We recently connected with Joshua Walk and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Joshua thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
The very first ingredient is passion! I was never the type to just listen to music. From childhood I have been drawn to music as a way to express my emotions, so my initial draw to music was creating an expression. After 20 years of being an independent artist and paying other people to engineer for me I realized that I was being limited by the engineers capabilities. It became apparent to me that the only way I was going to be able to express my true emotions was to learn the engineering, I do wish I would have paid more attention to the creation and engineering earlier on, but also am a firm believer in things happening when they should. The biggest and most essential part of my current success, is undoubtable my return to school for formal education, I now hold a bachelors degree in audio production, and an 1 class shy of my masers degree in entertainment business. As far as obstacles, I think that the biggest is time! There are a lot of naturally talented people out there, I consider myself to be one of them, but rarely does natural talent take you all the way, It usually comes with time invested to your craft or hobby to get that polished outcome. In our industry, there is always so much to learn and making sure to manage time appropriately and invest as much time as possible into sharpening your skills is an absolute must to reach success.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is JOSHUA WALK, Born in St. Louis, MO and raised in Salt Lake City, UT. I am known in the music industry as “D.E. ThaPRODUCER.” My career in music began in 1999 while stationed in Vicenza, Italy with the US Army as a paratrooper. I was DJing at the on base club and some guys were free styling. I started to play instrumentals for them and I was absolutely hooked! Drawn in by how amazing this craft was, I eventually took the Dr. Dre 2001 (Instrumental Album) back to my barracks room and began to freestyle. At the time, I was gong by the artist name “Dreamz” and it didn’t take long before I had rallied a small group of artist o record an album there in Italy. Our collection of artist began to make music as “Dreamz Entertainment,” and by the time I left Italy to come home, Dreamz Entertainment had recorded an album, Love Life, Industry, that would never make it to official release. I returned home from the Army in 2002 and hit the ground running as an independent artist. I found a local studio and recorded my album “The New Cat” also known as “Against. Your Words,” after adding 2 new songs, this album was also unofficially released. During this time I was attending every freestyle battle possible trying to establish a name for myself. During one of my shows, I met, Lowkeezy, a touring artist from Topeka, Kansas, who owned Breakin Free records. I signed a new artist deal with Breaking Free and recorded my album “Risen” and this is the point where Dreamz became D.E., with the new album coming out under a label we decided to rebrand and out of my respect for Dreamz Entertainment which for me is where this all began, I adopted the name D.E. My album Risen would not see an official release either, but I traveled to local area performing and promoting my music almost non-stop. By this time I was working in the oil field eventually becoming a Driller on an oil rig. My schedule was 2 weeks on 2 weeks off and the money was great so for 10 years, I would record and perform on my days off. Still living the performers life and still paying others to do my engineering, I was fortunate to meet the owners of STEELFIST Fighting, a local MMA group an I would go on to write the fight club anthem “STEELFIST” in addition, I was granted a performance at each fight event directly before the main event of the evening. This would go on until 2015 hen the oilfield crashed and I was laid off. I found work at an oil refinery here locally. and continued performing but would eventually split paths from STEELFIST as they were a booming fight club and I was a “local” musician. My song would go on to appear on the nightclubs cable tv show as the intro music for several years. In 2019, 2 major events happened, first, the VA issued me a disability rating of 100%, and as a result, my place of employment determined that I no longer met the needs of the position. Now unemployed and uncertain of what I should do with my time, I made the decision to return to school. I attended Full Sail University and received my bachelor’s degree in audio production. It was during this degree program that I opened my own studio TRU Sound UT in Draper, UT (Salt Lake City), and began engineering. Having been a recording artist for so long, I wasn’t completely oblivious to the process and this gave me the ability to learn very quickly. It was vey shortly after opening my own studio that I rebranded one more time adding “ThaPRODUCER” to D.E. Completing my bachelors degree in 2022 and running my own studio, I now engineered for other artist as well as my own music, but I wasn’t sure what to do next? I made the decision to grow the business and went back to Full Sail for my masters degree in Entertainment Business which will complete the end of February 2024. Since gaining an education and opening my own studio, I have officially released my debut EP “TRU”, my debut album “Graduated”, and a number of singles, all of which are available on all major streaming platforms. Now looking forward beyond the completion of my masters, I am adding features to my studio and we are no long going to be simply and engineering studio. My new model is to be a full service artist/brand development company. I will offer all services from recording and engineering, to market and distribution, to merchandise and touring as I make TRU Sound UT on of Utahs leading music establishments. To TRU Sound is working with 18 artist and growing.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Passion to Profession! From being a Paratrooper in the Army to a Driller on an oil rig, hard work has never been something I would shy from, but there was for a very long time, this urge to earn income from music and if I could do so, I could consider myself successful. Having been making such great income from the oil rigs, and only having to work half the year, I allowed myself to lose a bit of steam regarding my goals with music, so it was truly a blessing for me to get laid off in 205 which ultimately began the snowball effect leading to me being in music and earning, full time. Now, rather than consider myself done, my goal has evolved and I get to guide other artist in their journey and help others turn Passion to Profession.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
All of 2023, I have had one fan in particular, and there are others but this one stands out, he repeatedly shared stories of his own growth through the year and would attach my music to his stories, In a recent post on the promo to my new song “On My Way” releasing Jan 6 on all major platforms, but this fan commented as said “Graduated was my song for 2023, think this one will be my song for 2024.” For me, it is absolutely most rewarding to know that others, even 1 person, but the more the merrier, that can listen to the music I make or the music I engineer for other as well, watching this music reach out and have a positive effect on others is so inspiring. It definitely make me want to continue down this path! For all the trials and learning experiences and years that have gone by, I do feel that I was able to become a TRU asset to my music community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dethaproducer.wixsite.com/trusoundut
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dethaproducer/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DETruSound
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dethaproducer1978/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DEthaPRODUCER
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvvlBUN48Nbo6Y3XjK0ZT2g
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/tru-sound-draper?osq=Recording+Studio
- Other: Facebook business page for TRU Sound UT – https://www.facebook.com/trusoundut/
Image Credits
Amanda Maynard