We were lucky to catch up with Peter Schrupp recently and have shared our conversation below.

Peter, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I found there was a Venn Diagram of skills that led to an unlock in my life. There’s an intersection between what I’m good at, what people would pay me to do, and what I want to do. It’s not exactly how I planned my life but it’s turned out to be the greatest vehicle for self-actualization imaginable.

This combination of skills is different for everyone, but for me this is the connection between music, teaching, and Spanish. I’ve been a musician for 17 years, playing multiple instruments, writing hundreds of songs and performing thousands of shows. I always wanted to be a “cool” musician, but when I realized I’m a great teacher who is great with children and I LOVE being involved in their development, I found an even deeper and truer connection. The final piece of this puzzle was the fact that there is a great need for bilingual education – fortunately the best time to learn Spanish is in your youth and the best way to learn is through music.

These three skills were essential and as strange as it is, it took me years to understand how to connect them. Since I did it’s been a flurry of excitement – teaching children and learning from them. I’ve since taught myself that anything is possible. I can learn how to direct, write and edit videos, I could produce songs more efficiently and I had an audience that was hungry for more.

My biggest obstacle was ego – the ego that said “kid’s music isn’t for me” or it’s “corny” etc. All of these biases were me resisting my true calling and I’m SO happy I let these fallacies go. As soon as I did, my life changed for the better.

I’m not saying you need to be a bilingual teaching musician. Maybe you’re a ceramicist with social media skills and a great mind for math. Maybe you’re an interior decorator that loves pop culture and shoes. I don’t know, but I do think it’s possible to succeed if you listen to the universe. Something that might be incredible difficult for others might come entirely natural to you.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Peter Schrupp. I’m more commonly known to adults as the singer of the band Arms Akimbo (@armsakimboband) and to children as Teacher Peter (@teacherpetersings). I’ve recently released my first children’s album, “Oopsy Daisy”. I am a traveling kid’s musician, performing at classes, birthday parties, preschools, festivals, etc. I also have a YouTube channel where I sing children’s songs in both English and Spanish and show kids the benefit of using your imagination! With my band, I tour the country playing indie rock/folk music around the country. We’ve opened for artists like Walk the Moon, The Animals and Motion City Soundtrack and we are currently recording our second full-length album.

I am an artist that proves you can live a dichotomy – children’s artist by day, rock artist by night. I hope that dissonance brings life to each of my respective projects.

For anyone who wants to follow the journey, please check out The Party (Acoustic) by Arms Akimbo – a recent hit we’ve had some viral success with, and for those with children, I have some wholesome educational but FUN kid’s content on Youtube!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

It’s SOOOOO cliché but I get these dm’s every week that I wish I could share with the world but out of respect to the families I keep them private. Families send me videos and messages of their children falling in love with a video or a song from my album. It’s soo beautiful to see these children connect with the songs. There’s no better feeling than making a kid smile or laugh or dance with your art.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

This is a funny discussion because while my band is thriving in this department, I still need to crack this for my children’s music channel. Hopefully I can find a way to take my own advice. Below are some tenets that took our band from 10k followers across platforms to over 250k between IG, Tiktok and Spotify.

1. Lean into familiarity…if you can handle it – My bandmate and I caused our song to trend by acknowledging that some of our fans likened a riff to Jack Johnson, John Mayer and Hozier. It led to a bunch of discussion and if you can handle about 10% of the people being negative, you’ll find a bevy of new fans.
2. Be facile – we set a plan to post every day for 30 days NO MATTER WHAT. At first we batch created the content, but once the 3rd video took off, we had to completely rework our strategy, reshoot the next 2 weeks of videos, and strategize all over again. Fortunately it worked and we still get over 100 new followers every day thanks to that 1 month of dedicated posting
3. Be cringe – it’s embarrassing to promote yourself. It’s hard to commit. I still struggle with this, but whenever I lean into “cringe” or earnest posting, it tends to have positive results.

I could talk about this topic for hours. Social media is difficult and unfair and erratic, but it can also be fun and occasionally life-changing. Right now I see it as the best outlet to connect to an audience that needs my music. Whether that’s someone who needs a new song on their playlist, or a child looking for a silly song about a r*b*t, it’s all valid.

Contact Info:

• Website: teacherpetersings.com / armsakimboband.com
• Instagram: @gar_peter @teacherpetersings @armsakimboband
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterschrupp/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@teacherpetersings
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@teacherpetersings

  https://www.tiktok.com/@armsakimboboys/

Image Credits

Emily Pinto, Owen Labate.