We were lucky to catch up with Clarke John recently and have shared our conversation below.

Clarke, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Well firstly, I’m definitely still learning. I think anyone who makes music and wants to continuously improve feels they SHOULD always be learning. But I had to start somewhere, and for me that started with writing. I make hip hop music, and in middle school and high school I listened to my inspirations all the time. People like Jay Z, Kendrick Lamar, MF DOOM, J Cole and more all inspired me to pick up the pen. I started out really rough though. I would write to famous instrumentals which honestly helped a lot because I had something to compare myself to. If I was writing to a Kendrick beat, there was a benchmark to reach, or at least one to try to. I did this hundreds of times, trying my best to improve with each song I wrote. I started writing more originals to beats on youtube and stuff like that, but I eventually got to a point where I wanted to explore my musicianship even further by producing my own music. I went to college for music production, but honestly most of what I know now and what I use in my songs are techniques I learned through trial and error. If I could give any advice to someone trying to produce their own music, I’d say get the technical stuff down to a T. Learn how the DAW functions, and learn it well. Once you do that, you’ll have the tools to just go in there and create. Just practice, do your thing, and eventually you’ll start making stuff that you feel represents you.

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

My name is Clarke Weigel and I’m a 23 year old alternative hip hop artist. I’ve been making music for about 8 years now, doing so in both Portland, OR and the LA area. I grew up surrounded by art and music- my mom is a singer, painter and poet, my dad was a guitar player, and my sister is a musician like me. Almost every day of my childhood something creative was going on in my house. I found music a bit later in my life when I was 15. I realized that for me, music could be an outlet and a place for me to express my most complicated emotions. It became that for me pretty quick, and it functioned in that role better than anything else ever had. I soon discovered that I wanted a life where music was my main focus, so I went to school to pursue that dream. In the years I’ve been making music, I’ve found that it is incredibly difficult to maintain a career in the field. You can’t just step into a life as a musician where you’re able to comfortably create your art, you have to find time for it amidst all the other things that aren’t necessarily in line with your passion. So currently, I’m trying to juggle all that with the overbearing weight society places to be a certain type of person. I’ve started my own record label, Cage Records, with my friend based in the San Fernando Valley, and our goal is to help independent artists in a similar position succeed without tying them into lengthy contracts. We want artists to be able to come to us with whatever service they may need help with and help them. For example, if an artist wants help promoting and distributing a singular release, they can come to us and discuss exactly what that might look like. We work with artists as little or as much as they might want instead of the traditional label model, where they completely oversee and manipulate an artist’s career. Hopefully Cage Records can help push others as well as myself toward success in the music industry, whatever that may look like. I think I speak for a lot of independent artists when I say that I want to be able to make the art that makes me happy and not be stressed while doing so. In addition to what I hope Cage Records can accomplish, I hope that my music is able to find people who resonate with it, and I hope that whoever it finds gets as much out of it as I do when I make it.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think the support artists receive or the lack thereof is a really difficult point of contention. It’s next to impossible to adequately support yourself if you’re an independent artist in most mediums, which is really unfortunate. For actors, we’ve seen the SAG AFTRA strikes occur in protest of ridiculously unfair wages. For musicians, I’d consider it even more difficult to be heard and supported. You can spend days and days refining a piece of music that you put your all into, only for it to make you 0.003 cents a stream. It’s ridiculous. One way that society could begin to better support musicians is for streaming companies to mend the absurdly low streaming payouts, but that feels like a pipe dream. Spotify just announced that they’ll actually be altering the minimum stream count required to even begin seeing the 0.003 cents. This kind of disregard for a musician’s welfare admits that corporations don’t take the profession seriously, and view it more as a hobby than anything else. Meanwhile, major labels are raking in millions and millions of dollars from unethical chart and playlist placement equating to modern day payola. It’s hard to address what changes need to be made when money is power, and the people who need change have no money. There are countries where artists are supported much more than America, for instance in Norway or Denmark where public money and grants are used to support artists who are in practice. This feels super fair, even if it isn’t much and just supplemental income. It would be a million times better than what we get here, which is basically nothing.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

While being an artist is difficult financially, it’s incredibly rewarding in other ways. The feeling I get when I come up with a piece of music I really like is one of the best parts of the art form. I love sharing my music with friends and family, hearing honest feedback and appreciation. One of the best parts of being a musician though is when total strangers find my music and are compelled to comment on it or share with me how they feel about it. It’s something they totally don’t need to do, so when they do it shows that they actually really like what you made. And that’s super rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.clarkejohn.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clarke.john.music/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClarkeJohnMusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsgfJ__aQxIEiu0p3uCMdGA
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@clarke.john.music?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc