my Marketing degree with honors, get a good job in a new city like Chicago or New York, and willingly resign myself to the trap of office work, happy hours, dating apps, and social media trendy hobbies. I tried to adopt the goals of my more straight-laced business school peers, but fortune had other plans, connecting me with likeminded friends who shared my genuine priorities.
Louis, and other friends like Tim, Mehrzaad, Gio, and Alex, shared my love of music, but expressed it in different ways. They encouraged me to continue on. Tim constantly invited me to record and play gigs with him in Tallahassee, providing me a platform to share and grow my electric guitar playing. Mehrzaad and Gio introduced me to rapping, freestyling into the night and pulling me in with them. Alex heard my song “Pipe Dreams,” a simple track I thought to be disposable, and pushed me to make more songs like it. He insisted that it was my best work, which made me feel my power like never before.
Honoring his request, I showed “Pipe Dreams” to more people, and each responded more favorably than the last as I improved in my ability to perform it. Before long, the song was beloved by a tight group of our friends who all shared similar sentiments of desire and dreams. That encouragement drove me not only to continue playing music, but to also record and release my music for the first time.
With each passing performance, I felt my power reinforced by the people around me, and that compounded even more as I played open mics and small shows in New York City. Music, once simply a sarcophagus for my pain, became my key to connection. While I once hid my pain, I learned to turn that pain into powerful messages and metaphors, gaining confidence with each passing day.
The more I shared my gifts, the more people reached out their helping hands, ready to invest in my growth. Perhaps the greatest example of this: after recognizing my vocal limitations together on the NYC open mic circuit, another friend, Melissa, connected me with my first vocal coach, Kevin Michael Murphy. Kevin taught at NYU by day and trained Broadway stars by night. He would serve indispensably as my coach and guru, training not only my voice but the body that is my instrument. I never properly thanked Melissa, but her kind gesture and empathic approach to my greatest sensitivity allowed me to address my biggest weakness as a songwriter. Thank you, Melo. I owe you one.
Today, I invite pain for its gifts in the form of lyrics, melodies, and rhythms. My electronic music project, Good Moraale, reflects on the highs and lows of success and suffering, blending sounds from throughout my artistic journey into songs that feel fresh, yet nostalgic. I recognize now that through pain comes beautiful music, and my unique approach to music is my super power.
By distilling my perspective into layered, metaphorical lyrics and rich, soaring melodies that transcend suffering, I have gained the unique ability to seduce more complex emotions from listeners that are far more colorful than simply brooding about the pains I am confident to defeat. In learning to alchemize pain into beauty, I am gifted with the most precious gifts of all – connection and community.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
I have an unwavering belief that I was put on this planet to make the music I wish to hear, documenting my life through lyrics and soundscapes that serve as individual time capsules. Every song I have written is like a 4-dimensional journal entry, capable of taking me back to the exact feeling I had at the time of writing. When I get the opportunity to produce a proper recording of a song, I arrange a composition that evokes the full suite of emotions described in the lyrics. If that opportunity does not come, I have an incredible imagination that can produce a complete track in my head so long as I take the time to listen.
Naturally, not every song I write gets produced and recorded, as the time and financial investment in each song can be massive. As such, I have accumulated a backlog of hundreds of songs, for many of which I hope to hear a proper recording some day. I have written seven albums and over one thousand songs to date but only have finished two albums and perhaps a dozen miscellaneous singles.
In a way, this gigantic, ever-growing catalogue, and my primary desire to listen to final versions of the songs locked in my imagination, is a blessing. It has spared me from any trivial desires to reach an audience, giving me focused time to build my own home studio, learn music production and recording techniques, and develop my abilities as a singer and instrumentalist.
The job will never be complete, because there will always be more songs, more life to document, and more skills to learn and prove through my recordings. At my core, I am a forever student, always learning and growing as I chase the proverbial dragon. The pursuit fulfills me, yet I am never truly satisfied, and that sense of infinity fills me with my thirst for life. So I chase and I chase and I chase.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
There are no absolutes in life. Life is a constant confrontation between light and its absence, and it is through the integration and reconciliation between the light and the shadow where enlightenment can be achieved.
From an early age, our Western mythology teaches us of the binary spanning good and evil, imposed upon us by Disney films and other media. We play cops and robbers. We fear the dark. We are taught to make friends but not to negotiate with our enemies. In my youth, we were taught about the evils of drugs through the D.A.R.E. program and taught to hate groups of people under the branding of terrorism. We are taught cause and effect but skip what comes in between. We are taught either that public school breeds bad kids and private school breeds good kids, or that poor schools build character while rich schools build drones.
However, the truth is that nothing is simple. No one is truly noble. Few are truly evil. Not nearly enough are truly aware. Most will do whatever it takes to pay their bills, to achieve their goals, to confirm their own biases, to justify their feelings of entitlement or confidence in their competence.
Few will admit the fallibility of their humanity. Fewer will admit that we know nothing beyond the ability to adapt. Truly, to be alive is to be capable of adaptation, and to be human is to be capable of adaptation to nearly every scenario if determined or desperate enough.
This is why art is so unquestionably important. For only through art can we properly grapple with the absurdity of existence. Only through art can we contend with the selfishness of man. Only through art can we admire our own darkness while we reach for the light. As creators or observers of art, all becomes possible. The gray areas in life come into full color. The throughline connecting all human souls becomes bold and visible.
We are all one and the same, struggling as we wrestle with our shadows. It is the duel that brings out the greatest beauty in life. And it is I who wears the largest grin as I put up my best, most earnest fight.
My upcoming Good Moraale EP, “Heavy is the Head,” will explore this theme in great detail. As of this writing, I expect it to be available on all platforms on April 20, 2026. I hope you get the opportunity to listen to it when that day comes.
Thank you for reading.
With love,
Caleb Jerome Morales
AKA: Good Moraale, C. Rome, and Fade
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.calebjeromemorales.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/calebjeromemorales/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CalebJerMorales
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CalebJeromeMorales
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz58c2Q4quX48Kv6VCEDdiQ
- Other: My Catalogue on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/438CAAbtIQneZkK7CQ2hLW?si=fa4b39bfadfb45a4
The story behind Good Moraale: https://www.calebjeromemorales.com/good-moraale
Image Credits
Anna Godoy
