We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chris Bartels a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Chris, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
The reason I’m doing what I do today is because I was bored one summer day in high school and decided to pick up my brother’s acoustic guitar. Simple as that. I was 16, and ever since that day, I haven’t ever considered pursuing anything besides music as a career and life passion. Diving headlong into guitar tabs of my favorite songs, and first teaching myself with a Guitar For Dummies book from the library, it’s been an up and down journey since then of learning the crafts of songwriting, music and audio production, and running a small business.
I think the balance of teaching myself lots of different types of skills, both creatively and with business, has been important for me along the way. Things move and change so fast these days, especially in the music industry, so doing my best to stay open-minded and adaptable to changes, while also staying true to my own voice and my own strengths – that is also a tough, yet incredibly important, balance.
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’m a musician from Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I write, record, and release music from my home studio. I write a variety of different styles, be it indie-folk, synthpop, electronic, ambient, modern classical instrumental, and in between. Over the years, I’ve written and released under a handful of artist and band projects, including Elskavon, Bora York, Blurstem, Olma, Glass Echoes, Mum Child. Anthem Falls Music is what I call my “umbrella” brand of sorts, encompassing my projects and such – it’s sort of a blend between record label and sync licensing agency.
Most of what I do is writing and releasing albums – that’s definitely my main passion. I also work directly with clients, in writing original music, sound design and licensing for media projects – ads, TV shows, films, etc. I work with a few music licensing agencies as well, working with them in providing music licensing for their clients. All of these things blend and blur with each other.
Collaborating and co-writing with other musicians and producers has become one of my favorite things to do, as it opens up unique creative possibilities, and develops relationships and friendships – an essential and life-giving priority, in my opinion!
I would say I’m most proud of my full-length album projects, as I would consider these my main creative babies, if you will. They are the projects where the most creative blood, sweat, and tears are spent, and of course, simply the most hours. Listening to albums growing up is how I fully connected and fell in love with music in the first place, and always had me daydreaming about writing, recording, mixing, and releasing my own. So to have the ability to do that now is something I don’t take for granted. On top of that, to have full creative control over them, and the tools to continually stretch myself, alongside writing with friends – it’s so much fun.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
A couple things that have been a relatively newer discipline for me – that is, within the past couple years – have been taking consistent walks and being out in nature, and reading every day. I’ve always enjoyed being outside, but it used to be less of a consistent activity for me. It was during the early days of the pandemic where I started getting outside more often, and it developed into a habit that has become an important part of my work and creative life now. Even living right in the city, there are lots of parks, trails, and lakes nearby, and I do my best to escape at least for a short time every work day if I’m able. It’s a welcome mental break, and I find that often a lot of great ideas come to me during these times. There’s something about getting out of the normalcy of routine life and atmosphere that lends itself to a creative “refueling.”
Reading books of a variety of genres and topics has also been incredibly helpful and inspiring for me – be it non-fiction books about music, business, mindset, or fiction, or history. I like the variety, and it also helps inspire me in different ways, as well as opening up doors in improving my creative life, not to mention my relationships, and decision-making.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Given the nature of what I do, my income comes from so many different spots, and in many different ways – be it monthly, quarterly, and even annual royalty payments; direct client invoices; splits with collaborators, etc. In one sense, this is exciting – it’s been fun to see things working and to develop new avenues, and in another sense, it’s terrifying! Certain wells can dry up pretty quickly, or seemingly out of nowhere.
This life I’ve chosen and fallen into – providing for my family and sustaining my career through royalties and unexpected avenues (i.e. not through steady paychecks) – has by nature motivated me, humbled me, and thrilled me all the same. It’s a roller coaster ride at times.
It’s taught me many things, including to never rest on laurels or become complacent – opportunities and success can come and go. I love this, though – I don’t ever want to become creatively complacent, so by nature this is part of what keeps that drive alive, and keeps me motivated. Though I know if money were no object, the music itself would always be enough creative motivation for me, it’s still great fun to ride the roller coaster a bit! Stability is overrated – strap in. 
Contact Info:
- Website: anthemfallsmusic.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/chris_bartels
- Facebook: facebook.com/elskavon
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-bartels-051b3041/
- Twitter: twitter.com/elskavon
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/elskavon
Image Credits
Justin Blair (for the Elskavon images)