We recently connected with Jacob Shipley and have shared our conversation below.

Jacob, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

Something that I think about a lot as a creative is the idea of a ‘Plan B’. It’s a classic concept – you’re going into a highly competitive field where there is limited chance of perceived success and even if you do achieve that success, the financial payouts can be inconsistent or limited in scope. So, figure out something to do JUST IN CASE things don’t work out. Seems smart, right?

I am incredibly grateful to have had parents who have supported my creative endeavors from the beginning. They actually only had one requirement for me from a career perspective which is that I don’t get into advertising (they ran an Ad Agency together for 30 years and it was… tough at times). Now, any creative in the modern world knows that you basically can’t do your job without advertising in some way either through Instagram videos, email, flyering, etc… But still, I chose music and acting and they were so supportive.

They were also very clear with me about how difficult the career path I had chosen would be and the importance of some level of financial stability. But they never told me to find a Plan B. Their thinking was that if I chose a Plan B, I wouldn’t actually have the resources or time to commit to my career and Plan B would become Plan A. So I didn’t preeminently make an escape route from the world of music, I ran in whole hog. Instead, they had me think about the more niche ways my Plan A could bring me stability.

Okay, you want to be a musician – do you also want to teach? Turns out I LOVE teaching and it now comprises of half of my income. Do you want to play private events? I’m currently preparing for a wedding that I’ll be playing at this weekend. Can you leverage the myriad skills you’ve developed in promotion, audio editing, video editing, etc. into another job in your field? I have so many colleagues who approach their money jobs this way!

Basically, with this reframing, my parents conditioned me to think of my art as a realistic way to not only bring me happiness, but also financial stability. They continue to support my art through honest, kind, and critical feedback, and they do the same for the more business aspect of my career. Because of their guidance, I now get to spend my whole life doing the things I love and am decently stable. So thanks Mom and Dad, you really set me up for so much success. I love you both.

Jacob, 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 have two parallel careers at the moment – my singer-songwriter/gigging work and my teaching business, Shipley Music Studio where I teach private voice and guitar lessons.

I actually got my undergraduate degree in Musical Theatre and, up until the 2020 pandemic, was enjoying some moderate success in the theatre world, teaching guitar to a couple students a week, and otherwise working brand ambassador/catering jobs to pay my bills. However, I had been a musician for a long time and was getting increasingly frustrated with waiting for other people to give me jobs. In the music world, a lot of the work is self generated and while there are certainly gatekeepers in venues, sync publishing, etc, I’ve personally found these barriers more pleasant to navigate than the 3-5+ rounds of auditions and callbacks for a job that lasts 2 months and pays less than 1K a week.

So, when the world shut down, I did what I think I always wanted to do which was spend some serious time and energy expanding my private teaching clients and learning how to book my own gigs and make money as a musician. Fast forward to 2023, I finally had enough of a client basis in both teaching and gigging to quit the vast majority of my W2 work and become a full time private musician (I do still teach a few early childhood music classes through a company every week, but its honestly mostly to help deal with self employment tax).

As a songwriter, I write not-so-sad-anymore acoustic folk-rock for those who forgave, but find some masochistic joy in remembering as a way of giving myself and my audiences space to commiserate and laugh through the pain, sorrow, and embarrassments we’ve experienced. My concerts end up a little like a group therapy session, but with way more jokes and fewer tears.

As a teacher, I specialize in teaching singers of all levels to sing Pop, Rock, Folk, and Blues honestly and sustainably while my beginner/intermediate guitar students come to me to find strength and comfortability with their instrument. My studio is focused on helpings students discover their unique musical identity and no lesson or training is complete until the student both enjoys the way they sound and feels good doing it.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My main goal right now is to have a net positive impact on the world. To me this means engaging deeply with the community I live in, being a source of love and support for my students, and using my music to bring comfort and understanding to those who hear it. I’ve spent a lot of my life going back and forth on whether the best thing I can do for the world is to be an artist. At the moment, I think I can do a lot of good this way and sure hope it’s worthwhile. I do struggle with this question though! If you ask me next week, maybe I won’t be feeling so good about art as a vehicle for social change, but right now, I truly believe that music is one of the things that makes life worth living.

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

In this moment, stop using AI to make music for you, or turn you into a Studio Ghibli character, or write you a new romance book, or whatever people are using it for. And for people in positions of power like audiobook producers or film directors, keep hiring living breathing people to do the work they have trained for years to do.

Artists and creatives are reflectors of the world that we live in. They show us how deeply HUMAN we can be. Flawed, but honest, and connected to each of their individual histories and perspectives. Is some AI art good? Yes. Is it useful as a tool? Certainly (although the environmental impact is unbelievably horrendous). But I’ve also seen enough dystopian Sci-Fi movies to know that AI does not build the world I want to live in. It doesn’t support my values as a human. It doesn’t leave a net positive impact for the world no matter how much I may want it to.

Choosing to use AI instead of a real artist isn’t a test of your bank account or your time or even necessarily the quality of the art. It’s a test of your humanity. One I hope you pass. Otherwise how will you fill out that next captcha form?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jacobshipley.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacobtshipley/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JacobTShipley
• Other: Shipley Music Studio Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shipleymusicstudio/

  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3QO0R7R3XnvaVrtRDiYpb8?si=ofJr6I6WTDa9rAligwPJKg&nd=1
  Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/jacob-shipley/1166348380
  Bandcamp: https://jacobshipley.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits

Studio photos by Sy Chounchaisit
Live Performance photos by Shannen Bamford