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

Daphne, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I think most artists wish they could have started their career sooner at one time or another… I know I felt pressure not having played in bands untill halfway through college, and not starting my own band till a year after graduation, not to mention persevering through several major speed bumps like projects breaking up, sustaining a major injury where I couldn’t walk for six months, or going through a global pandemic which put my usual musical career on hold for a over a year. The older I get, the more there’s been a nagging voice in my head whispering, “You’re getting too old for this… you’re past your prime. You’ve taken too long,” that I’ve had to push aside. A lot of times, I think that had I gotten involved with playing in bands sooner, like in high-school, I might have been further along than I am, but I think the last year for me especially has been a lot of , getting comfortable with starting right when I did, and realizing that there is no one “right” path to being a musician or creative professional.

I think starting sooner would have put me on a different trajectory creatively. I may have had more experience writing songs, playing shows, and recording music overall, but the challenges I have gone through over the years, such as having to switch gears to go to film school at ASU for four years, all inevitably brought me right back to my passion for music, and ended up shaping a more interesting story overall. Sometimes having experiences outside your desired field, can end up making your creative perspective more unique when you come back to it. I know I am always thinking about music videos now when I write a song, and the production required to make those come to life. I also know the speed bumps along the way:, band breakups, health issues, mental and physical, or shared global trauma, don’t feel great in the moment, but they can fuel some really great art when you finally have time to process those feelings.

I’ve got an incredible band in Daphne + The Glitches that’s already put out one single, and we’re just about to go into the studio to record a brand new batch of songs with Bob Hoag of Flying Blanket Studios. I’ve also been able to collaborate and play with some incredible people throughout this project’s time so far, and am also playing lead guitar for another killer local act, Fairy Bones, which has been both a ton of fun and a great challenge as a musician thinking like a lead guitarist instead of a front person. As much as it’s been tough to come to terms with, I’m finally feeling pretty comfortable with being right where I’m at in my music career, and at the end of the day, I wouldn’t change a thing.

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?

I’m Daphne Greene, the singer/songwriter behind Daphne + The Glitches, a blues/psych/rock band with my own little nerdy slant to the themes and sonic direction of the music. Being a trans woman, I’ve also gotten to explore queer and trans themes in a lot of the music I write for this project, something important to me that has proven both incredibly satisfying, in that I get to write about stories and feelings that might resonate in those communities, and also challenging in terms of self-representation as an artist and member of a minority community that has been almost constantly under fire.

I’m also the lead singer for LA based band Statues of Cats, and play lead guitar in local AZ band Fairy Bones, as well as having played lead guitar and sung backup for Staircase Spirits (CA), and 42 Eternal (AZ).

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Honestly, there’s a laundry list I feel like I could pick from, but the one I’d like to talk about on a more personal level, that I don’t feel like I have before, is coming out as a queer and transgender woman. It has affected me not only on a personal level, but in my professional and creative life as well. I’ve experienced workplace discrimination, trouble booking shows with my bands, bandmates being uncomfortable with their project being identified as a “queer-fronted” band, as well as lots of financial stress, just to name a few things.

Moving from Phoenix to Los Angeles was in large part both wanting to develop my music career, as well as getting away from friends and family who I felt wouldn’t be okay with me exploring my gender identity. I came from a very conservative Christian background, and I knew expressing any kind of deviance from the expected gender binary could alienate me from most of the people close to me at that time. When I finally came out publicly (through updating my name/gender/profile picture on social media), it was like a light switch had been flipped, immediately changing how certain people spoke to me…or didn’t speak to me in some cases. It was incredible how isolating that experience was. I was fortunate that the support network I had developed in LA was incredibly helpful in coping with the fallout, but I think instead of dealing with how hurtful the experience was, I buried myself in my work with the band and my day job. This was something that I honestly don’t think I was equipped to recognize and deal with until years later.

