We were lucky to catch up with Citizen Snips recently and have shared our conversation below.

Citizen Snips, 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.

Each of us had different methods of learning damn near everything. Elliott went to college for piano, Trevor just sat alone in his room for years and learned beatles songs on piano and guitar, David immersed himself in math rock drumming at a young age, Erik took up bass and guitar seemingly on a whim and it all just clicked immediately for him.

The downside to all our (mostly) self taught ability is we each have blindspots in what we know. Sometimes they’re blindspots that one of us knows how to help the other fix, sometimes they’re blindspots no one knows and we have to figure it out together.

All that being said, knowing music theory is handy, but knowing too much can almost take you out of it. It’s not like it boils everything down to a formula of what should and what shouldn’t work, but it can stick in the back of your mind that what you’re doing is technically not supposed to work, or the terminology being thrown around is wrong. We spend a lot of time just trying to figure out what chord it is we’re playing that sounds so cool. We almost never use terms like “bar” or “measure,” it’s all just “the whole idea,” “that part,” and “whatever you were playing there.” Everyone has different methods of making and understanding music, and what works for some doesn’t work for others, but our dumb music talk works just fine for us.

Citizen Snips, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We’re a band formed mostly through craigslist, all four of us come from very different backgrounds, and despite that we work insanely well together. Trevor is an encyclopedia of The Beatles, Beach Boys, and Bob Dylan, Elliot went to college for jazz piano, Erik is an encyclopedia of early 2000’s alt rock, Dave was a drummer for an intense math rock band at 14.

We’re able to mix all this into something we haven’t heard in our local scene and we think people who see us tend to notice that. On paper, we shouldn’t work, but somehow we do.

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

Every goal is a short term one. Obviously there are lofty long term goals, but you can’t say them out loud. Tackle each thing bit by bit and work your way up. We wanna climb the mountain but looking all the way up there can make you dizzy, so you just keep climbing and looking for the next place to grab. Sure, try to see a few moves ahead, but don’t overreach.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

There’s a quote in one of the Dune books that Trevor won’t shut up about. It’s something along the lines of “living in the past is impossible, living in the future is pointless, and living in the present is incredibly hard.” The future is unpredictable and rapidly changing, you just gotta try to change with it and adjust. You can’t always see what’s coming, but you can try to be ready.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/citizensnips_band?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@citizensnips9877?si=IBP_iiPnrXbBzwh5

Image Credits
Eda Reutov Andrea Ferreri