We recently connected with Jon Steinmeier and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. 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?
The short answer is yes. I’ve been a freelance musician and funny person since I graduated College in 2001.
There’s going to be a theme to this story and it is…other people. There are many who have made paths for me and included me in their work and been great support.
I got a degree in music composition and studied a lot of piano, drums/percussion, and even voice. I have been playing one instrument or another in bands since High School, and continue to do that today.
Early professional work for me was as a private music lesson teacher in Chicago. It was and continues to be stable and satisfying work, and allows me to do other interesting work composing and performing.
I also was composing music for theater right out of school thanks to Mark Messing, a brilliant guy who composed a lot for Chicago theater productions in those times and also started the band Mucca Pazza. I later joined Mucca Pazza as a percussionist and met some of my best friends to this day.
Mucca Pazza introduced me to Noah Tabakin, another brilliant guy who I’ve now worked directly with for probably 15 years? Through Mucca we stared working with New Belgium Brewing Company’s Tour de Fat festival, a traveling circus of beer and bicycle lovers run by an amazing crew of creatives. Through Matt Kowal, we started directing/addressing musical needs for the festival days and eventually co-hosting the events as well as providing music and comedy.
While that project continues in one form/size or another, I continue to compose, perform, and teach. Noah convinced me to move to Los Angeles in 2012 but I keep in touch with (and sometimes collab with) Chicago artists and friends as I can…When we moved out here we connected with Scot Nery, another brilliant guy, who started and hosted Scot Nery’s Boobie Trap, a weekly variety show that ran for over 4 years and was called “Best Variety Show in L.A.” by Los Angeles Magazine. Through that madness I met so many awesome people and performers. Again “other people.” I’ve since composed music for and performed with many of them over these years in L.A.
Composing is a wild business and nobody I speak with about it has traveled the same road to where they are. Mine has been a freelance love forever, and I love the variety of things I’ve been able to work on. It’s also quite a hustle. I’ve done a lot of hard work for cheap, and I’ve also done some “easy” stuff for not cheap. Negotiating money/contracts has historically not been my favorite thing to do but I’ve gotten a lot of good help. I’ve learned, for example, to value my work and time at a higher price than I used to. I’ve also learned how to work more efficiently in many ways.
I now run a teaching business called Echo Park Piano Lessons, compose for an amazing variety of things, and perform in bands Including Opus Orange and The Suckos.
Speeding up the process advice: In addition to negotiating/asking for what you need, I’ve learned a lot about organization. When it comes to following up with people, keeping track of payments, cue’s that are complete and ones that are not, and generally spinning all the plates, I’ve found myself in spreadsheets and to-lists. Also things like different calendars for different projects, color-coding, and routines.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’ve always wanted to be a professional musician, and studied piano performance at Wheaton Conservatory in Illinois. I found myself composing a lot when I was supposed to be practicing Bach and Brahms so I switched degrees and got a Bachelors in Music Composition.
For the last 20 years I’ve composed music and done sound design for theater, tv and film, video art, and live performance. Live stuff has stretched from writing for bands to improvsing comedy songs to composing music for ballet with a full, live orchestra. I love all of it, and the variety of work I’ve been able to do is partly because of my education (ongoing) and partly because I’ve said yes to gigs and forced myself to figure it out. I love deadlines and finding what a project needs. I love crafting the thing. In Chicago in the mid-2000’s I was teaching music and performing music, and I set out to write a song a week for a while to work on my production skills and songwriting. It ended up being a project that lasted 2 years, and forced me a make better and better sounding tracks. I also starting writing for the lovely folks at Emotomusic in Santa Monica and continued writing for them when I moved to Los Angeles.
Performing is something I’ve done since I was a kid, from recitals to talen shows to rock bands and jazz combo’s, to touring the US and Europe with bands and the Tour de Fat festival. Some of these gigs have been opportunities for me to clown in addition to playing an instrument, something I enjoy a lot. Being a class clown, it turns out, is good practice for paid comedy/music gigs and show co-hosting. I’ve also been able to do live shows and studio/recording work in these years, with folks including Andrew Bird, Opus Orange, Mucca Pazza, and Mavis Staples.
My teaching business is only a few years old, but I’ve been teaching music since 2001. Making the move to start Echo Park Piano Lessons has been a lot of work but has been very rewarding. I got great advice from people I’ve worked for like Abraham Levitan of Piano Power in Chicago and Hannah Warner who runs Temecula Music Teacher here in California. I have a wonderful group of families/students that I work with and find that I’ve really settled into a style and comfort that allows me to be flexible to the various interests and abilities of students. I teach a lot of classical piano but also a lot of pop, jazz, rock, improv, and even songwriting. I teach drums, guitar, bass, and ukulele, all instruments that I perform or record on professionally. It’s very satisfying work and a nice balance with the composing and performing work.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Maybe the most rewarding aspect is connecting with and collaborating with other artists. I love writing/creating on my own and will probably always be making a thing, but I’ve gotten so much joy out of sharing the process with people. It, in most cases, has made me better and made the thing better. It’s amazing what can happen in a creative flow with a particular group of people. Sometimes gold is mined just riffing with the right folks (the write folks?;), and there’s a magic to that. This could be working with another musician on a co-write or could be working with a director who needs score.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Early L.A. days were tough because I left a big Chicago community for a much bigger pond. I had to hustle up work and make connections in a town that felt far more isolating than Chicago. I’ve had several feast and famine seasons in this decade here, and I’ll talk about two of them.
1. In 2015 I was working in my three main areas: teaching, performing, composing. But things were slow and money was tight. I had just started a teaching job at a friends studio and was doing Tour de Fat gigs (for far cheaper than I would do later). There were times I relied on family or friends to cover my bills, something I never want to do but make me grateful for my community. This was also the year that Scot Nery started Scot Nery’s Boobie Trap. My friend and co-creator Noah Tabakin was determined to be involved in the show and we were already doing a duo act for Tour de Fat. Long story short, we added a drummer to our act and convinced Scot to let us be the house band. It was the start of a very different season in my L.A. experience, as that show connected me with so many rad people and artists that are close friends today.
2. In 2016 I had the amazing challenge of scoring a feature length film at the same time I was composing about 90 minutes of music for a live orchestra. The timing of these thing was such that I spent several weeks (months?) with little rest/no social life. The time verses money equation was also tough, but that is how it is sometimes! I loved the projects and was dedicated to doing my best work on them. That fall, Romeo and Juliet was performed live at Ballet Bellevue in Bellevue Washington and in 2017 Into the Who Knows! was released on Amazon Prime.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jonsteinmeier.com
- Instagram: Instagram.com/jonsteinmeier
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonsteinmeier/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonsteinmeier/
- Youtube: youtube.com/jonsteinmeier
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/echo-park-piano-lessons-los-angeles
- Other: www.echoparkpianolessons.com
Image Credits
Peter Hastings Richard Michael Johnson