I was brought up with a very, ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps,’ mentality toward life. I learned to fend for myself fairly early on, which is why I think I was able to simply treat most of the issues I faced with an ‘it is what it is,’ mentality, shrug it off, and do my best to move on. But in retrospect, I wish I had had the support and tools to fight against some of the discrimination I experienced. When I came out at work at the rental house I worked for in Hollywood, I had one superior ask to speak with my privately in a room, telling me he wouldn’t be able to book me for the same gigs anymore if I came to work looking overtly female. He asked me several inappropriate questions, and I was not equipped to defend myself, or even call him out on his behavior at the time. I was subsequently let go for an ‘unrelated issue’ from that job days later, and blackballed from working at any of the affiliate locations for that company.

Then there is being out of work as a trans person. Applying for jobs can be difficult enough for anyone, let alone a trans person who is still at the beginning of their transition. Being misgendered and having to explain over and over that your legal name is one thing, but you go by another, to countless people during the hiring process; trying to put yourself together enough to feel confident in interviews; and having to have HR/IT correct names/pronouns on forms/emails/accounts once you actually get a job, can prove to be incredibly challenging and demoralizing. It got to the point where a friend offered me a recommendation for a job as an after-school chess teacher, but he told me I’d have a better chance if I showed up presenting as a male, which I did. Despite getting the job, I think this ended up being one of the single worst decisions I ever made, having to go back into the closet, and subsequently, not even a year into the job, having to come out of the closet again, but to several different groups of my own students and having the school principles hamfistedly try to set me up to talk to your students about how you’re Ms. Daphne now. This experience hardened my resolve to live as my authentic self in every instance, not only in my expression of my gender identity, but in all aspects of my life as well.

Looking back, it can seem like a lot, and honestly that’s because it was. It wasn’t until the world stood still due to Covid, and I found myself not working for months that I was able to take time to reflect on all the things that I went through and finally process them. I had jumped through most of the legal hurdles and was on the path to jumping through the medical/financial ones. I was finally able to practice some self care, and am in a relationship with my incredibly supportive and loving partner Hanna. I’m in a band where I can be myself completely, and be a visible member of the queer community in any way that I want to, and support other members in their journey. The struggles I’ve encountered are only going to be fuel on the fire that is my future musical and artistic endeavors, and

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Being a creative is a career path that is rarely laid out for you in any kind of structured way, and it may look crazy from an outside perspective, not to mention, everybody has a different way of doing it. Some can really lean into social media, streaming or content creation, while others focus on the craft, performance or business aspects. Most artists who can’t afford to pay people to help them with certain aspects they’re not familiar with or passionate about, end up having to become jacks of all trades, and masters of none in order to compete with everyone else. The reality is, it’s a balancing act that can be extremely difficult to manage at times, and if you’re not careful can overwhelm you.

Personally, the bit that I’ve been struggling with the most is social media. It can certainly feel like a necessary evil that puts artists in the position of constantly feeling the need to be “on”: always producing content and engaging their fanbase. Because of the nature of the bite-sized and easily digestible content that most people end up engaging with these days, there can be a subconscious pressure to be constantly at the top of your game, always at the behest of the almighty algorithm. This pressure can wear down the creative spirit, at least in my case.

When the pandemic hit, I simply chose to take a break from it all. There was part of myself that said I was going to use the break from work to write and record music, create tons of content, and build up a marketing strategy. In reality I ended up spending countless hours playing Animal Crossing, escaping from the grind and trying to practice self care in other areas of my life that I had put off far too long which in some ways, I think may have been healthier for me at the time. Now that things are back to some semblance of “normal,” the pressure of hustle culture is there again. Coming back to it with some time away has given me the perspective necessary to try to re-engage with social media in a more healthy way. I want to remember that it is a tool that can be used, and not the other way around. While you can get in your own way, telling yourself you have to be living the perfect curated life, the reality is that people identify with imperfection, and authenticity will always trump artifice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.daphneandtheglitches.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/datglitches/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daphneandtheglitches/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/69123603/admin/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DATGlitches
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLp53DH3S6nrfcTWm5Pk61w
• Other: https://www.twitch.tv/daphneandtheglitches

Image Credits
Neil Schwartz Photography