We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful James Rone. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with James below.

Alright, James thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I started my creative career very young – I started performing improv and writing songs when I was 14 years old, and I haven’t slowed down since. I don’t have any regrets about when I began, but I do wish I had recognized the many different ways that a person can live a valid creative life sooner.

Writing and sharing songs is everything to me. For years, I believed that there were two songwriting identities available. Category 1: rising, adventurous, profitable artists who attract press. Category 2: older, unexciting hobbyists who perform amateurishly to empty rooms. As a result, after I turned 35, I concluded that all doors were closed to me, and I’d have to resign to being in Category 2. After all, if I hadn’t been discovered yet, I must be a hack.

The terms “amateur” and “professional” are inextricably linked to commerce. You’re a professional if you can pay your bills with your work. Sources of income as an artist often depend on venue operators, social media intermediaries, and other distributors. So my status as a professional artist relies on someone else’s belief that they can profit from my work. In my mind, “professional” equated with “valid”, so as my perceived marketability declined with the graying of my hair, my self-esteem as an artist dropped. If nobody wanted to sell me, I must not have had much value, right?

Of course, the truth (as always) is much more complex. Shira Small recorded The Line of Time and the Place of Now in 1974 as a senior project at a small Quaker boarding school in Newtown, Pennsylvania, She pressed 500 copies and nothing happened. Does that make her less valid as an artist than songwriting teams who write songs for streaming algorithms or jingle writers who pay their expenses from money made from music? The Numero Group just reissued Shira Small’s album – I recommend you listen to it and decide for yourself.

Like any artist, I’m always growing and evolving, but the music I make has value because I have invested myself in it. I now collaborate with folks who share my ideas and my taste, and the audience that I find as a result finds their own value in what I create.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’m a songwriter, performing artist, and educator.  I’ve always made my living in arts and education.  I’ve performed as a songwriter and improviser in the Twin Cities for a couple of decades with bands like The Seagraves, the Robinson Caruso Organization, and School For Girls, and I’ve recently begun releasing albums as a solo artist.  I perform every week at HUGE Theater with my improv group, The Mess.

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

I want to be truer and truer to myself, the older I get.

How did you build your audience on social media?

That’s not where I’ve built my audience.  I’ve built my audience through performance and making connections with people in person and through a regular email that I send to people who are interested in what I do.  It’s easy to feel discouraged if expressing yourself on social media is unnatural to you. Some people feel good about using those platforms and are energized by it. If you’re not, there ARE other ways of connecting with people around your work. You get to do the creative work of finding those ways. Contrary to what we are told, social media is not the only way of finding an audience in 2023.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jamesrone.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesronemusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesronemusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNUVJ_jf7CgWVIPoJtIduBw

Image Credits
Adam Iverson Photography