We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cole Hedgecoth. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cole below.

Hi Cole, thanks for 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?

The biggest thing I had to learn was to be self-sufficient. When I first began making music, I wanted everyone else to do it for me. I thought making music was only about performing and using your voice, so when it came to producing, songwriting, mixing, marketing, etc., I wanted other people to do that for me. Then I quickly realized I wasn’t growing.

All throughout high school, I recorded music using a Samsung Pocket Camcorder on top of free downloaded beats from YouTube and put everything together in a free video editing software. Not the most ideal set up. I probably released 4 or 5 projects using this method. When I got to my senior year of high school, I shared this method with another artist friend of mine, and he told me he had a small studio set up in his bedroom that he’d be happy to let me use. We were able to collaborate and produce a few demos, but this is when I realized how much I didn’t know about my craft. There was a whole world out there that I never cared to invest in, and I knew if I wanted to grow, I had to start somewhere.

I immediately downloaded the demo version of FL Studios and began teaching myself how to use it. Once I got a job, I invested in some equipment and was able to really start pursuing my ambitions. It was difficult, and I so badly wanted to just be good at it, but I knew I had to invest a lot of time into what I was doing.

I often will get ahead of myself and think that I don’t need to learn things because someone else can do it, and had I just embraced these things myself, I’d probably be a lot further along. But now I understand that if I want to grow and develop as an artist, I need to advocate for myself and expand my skillset as far as I can.

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

I’ve been writing and performing music for as long as I can remember. I have a stack of paper in my basement with over 200 songs written, dating all the way back to kindergarten. They’re probably not very good, but I’ve at least been pursuing this dream for a very long time.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve continuously evolved and grown to become the best version of my artistic self that I can be, and that growth is still happening today. My goal has shifted from just writing whatever to telling authentic stories about the human experience. One of my favorite things to do is to listen to earlier music I’ve recorded and experience my growth as a storyteller & songwriter with every project.

When people encounter my music, I want them to feel safe. I want them to feel like we know each other. I’ve never been afraid to fully express myself and lay it all out on the table, so when listeners hear my emotion, my hope is that they can relate to it and grow from it. Being a human is such a unique experience and I feel like it should remind us that we’re in this together. I want to express that as often as I can through the different stories I tell in my music.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

“It has to be perfect.” For years, I was striving for perfection, thinking that’s what I needed to reach in order to be successful.

When I was in 10th grade, I released a song & music video about a girl I was dating. I had mostly tried to keep my music a secret, but every once in a while, people managed to find it. The guys in my gym class found the song & video and made fun of me for it. It was super heartbreaking and I really wanted to quit pursuing music.

Towards the end of my 11th grade year, a bunch of students were playing YouTube videos on the projector, and I was so scared of them finding my music, that I just deleted it all right then and there. I couldn’t bare someone else making fun of what I was creating. But instead of walking away from music, I just dove into chasing perfection. Nobody could make fun of me if I was making perfect music, right?

I lived under that idea for the next couple of years and it was incredibly debilitating.

In 2020, I had the opportunity to sit down with a Grammy award winning producer, and one of the things he told me was, “You’re going to suck sometimes. Just keep going.” It took me a while to process what he was telling me, but it helped me deconstruct my toxic thought process and develop a new method for creating art: embracing the bad.

I’ve found so much growth in letting go of the perfection. I can’t really achieve it anyways, so why keep trying? If you create often, you’ll find yourself making things that just aren’t that good, but instead of giving up on it like I used to, I’ll embrace it. The good stuff comes much quicker when I don’t try to avoid the bad. It’s there to help us grow.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

One of the most rewarding things about being an artist is seeing a finished product. Some of the projects I work on take weeks, months, and even years to complete. It can exhaust a lot of mental & emotional energy. However, when I finally reach the end and am able to share it with the world, it so satisfying.

Contact Info:

• Website: colehedgecoth.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/colehedgecoth/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100007246530341
• Twitter: twitter.com/colehedgecoth
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ColeHedgecoth/featured

Image Credits
Michaela Cooper-Hedgecoth Liam Boyd