Hello Reverend Doctor! Thanks for chatting with us today! 2019 is coming to a close soon – what has been your favorite moment musically?
Man. 2019 has been a year or ups and downs. I put a lot of road under me this year and met a lot of people and played a lot of places I never thought I’d be.
So I’m going to pick a cultural music moment. Anderson .Paak dropped “Ventura” in 2019 and it reminded me how present and in our DNA Soul music is. I needed to hear it because of the textures it borrowed from the 60s and the 70s, but I needed to hear the way someone would produce it now. It’s not about taking old things and dusting them off. But it reminded me that the music also conveys a mood, a place, a feeling. And that feeling is celebratory.
How did you know that music was your path?
I don’t think that it is! I don’t think life has any more “paths” than what we choose or are limited to.
What I mean is this: as an independent artist I do my own booking, PR, email, fashion consulting, networking, research, artist development, logistics… I could go on. But it’s all painless to me because at the end there’s music.
I’ve done other careers. The messy details of those things were difficult for me to follow through on because I found no reward in the hustle. I could never make another dime for the rest of my life off music and I would still work at this thing because I still get to sing, write, and play.
So for me, for now, I choose music because that’s what my heart tells me to do. If I wake up one day and it’s not that, I won’t be upset at myself. I could see myself teaching, writing, or doing any number of other things.
I think that sometimes we put too much pressure on people of any age to find their “calling” or their “path” in life. I don’t think it’s as big as that. I think it’s about finding things or people you love and investing there. We’re lucky enough in life if we find even one thing that we love.
Share with us your musical background? Do you have a musical family or did you just fall into songwriting all on your own?
Great question with a funny answer! I am the black sheep of the black sheep.
Both my parents work at a university in Iowa, my dad’s a professor and my mom just recently retired. I have four sisters, two of them have graduate degrees in business and science. I also have two younger sisters, one that studied accounting and the other that got her PhD in a scientific discipline. In compare, I studied art and English as an undergrad.
Growing up there was certainly a lot of pressure put on school performance, particularly on math and science. I started letting my parents down REAL young because I would draw obsessively. I was creative at a young age and while they didn’t discourage it, they had a hard time resigning themselves that their only son would be an artist, I think.
I sang in the children’s choir at church growing up. But near as I can tell, I’m the only one with a fascination with music enough to follow it anywhere. My sisters played instruments when I was younger, but my first real memory of someone playing music was in church when I saw a pastor play the guitar.
I was really surprised when one year my parents bought me a guitar. I wonder if they knew I was going to take it this far if they’d still go back and buy it for me all over again!
Almost the same moment I learned to play my first song, I rearranged the chords and started singing my own words over the changes. I felt power. It wasn’t a lot but I did something that I literally never thought I’d do: write a song. I was hooked!
Tell us a few of your favorite musicians! And Why?
There’s very few musicians I consider to be permanently in my corner no matter what they release. And that’s partially because my taste is so wide and undefined.
Right now I’m really big into Jacob Collier. Watching someone at the top of their musical game do what they do with such joy and enthusiasm: he is so prolific and engaged. It’s hard not to be captivated by him both on and off the stage.
As a musical artist, I am constantly in awe of Lady Gaga. Maybe that’s surprising or maybe that isn’t. My spiritual successors are Prince and Bowie, and while I’m not gender and genre-bending to their point, she is a reminder to me that music at the end of the day is about spectacle and about ENTERTAINMENT. Sure, it’s art, but there’s plenty of important art that ain’t nobody gonna BUY.
Bruno Mars. The man infuriates me. In my opinion he is the most talented male entertainer working in the industry on the planet. One week he’ll write this annoying ear-worm about getting high and the next he’ll slay me in the spirit of The Godfather of Soul Himself, James Brown. There are a lot of really talented people that have no idea how to hone or market their craft that gave up on music. By that same token, there’s lots of people that have figured out how to do that one thing and market it, become flavor of the week and collect their check, and move on with their life. Bruno Mars is this deadly combination of raw talent and self-awareness. There are no limitations, no rules, you get to write your own ending with that combination.
If we were riding in the car with you – who we would hear coming out of the speakers?
Lately I haven’t been listening to music in the car! I know this sounds weird, but music in the car just puts me to sleep. More often than not I’m calling a friend while stuck in traffic or listening to a podcast. Can’t tell if that makes me a hipster or a boomer. I don’t think I’m either, but by definition I wouldn’t if I WAS either of those demographics.
Where can we find more of you and your music on line?
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/_reverenddoctor/
FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/revdrmusic/
URL: https://reverenddoctormusic.com
End of Interview