We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cameron Poe a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Cameron, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Uniqueness is a gift possessed through the art of individuality. Everyone is handed the same canvas but will all fill it in in different ways. The reason I started making music professionally is to experience how many different ways a canvas can be filled.
Cameron, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve been a self taught guitarist, pianist, bassist, vocalist, producer, audio engineer and artist for over 13 years now. I owe my passion for music to my parents and my uncle. I grew up in a household that shared many different tastes in music exposing me to many different sounds and styles. I always loved the sound of music but never really had a deep passion for it until I heard “Sharp Dressed Man” by ZZ Top. The tonality of Billy Gibbons’s guitar spoke to me in a way that no instrument has ever done before. I was shocked that something as simple as a guitar being plugged into an amplifier can spark an emotion inside me that I’ve never felt before. It was so raw and colorful and I wanted to create that same feeling myself. My uncle sent me a guitar for my tenth birthday and at first I just wasn’t into it as much as I thought I was. My parents even got me a ZZ Top tablature book so I could learn “Sharp Dressed Man” but I just didn’t feel that click. I’ve always been a “get things done now” kind of guy and after struggling with guitar for a couple weeks I decided it wasn’t for me. Around my twelfth or thirteenth birthday my family and I moved to California and it absolutely wrecked me. I had a great friend group in Colorado and was getting ready to head into my last year of middle school so I was super excited to experience that but had to immediately cancel it to move. When we got out there, I had no desire to meet friends, experience the new surroundings or even feel motivated to go to school. My only hope was that guitar my uncle sent me. So one day I went home and decided to play until my fingers bled. I played the same three chords over and over and over again until it hurt to play. Then one day my dad got tired of hearing the same three chords being played and showed me Eddie Van Halen. My little musical world was blown from that day forward. Everyday after school I would go home and lock myself in my room and just watch live videos of Eddie Van Halen playing guitar and do my best to replicate what I saw and heard. My guitar became my best friend over that year period of living in California. Now that I’m older, I have a better understanding of “getting things done now.” As much as I want to get things done fast, I also have to realize that certain things just can’t be done “fast.” Having that experience of teaching myself the ropes with music opened so many doors for me. I was able to learn chord progressions by ear, find which key the song is by ear and most importantly develop a sense of patience that I believe can only be learned by you teaching yourself. I now apply that theory to everything I do. Our minds are the most powerful tool and can only be fully utilized when you push yourself past comfortability. When I first got my guitar I was just comfortable with being novice because I was comfortable with where I was at in life. It took that shell shock of a move to break me past my comfort zone in order to strive to be “Eddie Van Halen.” If I never pushed myself to play I would never be where I’m at. Now my goal is to keep being uncomfortable because the best ideas come when you work on your toes. My favorite aspect about creating is the amount of teamwork that is involved. The true magic isn’t the finished project, it’s the road that led you there. I geek out on being able to collaborate with talented people on a project because it gives everyone the opportunity to learn and the only way to build and succeed in life is to keep learning from those around you. Music wouldn’t be impactful if there wasn’t a story to be told. My parents showing me different tastes of music helped formulate my own style and taste down the road. Now whenever I write, I strive to blend as many genres together as possible. I don’t want to be defined by one genre as a book can’t be told through one chapter.
How’d you meet your business partner?
I wouldn’t be anywhere without my wingman Recet. CJ “Recet” Fankhauser and I are a dynamic duo with a friendship that goes back a long time. We’ve known each other for over 10 years and started making music sophomore year of high school. He has the power of creating tremendous beats and rhythms and I come back over and lay down the melody and progression. He is a true wizard with mixing and mastering and just creating overall and its an incredible honor to be able to share a studio with him. Watching our friendship and business endeavor grow has been the most heartwarming experience I’ve been apart of. It’s a great feeling to sit back and look at when we first started jamming in his basement to Maroon 5 to now playing our own music on a stage. Over the years we’ve bonded more and more over the idea of creating and playing modern music with raw, acoustic instruments. It’s a big challenge to be tasked with, but it’s something we both know will happen. We both grew up listening to the same genres of music and playing those genres on different instruments but both share the same passion. He learned drums and I learned guitar and from there we wanted to get experimental with our talents by writing modern hip-hop/rap music but keeping the tonality of acoustic instruments present.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Building a reputation is something I’m still trying to figure out and build on. Like any business, making music and marketing your music is a challenging task in the sense of it takes a lot of time. When I first started making music, I was thrown for a loop because I didn’t realize that every musician doesn’t get famous overnight. I was under the impression that once you make a song, you’re famous. I was always stubborn to the fact that you have to spend a hefty amount of time building your song up to get people to listen to it. Social media has been an interesting tool to use in efforts of building your song and brand up. With the presence of so many different apps and websites, it’s easier to find an audience anywhere. It’s been a fun adventure finding different ways to market your music whether it be making videos, memes, posting to blogs or just simply putting up a post with hashtags pertaining to the image or message or your song. Slowly but surely mine and many other artists alike have been finding their niche through social media. Doesn’t matter which field you’re in, connections is the biggest tool for success. The art of conversation is the closest thing to real life magic as you never know what you may learn from just sitting down and taking to someone. We all can take our experiences and build upon them from the experiences of others and from there build trust. I found that going out and physically talking to people and playing live is one of the best and fastest ways to building a reputation because you get to deliver your emotions live and in person.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/w.avesy?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC9Dcu7jVLKT69cYW9POhg0g
Image Credits
Adrian Velasquez CJ Fankhauser Kalif President