We recently connected with Gene Taylor and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Gene, 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 been able to make a living being a full-time musician in NYC. I’ve always been musically inclined and it has illuminated my path since I was very young. My first solo I sang I was probably in first grade and music has been my compass ever since. In my high school years I had my small rock band and I knew even then I’d like to make a living doing live music. In my early twenties I was the music director at my local church, a piano player at a liquor store and I’d also travel around the tri state area playing shows and events. These gigs didn’t provide much money but it was enough to let me know that the possibility is there if I stay consistent and at the age of 23 playing music and being on salary did feel great, it confirmed that I was more than able. Around the age of 24 I took a leave of absence from college to simply pursue playing live and auditioning in the city for musicals, which I also enjoy doing. During my leave of absence, I’d drive from Vernon NJ to Secaucus every Friday to do a small mommy and me music class. At that time I didn’t care, I just wanted to be in NYC and make connections and meet people. After a year of auditioning I booked my first national tour in a musical and I started to receive decent money following my creativity and art. Although it was a musical I still found that the bug for live performance was alive and well. During this time my duo band was put on a hiatus and our church job as music directors came to an end. Now after my national tour (Man of La Mancha) I moved to NYC because I thought “Well, obviously broadway is next” and it definitely wasn’t! I had rent to pay and I needed food to eat so I took a cruise ship job singing in a band for Carnival cruise lines. After that contract ended the money obviously dried up and I went back to work at a company called Kidville where we played music for toddlers. During this time I recognized that I am now surrounded by musicians around my age who also had decent paying gigs like weddings and corporate events, no longer did I want to be away at sea for 6 months. What I started to realize is that fostering relationships and being reliable are the mainstays in this industry. Now that I’m meeting more people I joined a band in the heart of Times Square that would have a 5 night residency, quite unheard of other than famous venues like Cafe Wha, that of which I also play for. For me, I don’t think there is a way to speed up the process, simply because I have always been in the process of making music be my full-time career. It’s all I’ve ever really known and my process is and has been working for me.

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?

Well I am a singer and a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. I personally love songwriting the most when it is done in a collaborative effort. I’ve written songs since I was a kid and really took it seriously in my early twenties. I’ve released a few singles that are a bit more in the throwback era musically. When I’m not writing I spend most of my time doing live music either playing for other artists on the bass or rhythm guitar and sometimes keys. I’d say that for me that I’m a bit introspective and I like to be very thoughtful throughout the process of crafting a song, a setlist or the ambience for an evening. Most recently my band “The Caterers” has been able to do small live band karaoke events for corporate events as well as regular parties. It may not sound deep or meaningful but the amount of times people have come up to me or the band saying “That was such a relief for me” or “You all are so kind, I can’t believe I got up and did that!” and it made me think. People want to express themselves and people also want to feel supported while they do that. Singing or public speaking is often listed in the top 5 scariest things to do and if we can get a few people to jump over that hurdle of fear and land on the other side feeling lighter and also feel the rush of endorphins after tackling and conquering a fear the job has been done. There is Gene, the artist, the singer who was on The Voice, but there’s also a side of me that wants to see other people feel the same joy I feel when making music or singing on a stage and feeling the conversation between the audience and myself.

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

Funding of the arts is one but I’d also say that social media whether it’s Tik Tok or Instagram can really put a massive amount of pressure on artists. There is a culture of constantly chasing the algorithm with “content”
I don’t really see the word art used as much anymore. I’m not trying to complain here but when creatives are making content for an app which further pushes the goalpost of what gets engagement it’s very easy to feel forgotten or not worthy. The constant feeling of “compare and despair” and “If you don’t have a lot of engagement then your art isn’t good”
This can’t be further from the truth, a lot of musicians and artists are not videographers or really have a desire to outsmart an algorithm or outsmart music streaming services that pay next to nothing. Musicians and songwriters need to be paid their worth and not a fraction of a penny from streaming services. I remember when Napster came out and of course I downloaded music for “free” I was 13, but now I see the ramifications of that being introduced in the early 2000’s and the course it has taken for every musician famous or not. Society continues to march forward in lockstep with technology. I don’t have any answers on how to fix social media and it’s effect on artists, but a good start would be for people to express themselves and be seen by people without needing the dopamine hit of seeing one hundred likes on a video or seeing one like and feeling like they have failed.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn “sounding good” with singing. Singing is such a huge part of my identity and it somehow gets tied up with self worth. It shouldn’t but since it is an intimate form of expression I always want to put my best foot forward. The problem with always trying to “Sound good” it can take you out of the moment, it forces you to listen to yourself rather than express a feeling or an emotion to an audience. I recall being on this past season of The Voice and getting notes on “You sound too pretty” or “You sound like you’re a voice teacher” on one hand these are validating comments but on the other hand they are healthy critiques to remind me of why I sing and write music. It’s to remind people that most of us are very similar and have backstories that are universal to many people. Trying to be perfect ostracizes because no one is perfect and people want vulnerability, they want someone who is willing to go there and ache on stage and express the emotions they themselves don’t want to express or didn’t even know they had. So once I learned that sounding pretty is overrated I freed myself from a pattern that also kept me back. No longer am I saying “Im not ready, give me more time” I’ve had the most success just leaping off the cliff and saying yes and going for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://genetaylormusic.com
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Image Credits

Alex Galvis