Held10: The Upright Piano Album Made for a Dog's Sleep

Held10 is a ten-year remaster and reimagining of East Forest's 2016 album Held, and the story behind it is stranger and more tender than a tenth-anniversary reissue usually carries. The record was tracked in a Portland, Oregon living room on a Charles Walter upright that the musician found through a Craigslist search and collected from a storage locker, in the middle of a divorce. A lab mix named Kaya slept through many of the sessions and can be heard in the background of several songs. A decade later, the album became the soundtrack to Kaya's passing, a synchronicity East Forest calls one of the biggest of his life. What follows traces that arc from the piano to the microphones to the quiet music built to make a listener feel held, and to the reissue that carries it forward.

How did a storage-locker piano start an album?

Ten years ago, East Forest was living in Portland, and by his own account it was a hard year. He had been with his partner, Karina, since they were very young, and by 2016 the relationship was ending. He describes the period without dwelling on the details, but he is clear about its weight: a shift of that kind reaches into every part of a life.

In that season he began wanting a piano. He did not have one, and the timing made little sense. He admits as much, noting that a part of him sensed his living situation was about to change and that buying a large object was the opposite of what a person in transition should do. Still, the impulse held. [3:12] He had been listening to a wave of piano recordings at the time, much of it neoclassical and modern classical, and he wanted an instrument of his own to work with.

The search itself is a small lesson in how instruments get valued. Upright pianos on the used market run from the nearly worthless to the merely serviceable, and buyers often shop for price rather than tone. He was after something better. He found Charles Walter, a brand he had not known before, whose uprights he understood to still be made in the United States, in the Midwest, by a family business. He describes them as professional-grade instruments with heavier construction, a bigger pin block, and a longer soundboard, and he noticed that few of them turned up used because most buyers moved up to a baby grand before they reached that tier.

He checked Craigslist, which he notes was the place to look before Facebook Marketplace took over. A Charles Walter in Portland popped up. The seller would not reply to his messages, so he kept searching and settled on a different used piano, then changed course the night before he was to buy it. The seller finally wrote back. [6:22] The next morning he met the seller at a storage locker, where the only thing inside was the piano, sitting in the middle of the space. It was out of tune and cold. He bought it anyway, had it moved to his house, and had it tuned.

"I wanted something simple and intimate. I wanted to climb into the music and feel held."

East Forest, description for the Held10 video, YouTube, 2026

How do you record a piano with a few microphones in a living room?

East Forest had never recorded a piano before, and he approached the job the way a self-taught engineer does: by trying placements until the sound was right. He set up four microphones. Two small condensers sat on the side of the instrument, a large condenser sat low beneath it, and another large condenser went in the middle, after the wood was taken off the soundboard so the mic could get in close. [7:13] He fed them through an old Apogee Ensemble interface, using its preamps and converters, and monitored on headphones.

The microphone plan matters because it explains the sound of the record. A piano is not one source. The hammers striking strings, the wood of the soundboard resonating, and the body of the case all radiate at different points, and each microphone hears a different mix of them. Close placements capture attack and the detail of each key's touch; distant or low placements catch the bloom of the soundboard and the room. East Forest was building a picture of the instrument from several angles at once, in a room that was not designed for recording.

The approach also reflected what he was trying to do musically. He was not chasing a concert-hall sound. He wanted to hear the small things, the depression of a key and the way a note settled, and he wanted them close enough to feel like a whisper in the ear. Playing quietly and amplifying that quiet through headphones turned a modest upright into something intimate. The result is a piano album in which the room is audible and the listener is positioned as a near neighbor to the player.

What was the music supposed to do for the person making it?

Looking back, East Forest links the record directly to what he was going through. He sensed that his life was changing in ways he did not yet understand, and he felt a need that music could answer. [7:43] His description of that need is one of the most useful things in the video for anyone who makes or listens to quiet music.

"I needed to feel held, like I needed to feel held by something inside, like a kind of strength or a sort of tenderness."

