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

Darius, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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?

When you first set out on your creative path the idea of being able to do it full-time is attractive and certainly a goal that you put a lot of energy striving for, like most things in life it can prove to be somewhat of a double edged sword. While the first few years of full-time income from my music was a dream come true, at the same time I found myself gradually shifting as an artist and becoming increasingly uncomfortable by being limited to production and publishing deals as well as beholden to the agendas of managers and agents who are often making decisions for you that are more about how they can structure their relationships and power which is not necessarily always useful or even healthy for you as the creative.
I guess there is no perfect scenario, you gotta trade one thing for another, but in recent years I have preferred to work without any overwhelming deals or specific management in place so as to retain my creative freedom and remain in integrity with the people & projects that I work on. I am of course very grateful for the wonderful start that I had in this industry and the help that I received from people more experienced than me who I was able to learn from, but these days I am much more comfortable calling all of my own shots, it’s not for everybody but I prefer to have more freedom. At the same time I would recommend any young and upcoming people in the industry to definitely sign deals and work with people but also realize that when you sign a contract and take money from someone you are also giving up a certain amount of freedom and you might feel differently over time.

Darius, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a singer-songwriter, a producer and a multi-instrumentalist. I started out writing and producing for major label artists in Manhattan until I decided that I wanted to pursue a full-time career as a singer-songwriter and moved to Los Angeles where I have been playing live for the last 10 years and touring the West Coast. During this time I have also helped produce records for other people and worked on movie soundtracks. Most recently I wrote a song for the main character in an upcoming movie called “Black Diamond”, during which I also worked on set training actors how to pretend play guitar on camera. I enjoy the range of projects that I get to work on these days, it helps keep the work interesting for me and I’m always happy to take on new projects and new roles.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Honestly, if you see good live musicians playing put money in the tip jar, if they’re not famous they’re not really making much money and anything that someone can give them is gonna mean a lot, also if you don’t tip live musicians you’re just gonna wind up having bad music at venues because most good musicians will stay home instead of make peanuts.

Also if you just listen to music for free on Spotify or any of the streaming services then you are pretty much contributing zero towards the community of musicians, a few years ago there was revenue from vinyl, cassettes and then compact discs – these physical formats of music actually provided some form of living wage for working musicians, unfortunately streaming does nothing for musicians unless they’re mega famous. Consider subscribing to an app like tidal music where musicians are actually compensated properly for the streams. If you claim to be a fan of music but do not subscribe to any streaming service then quite frankly you’re not actually a fan of music, you’re just a fan of saving pennies.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I always felt that the drive for my creative journey was that I needed to do the one thing but I could not not do, it’s a bit of a double negative but I have discussed this with many other creatives and it’s some thing that a lot of us can agree on – that there is a compulsion to create and produce because we can’t imagine a life and a world without the ability to do that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.dariuslux.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dariusluxmusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dariusluxmusic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariuslux
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dariuslux
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/dariuslux

Image Credits
All photos by Jason Steiner