Photograph by Caitlin Rother

Geza Keller: New Mexico Tech has something to gain from his album Got Nothing to Lose.

“When I worked at Los Alamos in the ’80s, I had a Q-clearance, and I did a full reveal on my family still in Hungary,” says Oceanside (by way of Hungary)-based musician Geza Keller. Q-clearance is a U.S. Department of Energy greenlight to access certain top secret and restricted national security information.  “At the time, and still, the government was very concerned that I could be compromised if the Russians found out I had family there and I was working at the lab. If we sent anything back, they wanted to make sure it didn’t have a Los Alamos address.”

Starting two southern California tech-arts companies, Infinite Optics and Cibola Glass, made it more difficult to visit his homeland. “Then my special needs son was born.” The birth had a profound and permanent effect on his worldview. “It solidified what I thought a life of service would and should be, it’s not about you anymore. It’s about community. I’m fortunate that I have a company where I can employ my son and accommodate his special needs. Others don’t have that.”

Though politics prevented Keller from visiting his homeland, he contributed to the music scene through his original band breakingthecode, and later with Fakebook, which covered an array of musical styles while fusing them into original tunes. “I decided to form Fakebook as a cover band, as I had never really been in anything but in bands doing original music. The idea was to use the Stevie Van Zandt model of throwing in your originals while doing covers and see how they fly. A couple of those songs made this first album, and I’ve got a few more of those for the next album. Fakebook played around North County mostly, since I live there, as well as playing at the Belly Up Tavern a few times.”

His newly released album Got Nothing To Lose is rich with San Diego references such as the Hotel Del and Coronado Island. His fascination with hobo life is present on “Train Diddy,” which he says “is about the grind of getting up every day and heading up to [my office in] Orange County from Oceanside.” It’s Keller’s first official solo release and the culmination of decades of experience, which included witnessing his friend’s death on 9/11. “Victor was my college roommate at New Mexico tech in 1974,” Keller told KOGO host LaDona Harvey. “When we graduated in 1975, he said, ‘I’m going to go fly jets.’” The college roommate Keller refers to is pilot Victor Saracini, who was piloting United Airlines flight 175, the second plane to hit the Towers on 9/11.

The title track “Got Nothing To Lose” addresses the event simultaneously as a tragic turning point on a global scale and as Keller’s personal loss, with lyrics like “What can you say, it took two hours for the world to change, you won’t be here tonight, I’m trying to make it all seem right.” A portion of the album’s proceeds go to a scholarship fund at New Mexico Tech in Saracini’s name, as a way to both honor his friend and move past the tragedy.

It’s a musical journey of both reflection and action, a theme Keller embodies when talking about his son 20 years after his birth. “The world is much more in tune with the special needs community now than it was 20 years ago,” he says. “It’s the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, everyone is touched by it now. A public meltdown makes more sense to people these days. There’s still a long way to go once they graduate from high school. We mainstreamed our son through public school for both him and his typical classmates to get to know each other. When we are out in public, he gets recognized, and I know that helps build his self-esteem.”

Preceded by a single for “Let Me In,” Got Nothing To Lose was co-produced by local garage band icon Jerry McCann (Orfuns, Framework) and Sven-Erik Seaholm (Gandhi Method, Seaholm Mackintosh).