We recently connected with Gabe Keller Flores and have shared our conversation below.

Gabe, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

I’ve been writing songs since I was 12, but it wasn’t until the last 4 years that I felt good enough about what I was making that I wanted to actively share it with as many people as possible, and it wasn’t until just this last year that I prioritized doing this over other things, like making money. I can say that for me, making music can’t be ultimately about making money; that’s not the point. When it happens, it’s a nice bonus, and it lets me keep doing it, but what’s really gratifying about making music is the moments where someone tells you, “I liked that. That did something for me. That was meaningful to me.” That makes it all worth it.

I work other jobs to make money, so I don’t have to put pressure on my music to be the primary source of income for me. This lets me prioritize doing it because it’s fun.

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?

In 2018, I wrote some songs where I felt like I had learned from a lifetime of writing songs what my strengths are musically, and I had something to say. At that point, it felt like there was no reason not to share them, besides my insecurities and fears, and those seemed like good things to face anyway! So I started a band, Witness, with two friends and amazing musicians, Peter Breen and Tim Johnson. The name Witness at the time felt like a core intention of mine personally, that something I can offer is a capacity to witness and reflect back elements of my experience that others might resonate with, and particularly, elements that are challenging, that perhaps in naming them and writing about them, others might feel their experience validated or understood. So that remains the core intention in my songwriting: it’s both a personal therapeutic modality, but I don’t share every song I write; the line for me has to be that I can imagine (or sometimes I hear directly from others) that a song I’ve written is useful to them in some way, whether that’s as entertainment or a source of contemplation or both!

Witness is undergoing a transition at the moment, change in band members, and also a change in style and subject matter. Currently the band is comprised of myself on electric guitar, Willow Waters on bass, and Stephen Gregg on drums. I’ve been saying we’re a garage-country/jazz-fusion/rock n roll power trio. The songs are mostly about heartbreak. So it’s a louder, angrier, messier version of Witness than the existential folk-pop we put out previously. It’s been a cathartic and empowering direction to go in, but I think Witness’s long-term trajectory is probably somewhere in between these two styles. We have a travelogue album coming out this fall that is a mix of full-band songs and solo songs, so I think it will make clear that Witness can both go hard and be gentle.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think creativity is a birthright of all people, and I think exercising it in some way is important to mental health. Creativity is also something that can bring people together, whether they’re working on a creative project together, or coming together to witness someone else’s work. Creativity is stifled by being too busy, stressed, distracted, or unhappy. Unfortunately, this seems to describe most people today! What is needed for creativity to thrive is space, both personal and collective, in which to allow our minds to wander, reflect, and process what we experience into something beautiful. So, generally, efforts that allow people time and space to just be, to be reflective, would be supportive.

Funding for artists obviously is one way to allow people that space. But also, as individuals, being conscious of our time and energy and where we put it, is a way to resist and push against the demands of the 24-hour attention and engagement economy, that would have us spend our whole lives on our phones as opposed to connecting directly with eachother. So support for physical meeting spaces, local music venues, associations of artists and of patrons of the arts, allow us to supersede the middle man of social media and begin to build alternative spaces where we can create community and meaning without the constant intrusion of the richest companies in the world into our most intimate spheres. In this way I think creativity and the circles of connection that grow around creativity have the capacity to be a catalyst for the human connection, bridge-building, and power-building needed to turn the boat around on society’s general trend towards disconnection, atomization, narcissism, and polarization.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

As a preface, I’m a big critic of social media generally speaking; these companies are consciously profiting off exploiting human vulnerabilities through appealing to our tendencies to seek validation, compare ourselves to others, and be attracted to outrage and sensationalism, in ways that have disastrous consequences for individuals and for the health of our society at large. So, I try to use social media as a tool for connection and outreach, while doing my best to monitor and mitigate the harmful effects of its design on me and others. That being said, I much prefer other forms of connection, like text and email, because they don’t have the always-optimizing engagement algorithm as a backdrop. I’ve used an email list for my music for 4 years or so, and find it a lovely way to communicate with people I know are interested.

At the same time, social media seems essential right now for any artist seeking to grow their audience. In a way, it’s perfectly designed for that purpose. It seems to understand dynamics of human social behavior well, such that, if you use it as an artist interested in connecting with other artists, it will reward you by showing your content to other people with similar interests, etc. I’ve used my social media both as a platform for promoting my music, and as a way to stay in touch with my local music scene. For that purpose, it works excellently. I do recommend viewing all social media in chronological rather than algorithmic order; that way, you know why you’re seeing what you’re seeing (i.e. because that’s the order it was posted in) rather than being subtly manipulated by an algorithm trying to predict what will keep you glued to your screen the longest.

As far as what to post, my advice is to be authentic and feel good about what you post. Social media thrives on sociability: present yourself as the person you want to be known as publicly. It’s easy to get caught up in a social media metrics race where the only thing that matters are the numbers of followers, likes, etc. but in my experience that’s a recipe for unhappiness, and maybe isn’t actually the metrics you want to be using to measure yourself. For me, understanding that social media is just one way I connect with people around music helps balance the pressures its design puts on me.

So, for me, using social media is a tricky dance, a mindfulness exploration, that requires care and sensitivity. But I think used in that way, it can not only be a way to connect with people you might not otherwise have, but to have a perspective on the inner workings of this huge force in our personal and collective lives, which we can then bring to conversations on transforming, regulating, or replacing it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://witnessmebaby.bandcamp.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/witnessmebaby/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/witnessmebaby

Image Credits
credit to Josh Wirtanen for the Witness heart-eye symbol