We recently connected with Jeremy Fowler and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jeremy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with 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 feel like making a living from my creative endeavors is something that I’ll never stop pursuing. I’m currently in a position where I feel like I almost have too much work, which makes me feel super grateful. However, seeking gigs and fostering those relationships are things I’m always actively maintaining. I’ve found in this line of business, you generally get out what you put in – work begets work, gigs get you more gigs, and the main thing: follow up, follow up, follow up. Being persistent and being annoying is a very fine line that I tread daily.
Throughout my adult life, I’ve gone off and on playing music full-time to working a day job. I finally took the plunge into the creative world again for the final time around 2020. I was reconditioning hybrid batteries on Prius vehicles with my good friend, Peter Mark, for work, and I suddenly met a fantastic core group of musicians that I could see myself playing with. They stayed really busy and I would sub in every now and then at their shows, but I really wanted to play with them all the time. I would show up to the events they were playing as an audience member, even if I wasn’t on the bill with them. It basically developed naturally and I began playing with them regularly, which led to meeting and being seen by more musicians around town – i.e. more work. Currently, I play regularly with six or so different groups and occasionally play a solo show or sub in for bands.
The key take away I have for staying busy is being flexible. I’ve been a guitar player my whole life. I identified as a guitar player! In 2021 I started a Beatles cover band, The Lonely Hearts Club, with some of the previously mentioned musicians and found myself playing bass. Cutting my teeth on McCartney bass was a trial by fire. Here’s what I found: by being flexible on what I play, moving to bass opened so many doors for me. It doubled my work load – maybe even tripled. Everyone plays guitar, but not that many people apparently want to play bass. I absolutely love it. Bass has taken me on a Switzerland tour, Summerfest in Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh opening for Gary Clark Jr. Always keep an open mind!
Work is pretty busy these days, but it hasn’t always been like that. Even earlier this year, January and February were looking scarce for me, which leads me back to my initial point of being persistent in staying on top of seeking work and fostering relationships with artists, venues, agents, etc. Even in the fruitful months, I’m always looking for “what’s next?” The saving grace for me has been my abilities in audio engineering. Word to the wise – if you’re into playing music, learn all you can about audio engineering! There are tons of bars and bands needing a live sound engineer. I’ve been freelancing running sound for bands for years, and started working at the Lucky Rabbit in Jonestown, TX in March to supplement my income for especially dry gig months.
Jeremy, 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?
My creative business endeavors have been Transient Mic and Musicity Productions. Transient Mic is a 501(c)(3) dedicated to the preservation of music and sound. Recording high quality music with a knowledgeable audio engineer and producer is expensive. My co-founder, David Ventura Garcia, and I wanted to make recording radio-ready music accessible to artists by making the recording studio mobile and the recording project entirely free to the artist. Unlike a label, we give the artist 100% ownership of the masters to do with as they please. In turn, we get our funding from grants and donors. We’ve had a studio residency at Mosaic Sound Collective for a couple years, but sadly they are closing their doors. In our time there, we raised enough money to transform the school bus that we purchased into a mobile studio. It’s currently being renovated in South Austin, and if anyone reading this has any interest in being a volunteer in any capacity – audio engineering, bus build, fundraising – don’t be shy to contact me. The soul of Transient Mic revolves around community. There are so many amazing artists that need to be heard, and so many amazing music supporters out there and we want to bring them together.
Musicity Productions grew out of my involvement with Transient Mic. I’d meet many artists that really wanted high quality performance videos and help booking events: enter Musicity Productions. Musicity currently works on booking with six Austin, TX artists, and occasionally puts together secret concerts around town. The main way I’ve had financial success with Musicity is through recording live performance videos. These videos have introduced me to all kinds of artists from all kinds of genres. My main selling point on the videos is that it helps with booking. If you’re going to be reaching out to a venue, what better way to show them how fantastic you are than a live, high quality video of you performing? Many videos out there put their focus on either the audio or the video, but not both. The care brought to the tracking/mixing makes it sound close to a studio recording, and the video production on David’s part is top notch – he’s a film major after all! This elevates the product, which elevates the artist.
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.
On occasion, I’ve been given the insight from others that they’re confused about my work status. Explicitly: they don’t think I work. The saying goes “don’t mix work with pleasure” but it’s inherent in the music/entertainment industry, so I can see why it looks like I “get my money for nothing and [my] chicks for free” (thanks Dire Straits). On the contrary, I work every day. My common joke is “why work a 9-5 for a boss you hate when you can be your own boss and work every waking second of the day?!”
Here’s an example of how my day went today: wake up, follow up emails, drive to studio, set up studio for recording session, record material on artist’s new single, follow up emails (remember the follow up spiel?), edit and comp vocals and violins, begin mixing, call artists about shows and song releases, sort through 3 hours worth of music charts for a gig next week, update social media platforms, practice guitar for an upcoming solo gig, drive home and throw instruments in the car, drive to gig, setup for gig (including not just instruments, but entire sound rig), play 3 hour gig, drive home, see if any talent buyers have responded to my follow up emails, remember I need to do my interview with Canvas Rebel!
The thing is that every day is different. Some days I’ll play a three hour early-afternoon event, and then a three hour night event (usually pretty far from each other). Some days I’ll have a recording session from 9am-4pm, and then hustle up to Jonestown to run sound until 9pm. What people generally see, however, is a picture of me on social media playing bass and drinking a beer in front of an audience. I totally get the disconnect of the work aspect, but let there be no mistake, I always have work on my mind. I feel like the second I don’t stay concerned with keeping up with work, I’ll look at my calendar and it’ll suddenly be empty.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
My co-founder and I had been working on Transient Mic for maybe around 5 years. In that time, we really did make some great strides, but it felt like the support wasn’t really coming in. You have to understand that at Transient Mic, David and I are 100% volunteers in all of the work that we do. We run the company, we source the donors, we throw the events, we record the music, we build the relationships. T Mic is truly a labor of love for both of us, and we’ve put in countless hours of work. Just as I was questioning myself on if our work was making a difference and being accepted by people, we received our biggest donation to date from the Surack Family Foundation (Chuck Surack – former CEO and founder of Sweetwater). This did two things: 1) It made it possible to build out our mobile studio so we can take the studio to the artists and record them at no cost, and 2) It gave me a sense of hope that what we are doing is being seen and appreciated by people. The Surack Family Foundation was able to look at all of the work we had accomplished with artists and felt like we were a viable nonprofit worthy to support. At the end of the day, don’t we all want to feel like the work we do is impactful?
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.musicityproductions.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brother.golden.hair
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thejeremy620
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWDo5f3p_1kIM5TvZE9okVw
- Other: My Upcoming Events, Videos, and More: https://linktr.ee/brothergoldenhair Transient Mic: https://www.transientmic.org Shout Out To The Groups I Frequently Play With The Lonely Hearts Club: https://www.thelonelyheartsclub.net Gus Miller Band: https://www.gusmillermusic.com Anthony Garcia: https://www.anthonygarciamusic.com Johnny Fury: https://www.johnnyfury.com Mr. Bullavard: https://www.mrbullavard.com Luke Walker: https://www.facebook.com/RealLukeWalker Shout out to Lucky Rabbit: https://www.luckyrabbitbar.com