East Forest, video transcript, Held10 release, 2026

He describes the record's pieces as small beds, short phrases laid down and then built on, rather than sweeping compositions. That approach keeps the music from demanding attention. It holds a space, and it does so through repetition and softness rather than drama. For a listener in grief or upheaval, that is the practical difference between music that asks you to feel something and music that lets you stay where you are.

This is also why the record has lasted. Its emotional logic does not depend on a particular year or a particular breakup. It depends on the physical experience of a quiet instrument played close, which is why it could later carry a meaning its maker had not planned for when he recorded it.

Why is a dog named Kaya on the record?

Kaya was a lab mix who came into East Forest's life when she was a puppy. He recalls that she did not stay out of the room while he played. [9:13] She was present for the sessions, and the description of the album notes that she is on several of the songs, "doing her thing in the background." The detail that stays with you is simple: she used to sleep while he played.

That image is worth sitting with. Much of the music business is built around attention, and a piano record made in a living room is an unusually private act. Here the most constant listener was a dog, drifting off. The sleeping dog and the quiet music were part of the same domestic life, the kind of ordinary companionship that rarely makes it into a record's liner notes.

How did a 2016 album become the soundtrack to a loss?

The story turns on a later moment. Years after the record was made, Kaya was anxious in a way that needed soothing, and East Forest played the album for her. [23:32] It helped her settle, and the music that had once been the backdrop to her sleep became the thing that calmed her in distress.

Then, much later, the album became the soundtrack to her passing. East Forest describes this as one of the biggest synchronicities of his life, and it is the reason he decided to reissue the record and tell the full story behind it.

"Many years later, this album was the soundtrack to her passing. It was one of the biggest synchronicities of my life. I dedicate this album to Kaya."

East Forest, description for the Held10 video, YouTube, 2026

It is worth being careful about what the story does and does not claim. East Forest describes the sequence of events and the meaning he has taken from them. The video does not frame it as a prediction or a miracle in any formal sense, though the title uses the word. What it offers is a sequence: a piano bought in a moment of change, an album made to feel held, a dog who fell asleep to it, and a later loss that the same music accompanied.

What changed when Held was reissued as Held10?

The reissue is not a simple repress. East Forest went back to the original sessions, remixed the material, and had it remastered with a mastering engineer. He also gathered B-sides from the same sessions, remastered those too, and found a few previously unreleased pieces that he had not included before. Some of those B-sides appear on the vinyl edition, and the full set is part of the digital release.

The physical edition is a limited run of 500 copies, gold foil stamped and individually numbered, and it can be pre-ordered now. The reissue also ties into live performance. The song "Doorway" from Held is the basis for a European tour, with dates in Lisbon, Munich, and Warsaw in November 2026, and February 2027 shows in Dublin, Bristol, London, Stockholm, Zürich, Berlin, Zagreb, and Lithuania. Those dates tell you something about how the record is meant to live: not only as a document of one winter in Portland, but as music that is still being played for people in rooms.

The reissue, then, is an argument that a small album can carry a long life. A piano bought from a storage locker, recorded with four microphones in a living room, and played quietly so the player could feel held, has now outlasted the circumstances that produced it, and it carries a dog's sleep inside it.

Where to go from here

• Listen to Held10 on Spotify, Apple Music, or Bandcamp.
• Pre-order the limited-edition vinyl, 500 copies, through the East Forest store.
• Watch the film Music for Mushrooms at musicformushrooms.com.
• Explore the Journey Toolkit to go deeper into the work.
• Find tour dates and tickets at eastforest.org/tickets, and sign up at eastforest.org for event news and private offerings.

If you are a musician, start with the method: find an instrument you can afford, learn where a few microphones want to sit, and play quietly enough that the details come through. If you are a listener, the most useful thing to take from the Held10 story is its simplest image, a dog asleep while someone plays the piano in a living room. Music made that way is not trying to impress anyone. It is trying to hold.