We recently connected with Sweet (Dave) and have shared our conversation below.

Sweet (Dave), thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Back in ‘05 I was workin on Yo Mamma (tv show with Fez) and it was kinda cool cause it was tv, but I didn’t move to NY to do tv, I wanted to play music. I was on set at the Brooklyn docks staring at the monster that is downtown and I was asking myself on a loop, how do I play music full time, how do I play music full time, how do I play music full time. Eventually the phrase, you have to play music full time, popped into my head. There it was, the answer. In order to play music full time, you have to first play music full time. This for me meant fingers on strings 40+ hours a week. It also meant take absolutely any gig so long is it pays, because from now on it’s hopefully your only source of income. It became more about survival than just pleasing my artistic sensibilities. This taught me how to play better in many ways, mostly in terms of with others. Less weird prog projects, more backing up singer songwriters with whole notes. It wasn’t an easy transition, I had bouts of what I lovingly refer to as being upper homeless (often van crashing or random couch surfing) and I did have to get actual employment occasionally, but the goal was firm. My last “job” was working for Jonathon Waxman at Barbuto after being fired from Inside Edition back in 2009. Since then I’ve worked with countless acts of most every genre both live and in studio. I even got to write the song Take Me In The Night with Blondie.

Taking years of being a sideman and studio rat into account I created Sweet N’ Juicy here in Portland Oregon back in 2016. It took sometime to build, but it became my primary source of income from 2021-2024 during which we cleared 700 shows. We had four releases, 2 were nominated for awards. Our album Your Mom’s Gonna Love Us, won Album of the Year at the PNW Music Awards. We are still gigging but mostly just focusing on festivals and the like now.

I run a small recording studio too, in today’s world you are gonna have to take on a bunch of varied stuff if you want to play music full time, it’s just how it is. It might not always be on your terms unless you are very lucky, but there are still ways to make it happen if you are driven and get real good at your craft.

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?

I started doing jingle and production work about 15 years ago. I learned by doing. For a years tuition you could just buy the gear of a passable recording studio. I accumulated my studio mic, pre, and amp at a time. It took years, but now I can essentially produce any kind of music.

Sex Drugs and Fruit, and Your Mom’s Gonna Love us are my most recent albums that I produced for Sweet N’ Juicy, you can hear my progression as an engineer/producer from earlier albums. It’s a process, just keep working and you’ll learn new tricks.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

To me, it’s always been about keeping the lights on. People might ask “when are you gonna make it”, but to me, I’ve already done it.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Spend your money on real art, made by a person, preferably one you can actually meet face to face. Block AI anywhere possible. An educated society tends to appreciate the arts as well. Other places like Canada actually send their artists money to help them thrive. My guess is more folks would make art if they could.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Sweetnjuicymusic.com
• Instagram: @sweetnjuicymusic
• Facebook: https://Facebook.com/sweetnjuicymusic
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/sweetnjuicymusic
• Other: https://sweetnjuicy.bandcamp.com/