We recently connected with Bryan Page and have shared our conversation below.

Bryan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

It’s interesting— because the path to become the artist you are, or are capable of being— comes with a long rite of passage that pretty much takes you through being the artist you think you are, the artist you think people want you to be, and the artist you never knew you actually were.. if that makes any sense (lol).

I spent most of the time in my first record and publishing deals trying to curate my sound, show off what I believed were my gifts, and doing everything possible to appear to be the artist I wanted to see myself as. A thousands of hours curating music based on the response I was hoping to get, and really “working” on my “art.”

I had to spend years basically mimicking other artists, trying to do the things i admired, trying to blow people’s minds in everything i did. Funnily enough, it turned out that the harder I tried to create a specific response in people, the further I got from that very response.

After wearing out and exhausting my energy curating and shaping my sound, image, etc…somehow what was left underneath it all started to reveal itself.

All the sudden, writing just for the sake of expression, singing just for the sake of communicating whatever was immediately moving through me— without any concern with if it was heard or how it was received— revealed a sort of coherence in my art and music. Like “I” was finally showing up, even though the part of me that was working so hard and considering the art at all, seemed to fall away from the equation.

At the end of the day, I was my biggest and only obstacle. All of the uncertain and well-crafted and hopeful and motivated versions of myself had to run their course and fall away for my actual voice and art to start to move through me. It’s as if the more I actually got out of the way, Life would show up to communicate through me using whatever tools I had available at the moment.

I’m not sure any more who I sound like, other than me, or what kind of music I make, until I’m making it, or what kind of artist I am, because it seems to be constantly evolving. The whole process is much more rewarding and fulfilling when it’s even a mystery to myself, as opposed to the finished product I was always striving to be.

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.

Looong story short, I found myself in NYC at about 19 years old, sleeping on a sidewalk and singing in front of the morning show line to make some $ while the people waited to fill the audience. After spending months on end being bitter and resentful and lacking motivation or direction, I eventually started using the little money I’d make to spend as many hours as I could in an internet cafe on 42nd street trying to use Myspace to network, hustle, etc.

I connected with a kid who managed a music studio in the Brill Building at 49th and Broadway called KMA, and after a few months of interning for him, became close with the owner, and we ended up really connecting musically. One day he found out that I didn’t have anywhere to live, and the next morning I showed up to a futon in the spare studio room, and his NYSC pass so I could shower at his gym nearby.

My time in that studio is how I met everyone that was eventually involved in getting my first record deal (Motown) and publishing deal. Being young and naive, I got trapped in some contractual politics and ended up not being able to release music for the better part of 15 years or so.

This is my first time in my life I’m able to legally release my music, and I’m only incredibly grateful for the way everything unfolded. I wouldn’t do what I do, how I do, with the love that I have, had I not gone through every bit of it.

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?

The most hard to explain and easily judged aspect of being an artist without a plan B, is the absolute non-sensical and non-linear path to wherever it is we end up going.

There’s no steps to follow or blueprint that guarantees anything. and there’s no promise that if you put in the hours and stick to the program that it’ll work out. On top of that, the struggle and how you respond to it, tends to have a lot to do with what magnitude of an artist you become. And even then, who knows.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

There’s a poem by Rudyard Kipling that for me, says it all. And I actually mean everything. If one is so lucky to develop the qualities described in that poem, I can’t imagine them being any less than everything the world, themselves, and their passion and purpose could desire from them.

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