We recently connected with George Fetner and have shared our conversation below.

George, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

When I was seven or eight, my first music teacher made a deal with me: as long as I practiced what was assigned to me each week, I could also share with her anything I’d made up on my own. I think she recognized that I was creative but needed more tools. It’s always a marriage of curiosity and work, and when both feed off of one another, I find myself in a special circumstance I have to ride out.
For the better part of two decades I studied one-on-one with piano, guitar, or composition teachers. I also work with other performers either on the bandstand or in a composer-performer relationship. The clearest thread that’s emerged from these relationships is humility. Find ways to humble yourself. Put yourself in healthy situations like playing with people who are better than you are, writing music for people who know how to play their instruments, or working long-term with someone who understands how to inspire you to be better.
The more you put in, the more you get out.
The more open you are to outside guidance, the better your inner guidance will be.

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 a guitar player, band leader, composer, and songwriter. I’m interested in a little bit of popular music, quite a bit of semi-popular music, and an enormous amount of unpopular music.
When I perform, it’s mostly with my band as a singer and electric guitarist, but I’ve also performed solo, free-improv, film, and concert hall (“classical”) music.
I’ve composed lots of music for the concert hall, some film music and some electronic music. I’ve also written lots of music rooted in rock and lots of songs.
Looking back, my band George Fetner and the Strays. GFATS has allowed me to be a songwriter with an ensemble eager to play new music, a front man, a band leader, an arranger, and much much more. It’s also brought together nine musicians who have vastly different musical backgrounds who make something interesting, unique, and fun.
Music is essential to humans. It’s essential to survival. It assists in balancing an unbalanced world.

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

Spend money on local musicians. By now most music lovers know that paying to see local musicians, buying their merchandise, and buying their music makes a significantly larger impact than streaming their music for free.
There is exceptional, unique music happening close to you. Seek it out and be an active participant in a musician’s career.

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.

First, I think everyone is creative! Everyone is expressive in their own way. We are constantly improvising and creating elements that shape our lives.
I can at least share what my process is like in case someone finds it interesting. There are a lot of ways to make music and write songs. I write songs by coming up with ideas, notating those ideas, handing sheet music to my band, practicing, learning, making changes, performing the song, making more changes, performing, and hopefully recording the song after it’s lived with the musicians for a bit.
I don’t really enjoy the process before I hand sheet music to the band. It’s tedious and I judge all of my ideas as if they are a final product; it’s very hard to put something on paper and to convince yourself that it’ll be better later when you edit your work. But there always comes a point when I realize I have something that’s ready to be edited and polished. The last little bit of editing, polishing, and preparing written music for the band is really the beginning of the “fun” part of writing a song. But you have to put in the work to get there. You don’t have a song until you make the sounds.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.georgefetner.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gfats_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GFATStrays
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@fetnerg/videos
• Other: Bandcamp: https://georgefetner.bandcamp.com/
  Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/george-fetner-and-the-strays/1520464276
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6tyP8fgMpuVTa5wfkbBjEg?si=5065wCRTToeXKsC1NzNq1A

Image Credits

All photos by Perry McLeod except for:
#2 by Sean Rayford
#6 by Zac Thomas
#7 by Crush Rush