We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Courtney Yasmineh a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Courtney, thanks for joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I have earned enough money to live on some years and other years I’ve supplemented with small but fun or meaningful jobs and projects that allow me to be at home more and not out on the road on tour.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Courtney Yasmineh and I’m a person who has dedicated my life to self expression in a variety of forms. I’m a songwriter and recording artist. I’ve toured with a backing band in Europe and the US many times over the past twenty years and have every intention of continuing. My latest album came out in 2022 and is nominated for best Americana album in the Midwest Country Music Organization right now. In 2022 I also won a Bob Dylan Legacy Grant for a song of mine that chronicles my experience of running away and living alone at seventeen in a cabin in northern Minnesota, where I obsessed over the early recordings of Bob Dylan.

I’m a writer at heart, I write in a handwritten journal and also on my Patreon page for fans and followers just about every single day. I’ve written manuscripts about a girl called Sidney, who is for the most part me, and the first of those books has been published and is a best seller on Amazon right now. I’ve written a lot of songs and I’ve recorded eight albums. When I was ten years old I performed one of my original songs for the first time, playing acoustic guitar and singing into a microphone, at the big Lutheran Church in Chicago where I was in the children’s choir and I loved the experience.
Music drew me to the church, my parents said they made the mistake of taking me to a Christmas Eve service when I was six even though they were not members and weren’t church going people at all, and when I saw the kids singing in the choir I said, “How did those kids get to do that?” And after that my parents drove me across town to the church on Wednesdays and Sundays for choir, and I got a lot of solos and then I’d insist that they get dressed up and come to the service to see me sing. From what I remember, my father was just uncomfortable about being there at all because his mother was Jewish, and my mother was mad and said I was a show off.

My parents loved popular music and listened to a lot of great albums when we would all be in the car together, especially on long drives to our grandfather’s cabin in Northern Minnesota. I learned to appreciate music from them, especially my Dad, he loved The Beatles and MoTown and a lot of great singers and songs. My Mom loved Willie Nelson and some other cool Country stuff that affected me strongly as well.
I wanted a guitar and my grandparents got me one for Christmas when I was eight. I started playing it right away, a girlfriend of my big brother taught me four chords and she taught me how to read the chord diagrams so I could learn more chords in the song books I had. I had a Cat Stevens song book that I could play straight through front to back.

Right now I’m working to bring every bit of creativity and creation to fruition in the time I have left in my life.
When I perform, either solo or with my full backing band, I try to show the full honesty of being a woman who has tried to live life to the very fullest. I think people appreciate my spiritual perspective, since I’ve always seen the universal and the mystical in the creation and expression of music.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I think deep down I’ve always had a mission or a goal to show that anyone, and especially a woman, can make their way as a creative person with a sense of personal freedom and a sense of choice, not having to follow the advice of record executives or adhere to the constraints of popular opinion. I think I want people to see me at the age of sixty, or seventy-five even, doing exactly what I want to do creatively and I want to be of value and have some kind of relevance because of my unique perspective.
I want everyone in the world to have this same attitude for themselves and their own creations.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think the one single thing that makes others feel frustrated in their own lives is the thing that someone might struggle to understand about my life and my story……it’s the idea that you are free, you can choose, you are allowed to live and work in whatever way inspires you, you can be creative in everything you do, and that every one of us is creative and is choosing creatively everything from our hairstyles to our clothes to our foods to our jobs…..we are all creative and we are all saying things to each other by our choices….even if what we’re saying is “I’m not creative, I’m not exercising my creativity” then that’s a choice to say that too.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.courtneyyasmineh.com