We were lucky to catch up with Benjamin Kelly recently and have shared our conversation below.

Benjamin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

The short answer is: yes, I’m happy as an artist and I wouldn’t trade it for any job in the world.

The longer answer is that, like anyone, I’m obviously not always happy. The music game has its drawbacks. The path to getting your art out there is never super clear, and because it can be difficult to see tangible results, it’s often easy to fall down the rabbit hole of self-doubt. But, honestly? I don’t make music because it makes me happy. It does, obviously, but that’s not why I do what I do. I make music because I really believe that art has a place in the world, and that we’d all be a lot worse off without it. It’s easy, I think, to mistake a lot of artistic pursuits for self-interest. But I’ve known a lot of musicians in my life, and I can promise there are plenty of us who still do it for the love of music.

As far as having a “regular” job? It’s not my path, but I really believe that every job can be done passionately. Music is the thing that I feel called to do, but I know plenty of people who attack their more traditional jobs with the same vigor. And that’s really the crux of all this for me: I’d much rather be fulfilled than happy. Whether it’s music, medicine, law, or academia, it won’t always be easy. But anyone who knows what they believe in and finds purpose in their passions is all right by me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Ben Kelly — I’m a musician from Southern California and I make music under the name Wandermere. I didn’t take the path that most professional musicians do. I graduated from college about a year ago with a degree in philosophy. But, in a roundabout way, that study is precisely what confirmed my calling to create.

Most of what I studied was ethics, the primary questions in which being: what is good? What has value? What ought we strive to create in the world and in our lives and the lives of those around us? And honestly, trying to answer these questions is discouraging. Pleasure lasts only so long. Fame fades eventually. Even love doesn’t matter much when there’s no one to enjoy it. And it’s easy to feel disillusioned – like nothing matters because, ultimately, there will be no one left to benefit from any of it. But I kept finding myself attracted to the idea of things that really make the world a better place. And things that last.

For me, that thing is art. There’s nothing in my life I’ve ever felt called to do besides create art, and I can promise I wouldn’t be pursuing it if my only stake in the game were to become rich or famous. I don’t believe that art is an inwardly directed process. And I don’t believe that life ought to be. I create art because I believe in my heart of hearts that it makes the world a better place. That it makes people’s lives better. That it creates genuine connections and allows people to express and internalize emotions that words alone fail to capture. A world without art is a sad one – one with which I am not content. As society shifts towards an automated, artificial world, art seems to be the last frontier by which we retain our humanity. After all, what could possibly be more uniquely human than to create?

To that end, my music has taken all kinds of paths. I’ve cut my teeth in lots of different scenes and genres — from bebop piano to death metal guitar — and I think that experienced has colored my art in a unique way. These days I try to blend my bass-influenced electronic production with my passion for blues and jazz. But my primary directive is just to be interesting. There are plenty of musicians with better guitar chops, cleaner mixes, or crazier sound design than me, but my music is my narrative. And no one else can tell it.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I did social media pretty awfully for a while. Before I was making about partying and doing drugs, I was completely committed to the “dark and mysterious” persona. There are definitely people who can pull it off, but I certainly was not one of them. Social media really became a tool for me once I started digging into the things that I was already good at: namely, being goofy. Once I had that revelation, it was off to the races for me. I started posting the most ridiculous and absurd promo videos I could possibly put together — dancing like a clown at a roller rink, smoking cigarettes on top of cars, and letting myself be the joker that I am.

So, my best advice (not that I’m an expert by any means) is to capitalize on the parts of your character that are already strong. If you’re edgy and mysterious, make that your social media persona. If you’re silly and lighthearted, build a silly and lighthearted social media presence. Even minor things that you’d never think could be the basis for an online persona can take on lives of their own; I’m pretty sure my mustache alone has doubled my social media following.

The last (and probably most important) piece of advice is to engage with the community. When other artists follow you and comment on your posts, follow them back and support them, too. Artists are nothing without other artists. and honestly it’s a lot more fun when you’re not in the game alone.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I mean, I’d be lying through my teeth if I said I didn’t want to play at huge festivals and have a billion listeners and start my own record label – that would be pretty cool. But my real goal is just to contribute to the story of music. You can’t tell the history of music without mentioning Beethoven, the Beatles, Miles Davis, Metallica, Nirvana, Skrillex – there’d be pieces missing. Even if you don’t particularly care for those artists, their influence on and importance to the art form is undeniable.

I really believe in music as an art, and having written just one of those chapters – one of those sentences – in its history is what I want more than anything. I want to leave the music world just a little better than I found it.

Beyond that, I’m driven by my desire to connect and introspect. My music spans a range from the egregiously happy to the indulgently melancholic, and I think that’s kind of the whole point. I think there’s a real value in exploring both the highs and lows of existence. A life without happiness is a shallow one, and I think the same is true of sadness, melancholy, or anger. They’re all unique features of human existence – we laugh, we cry, we scream – and they give each other meaning. They reveal parts of ourselves we couldn’t find otherwise and push us to become more complete people. There are few conditions as bleak as complacency.

To that end, I believe music has always been the ultimate forum for that type of introspection. Nobody likes to make themselves sad, but people love listening to music that does. Nobody is uniformly happy, but we love listening to music that makes us feel like we are. There’s something about rhythm and melody that allows us to indulge in the emotions that might not necessarily be as accessible to us. It’s more than just a safe space – it’s maybe the only the one that lets us explore those feelings so deeply. Music often succeeds where words fail. And that’s what I want my music to do. I want it be a portal to those extreme ends of the emotional spectrum, in hopes that maybe it’ll help people find and ponder those parts of themselves in a unique way.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wandermereofficial/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/wandermeremusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wandermereofficial
• Other: https://soundcloud.com/wandermere