We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Connor Fiehler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Connor below.
Connor, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
Being a creative can toy with your head like crazy, but it’s worth it because I find that pursuing what you are most passionate about will fulfill you more than anything else ever could. I would certainly consider myself a happy person, but that doesn’t mean that I always love my job or have a clear path within it. I’m still very much trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, which I’m sure will be the way I feel for the rest of my life. Right now, I am a full time student at Belmont University, full time gigging guitar player, songwriter, and somehow within all that I’m trying to find time to be a solo artist. This list, of course, does not include things like having a social life, spending time with my family and friends, trying to engage in some of my other hobbies like rock climbing. Being in a creative industry like music means you constantly are working towards literally dozens of things per day, and not just anyone can handle that. It takes someone truly dedicated to what they do. Sometimes I do think about how much easier it would be if I was majoring in something more ‘regular’ and was looking for a 9-5 when I graduate college. In fact, last month I was thinking about just that. Over my winter break from school this year, I went on tour in eastern Europe for 3 weeks to play music for troops stationed at military bases in that region. I remember about a week and a half into the tour, on Christmas day, thinking to myself “what am I doing here right now?” I was away from my family for the holidays, I had 12-16 hour travel days every few days going to new countries, my suitcase had been lost by United Airlines so I was wearing the same thing I flew there with. All of this got me thinking about how nice it would be to be at home with my family, opening gifts, sleeping in, wearing clean clothes! But at the end of the day, the worst day on tour is always better than the best day at the office. At 20 years old, I was touring internationally in a region of the world that I would never have dreamed of going to, and I was doing a service to those who are serving me. Despite some bumps in the road (I still haven’t been reimbursed by United), I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my time. That’s what I love about this path I’ve chosen for myself, the hectic nature of it, the insane hours and how my life looks very different week to week. It keeps life from getting too monotonous and through its ups and downs, I still find myself in love with music and playing it, creating it, and everything else that it comes with!
Connor, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Connor Fiehler, and I’m a multi-instrumentalist, artist, songwriter and producer from St. Louis, currently based in Nashville. I got into this industry at age 12 when I picked up guitar and bass, and I never put them back down. In middle school and early high school, I joined School of Rock as well as a few St. Louis based bands such as Thames, Hot Soup, and a few other random groups I can’t even remember the names of…mainly I just floated around and played guitar and bass for other people. Then my senior year of high school I got into songwriting, and fell in love with creating my own music. I achieved some pretty cool milestones very quickly. First tour with School of Rock Allstars at 16 (the top 1% of players in the program), my tour with a band at 17, first album released at 18. The I went to college and many of my ideas of my career path totally changed. For one, after playing 12-15 gigs a month and two tours while simultaneously completing a 17 credit hour semester this year, I realized that overloading myself just in pursuit of accomplishing as much as possible isn’t good for me, especially when most of that work was for others and not as fulfilling for me. So these days I’m focusing a lot more on writing and creating for my solo project as Connor Fiehler, my band The PitchPockets, and for some of my professors who work in the music industry. My current services include: – ‘hired gun’ instrumentalist work where an artist will hire me to play guitar or bass for them. This includes things like gigs, sessions, lessons, all that good stuff. It’s where I make most of my income at the moment!
– Music director or ‘MD’ work where I play for them but also run their band, make charts, hire players and spearhead rehearsals in order to maximize efficiency and quality.
– cowriting and composition work where someone will have me help them finish a song or write music to their lyrics, or even sometimes ‘top-lining’ an instrumental where I write lyrics to their music!
– Producer roles, where I will help someone build out their song into a fully recorded track. This is something I haven’t had as many jobs doing and would like to eventually build out more!
One thing that sets me apart from others is that my ear and eye for quality is pretty through. I’m not gonna just show up and go through the motions, I make every effort possible to really serve the music and the art that I’m contributing to and try to make what the artist wants happen. Sometimes music directors or producers get in the way because they want make what they want to make, but unless it’s my own project I typically try my absolute hardest to be a vessel for others to use my skill set to get what they want out of a project. One thing I’m working towards getting more into is the ‘sync’ industry, or writing songs for movies, TV, and commercials. A few of my colleagues are into that line of work and it’s a niche industry because you have to create so much music, but it helps if you can write, produce and record yourself, which I can do. It seems really interesting and that’s one of my current career goals!
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
So my audience certainly isn’t anything crazy, I have a little over 6,000 followers across my platforms. but there have been a few things that really helped me in growing my following. Firstly, quantity of content above all else is going to be your friend. You have to make the content good, sure, and of course there are things like days of the week and time of day that give you better visibility, and all that other stuff that will help you reach more people. But if you can only do one thing right now that will completely change the game for you, it’s to make and release as much content as you can. The biggest platforms to grow your audience are TikTok and Instagram, and the vertical short form video content is king. So if you can make a lot of concise, engaging content to fit this format, then you will grow faster than with pretty much any other strategy. I have a few videos on TikTok for example that have a few hundred thousand views each, and even one with 2.5 million. The funny thing about the videos that performed that well is that they took almost no effort, very little time, and almost no talent to create. Content I spend hours and hours crafting very rarely cracks more than 1,000-2,000 views on TikTok. That kind of higher quality stuff does a bit better on Instagram, whereas TikTok is more about the trends, non-sequitur stuff, and other seemingly random variables that I still don’t understand. So basically using the highest visibility avenues such as Instagram Reels and TikTok, and then being consistent about uploading content regularly will get you the farthest the quickest. My biggest downfall on growing socials has been being in college while being a professional, and I simply have almost no time to get anything out anymore, so if you’re able to schedule that content creation time into your week, that’s the best option! Good luck, you’ll need it!
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
I think one of the biggest things non-creatives don’t understand, or maybe can’t understand I’m not sure, is that being a creative person in a creative industry is almost exactly like being in a long term relationship. Let’s just pretend that your creative field is a person whom you’re dating. You’re in love with this person, you can’t get them out of your head. All day you’re spending time with them, and even when you aren’t with them you can’t stop thinking about them. And you have a honeymoon phase where you’re completely stoked about them, and spend 100% of your energy on them. One day, you start fighting, and then realize that they have problems and so do you, and sometimes you need some space and that you have to have other things in your life to balance it out. But some people will keep fighting in this relationship and and break up, and it won’t work out. Others will stick it through the hard times and make it work in the end even though sometimes it can be hard. This is pretty much exactly how being a creative person works, especially one that does it for work. There’s times where you can be creative all day every day and you’re just so pumped about your work, and there’s times where you need some space to work on you, the individual, not the artist. What I said about some people not being able to make it work is also true, a lot of people will get into creative work, and they might even get pretty far within their industry, but then realize it isn’t for them because they either can’t make it work or it doesn’t make them happy. There is a fine line between being able to do something as your job and it simply being a hobby. One isn’t better than the other, it’s just what makes you thrive the best.
Contact Info:
- Website: connorfiehler.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connorfiehler/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ConnorFiehlerMusic/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEW_1UkFcY8x1aLu560fG1w
Image Credits
Nick Jackson