e were lucky to catch up with Alex Colder recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alex, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I believe everything worth having requires taking a risk. And requires putting all your eggs in one basket, Ignoring the voices of doubt that comes from family and friends. No matter what career path you choose, a musician, an athlete, doctor or whatever it may be, is a risk to pursue. There’s millions of people who have the same dream you do. But not everyone is willing to risk putting everything on the line to live the life they dreamed of. And that’s the difference between a success story and a life of mediocrity.

Risk means taking a chance, trying something new, and possibly failing or succeeding, but we must all experience risk in our lives. Taking chances is one of the most crucial ways of helping to advance one’s skills and gaining experience. Imagine a life where everything was the same, everything was safe, everything was easy, and most importantly nobody failed. How would we learn, grow, and adapt without risk?

While risk often means failure, which may seem scary, we must all experience failure to become better and to grow from experience and step into the next phase of our lives with more confidence.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am from Sacramento, CA. Growing up it was just me and my mom, my dad left when I was six years old. My mom was an addict, and so she wasn’t able to be there mentally. I witnessed first-hand addiction and abuse as a result of my household. So growing up, I was doing mostly everything all alone.

To keep busy, I played three sports, football, basketball and baseball. When I was ten years old, I started writing music, I would take old “Bow Wow”, “Kid Rock”, “Linking Park” & “Nickelback” songs and would rewrite them entirely, I’d keep the same cadence and flow pattern, but would change all the words to fit my life, which would eventually lead to me writing my own songs.

Sports were my always main priority, playing Football, Basketball & Baseball until my sophomore year of high school when I decided to focus solely on baseball. Being I felt I wasn’t big enough or tall enough to continue football and basketball. I never did good in school, primarily because I wasn’t interested. I could get by with decent grades by choice but it wasn’t my main focus, I only went to school to play sports. My life at home was only forgotten when I was on the field. But my classwork caught up to me, I was forced to miss a couple of games both my freshman and sophomore season, which led to the coach not wanting me back on the team, not for my talent but for my lack of focus. I missed my junior season all together. I decided to take school a bit more serious and tried to come back my senior year but again was turned down by the coach for my bad track record.

At this time, I had just started making music in my closet during the time I spent off the field. But all my friends and family could not take it serious, being they saw me as an athlete. They couldn’t see my vision or dream actually flourishing as a musician. So, I decided to stop recording and keep training for baseball and figured I would try to play Semi-Pro or college ball somewhere. Continuing to develop as an athlete for the next few years, I was offered a few scholarships but nothing that felt right. I was eventually seen by scouts & was offered a scholarship and without hesitation, I signed to play baseball at the next level despite my countless setbacks, I was finally getting all I had worked for. Two months later, during a morning workout, I endured a heart attack just three days before my 21st birthday in March of 2017. This resulted in me losing my eligibility and I decided to leave school all together. While recovering from my heart attack, against doctors advice, I continued to train and tried to make a comeback. However, it was slowly debilitating me, and no matter how much I tried to push through it, I knew my body was giving out. I was forced to hang up my cleats for good. Now, At this time, I had been writing music only when I thought something was worthy of actually writing down. But from age 17-21, I had accumulated hundreds of notes in my phone full of lyrics, hooks, melodies and album ideas. I still had the struggle of trying to deal with my new reality. Trying to find something I loved, that was actually worth pursuing.

Growing up in the suburbs and having the aesthetic I do physically, it’s hard to get support or respect taking the path I am. I’ve never had friends or family believe in my ability to make songs that could impact the world, on the inside I was always fighting for their approval in hopes of them finally seeing my vision and being in my corner. Because in my mind it’s never been a matter of “if” it was going to happen, its always been “when”, & I always hoped id have people in my corner when it finally flourished.

Still, it’s a solo journey, & I’m just waiting for the world to catch up. “Before they knew who I was, I knew who I was”

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My goal has always been to inspire the uninspired, to be a voice for people that feel like they don’t have one. To show anyone who comes from a broken home, a broken family, a past of addiction or abuse or someone who is going through their own mental health issues that they aren’t alone. To inspire the uninspired requires myself to always remain inspired.

People always ask “where does your inspiration come from?” “Don’t you run out of things to talk about?”, This question is something comes up time and time again and is something that I think about regularly. This concept is something I have touched on many times, in the studio, my therapists office, amongst peers and more recently has seeped more into my daily conscience. To be honest, the answer canary from person to person. Wether you’re trying to pull inspiration from your current situation, past traumas, experiences or your surroundings, from personal experience, I know feeling uninspired can be scary. It comes with anxiety, depression & self-doubt. Through my musical journey, I have found that people tend to believe in themselves more if they feel inspired. They are more motivated, passionate and move with more of a purpose.

