We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jj Slater a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

JJ , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

A vacation- or just a break, even without any travel or celebration- pulls you out of tunnel-vision. Every person can benefit from a few days as a leaf on the wind, you really absorb something when you let yourself get to that state. I think it helps you move more naturally and intuitively, even when you’re back to being hyper-focused.

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 work in music. On one end of the spectrum, I tune pianos. I do almost all of my advertising with paper flyers, and most of my clientele seem to see them in either coffee shops or one particular hardware store. I reset the pitch and tune them to factory standard, and have gotten pretty fast at it (without losing accuracy). Some folks say old pianos shouldn’t be tuned if their parts haven’t been completely replaced, but I just go ahead and do it, proving them wrong without having to open my mouth.
My least favorite aspect of that job is when someone’s hovering, watching me work. This distaste for an audience definitely does not carry over in my other music work. I write, perform, record and release original music. I tour solo, as a duo with my partner Lexi Weege, and with our band Signature Dish. We put on a pretty raw show- not so much because we’re luddites, but because MIDI, quantized, and synthesized things tend to break as soon as I touch them, and they’re expensive. I’ve developed a style of guitar from many nights playing casino gigs that covers a wide rhythm-and-lead sound simultaneously, and I always work with sinewy, funk-influenced rhythm sections. Our live shows range from crooning psychedelia, to wailing blues, to road-tripping Americana to rock n’ roll anthems. I’ve been proud to see our audience’s ages range from 15 to 85.
As a songwriter, my recent work has included an album called “The Silver Key”, which was written with a residency grant in Taos, NM. It tells a full story through the songs, and was recorded largely live back in MA with a Cultural Council Grant. I also worked with an artist friend who painted an abstract image for each song, which will be compiled as a lyric book when the record is released on November 22nd.

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.

“Non-creatives” and “creatives” may not be the best way to separate people, as I think everyone has the ability to think up something from nothing. A lot of the times I think people get exasperated while watching someone follow through. Sometimes I feel like I’m chasing ephemeral ideas when I’m writing songs, and that’s what gets me through the day. A lot of folks may see something romantic about that. Once you become more focused, and start pumping money and time and anguish into those ideas, I think that’s when some folks start to struggle to understand what you’re doing. Early on, especially, it can seem really chaotic. What a creative is trying to do, and always will be trying to do, is build a holistic lifestyle that can feed into their art, and be fed in some way by that art once it’s realized. Money-in-money-out is just one of many ways the creative life can be sustained.

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

I have small-to-medium-sized goals, and I try to think of ways some can lead to others. I hope to sell a certain number of albums- between vinyl, CD, art booklets and downloads- although the number is only in the triple-digits. At that point, I’d have enough money to record a follow-up record. I intend to record three song-cycle albums in the next few years utilizing grant and crowdfunding money, and through releasing them build a modest fanbase. I want to arrange and tour a live show that features all three records as an Americana triptych!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jjslatermusic.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/jjslatermusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS8IJH-xBZCFJzxxpxp7jNw
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@jjslatermusic

Image Credits

Caterina Kenworthy (color live shot, fire newspaper shot)
Kim Chin-Gibbons (black and white live shot)
Jameson Martin (painting)