We recently connected with Jason Lambeth and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jason thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I am largely self taught both as an artist and a musician. My main way of learning has always been to just to go for it. Whether it’s a new medium in art or recording myself. I just give it a shot. Sometimes I make mistakes, I learn from them and then try to do better on whatever the next project is.
I could have taken lessons! Especially when it comes to music. It was a long road before I really found my voice as a musician. At the same time, I am who I am because of the path I’ve taken and I wouldn’t change a thing.
I’m not particularly skilled and I’m happy to remain an amateur for life in most regards when it comes to making art or music. If anything is essential it’s my passion to try new things and continue to try and make the perfect noise rock album.
I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, not the most welcoming place for a budding young artist. I had an amazing middle school art teacher, but after that it was all down hill. This was also pre-internet, so I couldn’t go online and learn anything that I might have needed at the time. I’d say my main obstacles was a lack of access to good instruction during my high school years. I’ve tried to over come that with many hours of drawing on my own.
Jason, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m an early childhood educator, a dad, a musician and an artist all rolled up into one. I grew up someone that was always drawing and making art. In my early twenties I decided to start a rock band and fell in love with making music. After about ten years of playing various bands, my wife and I had our first child. And then I took time away from making music. I started an in home preschool with my wife and we welcomed our second daughter. For several years my only art and music making was with the preschoolers that I was working with.
At some point in 2018 I got the urge to pull out a sketchbook and started drawing again. One thing led to another and I was making collages and I started making music again.
In 2019, my band mate Elsa Nekola and I released our first album as Red Pants. Last fall we released our third album, Not Quite There Yet on Meritorio Records. Getting to work with Meritorio and release an album on vinyl was a dream come true. While continuing to make music with Red Pants, I’ve also maintained a steady art practice. I’ve made all of the artwork for our releases and made album covers for several other musicians.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I have a relatively small audience on the internet, but I feel like they are very loyal and insanely supportive of my endeavors. I just post what I want, when I want and try to share what I am up to or into at that moment. I realize that a five second video with trending audio is probably what would get more likes, but that sort of thing feels gross to me. I’d rather share some photos of my sketchbook or some behind the scenes of a new song that is a work in progress.
I am happy to grow slowly and really connect with people. I’ve been lucky to develop a strong community over social media by not following trends. So I would say go slow, take your time and share what you’re into.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding thing for me is the process of making something completely new. Whether it’s a song or piece of art. The fact that this thing didn’t exist before I (or we) made it still excites me.
I’m currently in the middle of writing a new album with my band mate and aside from recording, this is my favorite time as a musician. I love bringing in a kernel of an idea to band practice and leaving with a fully realized song at the end of the day. I love listening to our rough demos and thinking about where the song will go when we record our final versions of these new songs.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jasonelambeth.com/
- Instagram: jasonelambeth
- Youtube: jasonelambeth
