We were lucky to catch up with Andrew Meador recently and have shared our conversation below.

Andrew, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project that I have worked on, recently, has been engineering and producing vocals for songs related to the modern social justice/DEIJ movements. I recorded the vocals for several artists and was part of a much larger team working on the songs, which is a really rewarding experience because I feel like I can just play my smaller part(s) well and spread out the work of finishing the song. I think the end result is generally always better than doing everything yourself.

It’s most meaningful to me, especially in the context of these songs, because the artists are inhabiting a prophet-like mentality with their songwriting—they are decrying injustices, validating their pain, longing for a better world, and calling us all upward.

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’m a scientist and educator, and I love making music. I play trumpet, bass, guitar, keys, etc, but those are more like different brushes that I use to communicate a message to others. I started writing music because I felt a lot of emotional blockages inside of me, and rendering them into music was a healthy way for me to process. There were definitely unhealthy aspects of it—wanting attention for my music and feeding my ego—but it was mostly positive, haha.

I’ve built a lot of relationships on comaraderie and connection, and I care about people more than I care about things. Being in the studio with an artist, baring our souls, being the first one to suggest some stupid lyric and laugh about it—those are the moments I really treasure because of the vulnerability that is involved.

Artists and bands will send me one of their songs to write and record bass to, and/or arrange and record horn parts. I love that; I love the challenge of a blank slate and the challenge to purposefully and creatively fill it. I also play live with some artists, mostly bass. Being on stage with a bunch of your friends playing live music pumping through a large sound system is such an incredible experience.

As a producer, I feel like what sets me apart is that I’m not jumping on bandwagons and trying to chase trends. My ear for production ideas, switching things up, and arranging a track are also strengths, as well as how I am able to manage a studio setting in a way that everyone feels respected and free to contribute.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Much of our society (at least the online sphere), is driven by consumer convenience. I wish that social media wasn’t such a brutal assault on artist’s careers. When you post, these platforms limit the number of your organic followers that see your content—they’re following you! Don’t make me pay to reach the people that have clicked “follow”.

Additionally, the convenience of “fewer clicks” is going away. For smaller artists, users may have to click two or three times to get to their song. And for many people, that’s simply too many.

In an ideal world, people would be less risk-adverse when listening to new music or checking out smaller artists. But the reality is that many smaller artists are compared against larger artists who have large teams supporting them, while the smaller artist is doing everything themselves and spending what feels like a lot of money (which likely will NOT be recouped from a release).

As far as solutions to this, I think that streaming services increasing payouts to artists is the most logical and practical next step for a thriving creative ecosystem. Money talks.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I released an album entitled “PRIDE” that I’m, ironically, very proud of, haha. It’s six compositions, each featuring different artists. I had all of my sessions stored on a physical hard drive AND on the cloud, and I was in the mixing phase of the project.

One day, I went to open my computer, the screen glitched, my hard drive ejected itself, and I lost all of the session files: the features and vocals, samples, tones, sounds, etc. I went to download them from the cloud, and they had also been erased there! It was truly a freak accident and a producer’s worst nightmare.

I took it as well as I think I could, but I was just short of depressed after that happened. I didn’t think many people would hear it anyways, but I was really proud of the album and what it represented to me. I took all of my feelings of loss and turned them into motivating myself to make the album even better than it was. After four years of slowly rebuilding each song, I was able to finally release “PRIDE”.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amm.wav
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AndrewMichaelMeadorMusic/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-meador-5b60524a/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFImVcuLNXj_hIg8l9gtO_w
• Other: SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0ArlFjz331NTg2hADtXvJc?si=zKpsiZIjStS5QpkIGYW7ww APPLE MUSIC: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/andrew-michael-meador/1019223397

Image Credits
Dominique Whitaker Devin Balram