On ANTI-ICON, there is an explosive song called Vagabond, referencing a word Eric has tattooed on his fingers. In his former lifestyle, the “eras” of Ghostemane came with knee-jerk changes, sonically and geographically. Growing up, Eric and his brother counted eight separate childhood homes. In 2024, he moved back to Florida’s West Palm Beach, a place he now calls home, after getting married in 2023.
“There’s a reason why the word ‘vagabond’ resonates with me, being this kind of nomad,” he considers. “As an adult, whenever my lease was up, I wouldn’t even think about renewing it. I was constantly running away from any bad times: ‘Fresh start.’ AlI I ever really needed and wanted was a steady home. I mean that literally, as a place to live, but also in a person – my wife, my kids. I never thought I would actually find that.”
‘I just need a little place to call my home’, he repeatedly cries in Jupiter, the eerie first track Eric wrote for AM:FM alongside producer Kenneth Blume (Denzel Curry, IDLES) in 2025.
“I was going back and trying to speak for my younger self,” he explains. “But also from a place of future me: ‘You do end up finding it.’”
Truthfully, this utopian image is more of a “madhouse”, laughs Eric, largely thanks to the recent birth of his third child. His middle child, who has non-verbal autism, is always mucking about with beats on her MPC and staring intently at her father on the TV when Eric’s wife, Skye, puts on old Ghostemane music videos. His teenage stepdaughter is old enough to engage with his past and has enjoyed attending his recent shows, although she’s had to deal with some classmates treating her differently after realising, ‘Is your dad so-and-so?’
“I do have a unique situation, [in that] I don’t have to get up and go to work every day, so I’m basically playing the stay-at-home dad role with my wife,” says Eric. His self-imposed hiatus coincided with meeting Skye, an event he says held the key to his newfound happiness.
“I know a lot of people are going to see that and [think] it almost sounds like the most un-Ghostemane thing ever. But I never expected to meet the love of my life. The amount of support and love, and understanding about who I am… to really give this person everything that they’re giving me, I needed to love myself too. It’s cliché, but it’s true. I never really thought I’d be here. I didn’t think I’d be alive past 30.”