Unfortunately, I have also found that people associate inspiration and motivation with success and a lack of inspiration gets associated with failure & that is where things can become tricky. I’ve made hand fulls of songs that I thought “there’s no way this isn’t going to impact the world”, and when they released, they maybe got 1.000 plays. I didn’t understand, “how did this not blow up?” I thought. And it led to a mental battle that I had to overcome.

Luckily for me, I did. My inspiration and my relentlessness to continue making music even after those songs flopped, never hindered. Those moments of failure were vital for me to build the tough skin I needed to continue making music when I already felt I had little to no one believing in my ability to do just that. Now in retrospect, Im thankful those songs didn’t blow up the way I thought they would and should have, because truth is, I wasn’t ready.

Timing is everything, and inspiration is all about timing. Many artists, people with dreams of success & people alike struggle with “writers block” or feeling stagnant in their current space, because they may feel like they aren’t doing enough. I learned to take that “lack of inspiration” as a sign from my higher power that other parts of my life may need more focus wether it be in the gym, self reflection or taking time to sit with myself and be okay with myself. And trusting that everything will align and fall into place right when it’s supposed to.

I’ve had to pave my own path & make my own lane with little to no help along the way, So it definitely hasn’t been a smooth ride. In the beginning, I was in a battle with myself regarding the music I wanted to make and the music I thought people wanted out of me. With stereotypes around the aesthetic I have physically, it made it hard for people to take me seriously in the industry. So I focused on trying to prove all the people who doubted me wrong with every song I made. This led to another mental battle, I took time off & reflected on the music I had out at the time and truth is, I didn’t like any of it. So I locked back in with myself and with my higher power that connected me to my best self. I allowed my soul to carry the torch in my life, I stopped caring about what everyone was going to think, and started making the music I wanted to make. After about 250 songs, and only dropping about 10. I found my sound.

It wasn’t an easy task. One could say I was struggling or uninspired since I wasn’t releasing music. But these songs built my new foundation and it took time for me to develop the skills to be my best self. Timing is everything.

In basketball, they are the layup drills. Baseball, batting practice. And like anything else the long nights on the field, in the gym, or in the studio that nobody sees. Hours on hours, in which are vital to creating a product worth showing the world. Timing is everything.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think it’s fair to say that the hardest thing about being a musician or creative is not the same for everyone. Some sail right through with few problems and others struggle to varying degrees. Most will experience a change in the progression of obstacles as they overcome one challenge and move on to the next.

For 1, The Vulnerability: As a father of 1, allowing others opinions to have an impact on me hindered my ability to be fully present in other aspects of my life, even though music occupies most of my day to day thoughts, being an open book for the world to be loved & appreciated, or judged & misunderstood, and being okay with it either way, is something many overlook. I never shy away from telling it how it is or being vulnerable in my music. My vulnerability, wearing my emotions and my heart on my sleeve is something I used to try to hide. But that’s what ended up setting me apart. By saying the things people often think about but don’t dare to say out loud for themselves. But this is in no way easy, especially when you put your heart and soul into something with so much passion and people fail to see the handwork or the beauty of what you create.

Secondly, Success. Of course we want to be successful, but the higher up you go, the more demanding the circumstances become. When a concert promoter has millions of dollars invested in a venue, staffing, a crew, promotion and advertising, catering, transportation and fuel, security teams, etc., it doesn’t matter that the artist just got a call from home saying there’s a serious family crisis that needs his immediate attention. He either goes on that stage, right now, and delivers an enthusiastic show or somebody’s gonna lose millions of dollars! Any artist can be hot today and gone tomorrow, so the artists investors push to get the most out of them while they’re on the crest of their wave. Family, personal health and well being just have to wait.

And lastly, Egos and Addictions. As I stated before allowing others opinions to have an impact on me hindered my ability to be fully present in other aspects of my life. But others opinions are what fuel an artists success or failure. Many artists get lost looking to be fulfilled by people who wouldn’t care about them if they weren’t talented or had a lifestyle they wish they could have. That can be a slippery slope, causing artist to do things they would never do in their right mind but feel it’s necessary to achieve the status they desire and are reaching for. When an artist reaches the preverbial penthouse or success they long for, the load doesn’t get any lighter. The demand to be better only grows and the quest for perfection can be overwhelming. Throw in drugs or alcohol use for trying to compensate for a tired body and mind, and the outcome can be fatal.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.alexcolder.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsalexcolder
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexcolderofficial

Image Credits
Alex Colder, Sierra Grace, MaseTrigga