We recently connected with Jarrad K and have shared our conversation below.
Jarrad, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
I think the biggest risk i’ve taken is moving to Nashville after putting in so much time in the LA music scene – Nashville was a huge reset button – i had to completely start from scratch – my “credits didn’t transfer” nobody cared about what i had done in LA and to be honest, i was moving away from a lot of things too, but a good friend of mine told me that if i keep my head down, do the work and stay kind, things had a real chance of working out.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
i write, produce and mix songs and albums across a lot of genres – it started when i was about 21 and a friend revealed to me that some artists don’t write their own songs… which just about blew my mind – so i started writing with friends and slowly but surely, got plugged in to a few writing sessions etc – i fell in love with producing, instrumentation and arranging etc – i would use inspiration from pop songs i liked and apply it to folk songs, or vice versa – just mixing and matching – melody, harmony (my fav) layering of sounds, punchy drums – these are all things that really moved my feet. then i started mixing and became obsessed w that as well – my favorite part of working is trying my best to stay out of the way – producing is a service industry – its creative, yes, but it’s our job to help somebody else get to where they want to go – so i love to push someone in a direction and then jump out of the way and let them glow
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
starting out, i thought that having a “team” (ie mgmt, publisher, attorney, etc) was they skeleton key – but the reality is… nobody cares about your career as much as you do. it’s just impossible. i had to unlearn that several times. it doesn’t matter how good your network is. these days, we have to truly be our own ecosystems. DIY is stronger than ever. label deals are starting to feel more and more like high interest rate bank loans. publishers and song pluggers know what’s trending less and less, not for lack of skill, but because the tastemaker has evolved into a multi-headed monster w no forecast. for all of these reasons, we can sometimes turn to our people and place blame on them for our fires/failures, but truly nobody knows anymore – it’s now the biggest lottery in the world. so the key is to (lovingly) shut up, do the work, be kind and most importantly BE YOURSELF and good things will happen
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
sit with your non-creative family or friends around a diner table and try and explain what you do for a living… it sounds like a joke. all day, i push buttons, turn knobs, draw graphs, write silly rhymes, rarely eat, noodle on the guitar, meet strangers and swap stories and the intimate life details… all just to get a song that 99 times out of 100 will live on a hard drive and never see the light of day. but when the 1 goes… it can make it all worth while. and often times, that’s not even enough for the soul. BUT! we love it and we can stop. it’s what fuels us and keeps us living. we squint and scramble over the dumbest decibels. we pull our hair out to find fresh ways of saying “i love you” or “i loved you” or sometimes even “i hate you” we sing our feelings because posting them isn’t enough. we obsess and we thrive and we fail a lot but when we win we win big and that’s what keeps us in the game
Contact Info:
- Website: jarradk.com
- Instagram: @jarradk_allday
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@eviljarrad?si=8THseE6B9AKh5h4v