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

Daniel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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 way I learned to write songs was a long, absorptive process. I didn’t really even know this was who I was until later in life – my first musical collaborations were just around a campfire with friends, making stuff up. It was fun, it wasn’t a goal-oriented career path. We weren’t TRYING to be songwriters or rockstars, we were just letting ourselves be ourselves. As I started taking the music business more seriously, I started paying a lot more attention to how people did things – what made someone have a unique sound, or a unique perspective. By just paying attention, I learned that I could understand where an artist was coming from, even if I didn’t particularly like the music. I could always appreciate the honesty or the storytelling. And of course there are lots of rules and tools you learn when trying to write songs for the radio, or for an artists’s commercial project. There were books, workshops, YouTube videos and podcasts to learn all of those things – but in the end, the most important thing I learned is from what my college friends and I were doing all those years ago: collaborators just letting ourselves be ourselves.

Daniel, 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?

I was initially a visual artist. I made paintings and drawings, but I also wrote poetry and stories and novels. I was always looking at the world and imagining pictures and lives somehow. But whether I was walking, or cooking, writing or mowing the lawn, I always had music on. I have always loved music. One day while I was writing, it finally dawned on me: “you should write music”. I think a lot of people come to song writing because they sing, or play an instrument, or like to be on stage. That’s the “song” part of it. I came to song writing for the “writing” part of it. That serves me well in sessions with other writers and artists, because I can draw from storytelling tools, communication tools, or wordsmithing tools to draw out emotion while the other folks in the room are singing and playing and throwing ideas around. I’m the one who helps make things make sense! One thing I’.m proud of is that I have had songs recorded in country, pop, rock, Americana, and blues. The genre doesn’t matter so much as the impact of the song we’re creating in that moment. But the thing I’m most proud of, is that people want to work with me again and again – that they trust their hearts and ideas to me, knowing I’ll be a compassionate collaborator.

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?

If you’re not a creative, you probably don’t understand that it takes years and years of making no money from this venture to, in the end, make a lot of money. Mind you, I’m still on that journey TOWARDS the proverbial “lot of money”, (ha ha) but I have seen financial success come to people I work with. The grind is full of side hustles, gig work, pro-bono things to make connections, etc. That said, other entrepreneurs will understand that. Even Bill Gates started at a table in his garage.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I don’t know if there is a specific resource per se, but I do wish I had just gotten involved earlier. Do anything. Take every gig you can, find the coffee shop where people in your industry hang out, learn to play golf if people play golf, volunteer for a cause that is important to your industry. If you know someone who is going through the same journey as you, offer to help them move, or change their oil or whatever skill you can offer. This is how relationships are made, and every business is a relationship business.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: danielleathersichmusic

Image Credits

Studio Photos: Jonathan Olivares
Stage Photo: Sarah Edmonds