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

Jon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

It was not just a whim or by chance. In 1999 I was going through a divorce from a 29 year marriage. At the time, I was a manufacturer’s rep in the lawn & garden and hardware industry selling and servicing The Home Depots and big box home centers covering an area from Maine to Virginia. I was averaging about 54,000 miles driving throughout this territory. In the three years following my divorce (with two daughters in the mix) my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer, my dad attempted suicide because of my moms condition and my brother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. As a result of all the above, I fell into a very deep depression and was not doing well in my job. I decided to get out of the repping business and had the opportunity to buy a graphic design business that was called Creative Desktop. I purchased this business on 9/7 /01 not knowing what was to come on 9/11. When 9/11 hit, I found myself with an existing business that was suddenly starting to shrink. It did not help that I was still dealing with my depression. I happened to walk into a Circuit City one day, saw a keyboard, hit the demo key that played the theme music to the James Bond films and by impulse just purchased the Yamaha keyboard, took it home, labeled the keys and start using the built in loops to create my own music. I started to write my own lyrics to go with the music and never looked back ever since. That was exactly what I needed to prevent me from checking out of life as I was very close to do that by then.

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 joined the Ct Songwriters Association where I met Bobbi Tammaro and his wife Leila. Bobbi was a smooth jazz artist and a producer of many great songs, some of which got placed in soap operas on TV. Bobbi invited me and a few of the songwriters from the Association to his studio for what he called Producer’s Playground where we would give him a verse and chorus of a song we wrote and the genre we thought it would be good in as well as an artist we envision the song sung by. I gave him my song, Good Friends and he made it sound so much better than even I envisioned. I immediately asked him to produce a radio ready version of my song with his wife, Leila singing the vocals and was totally blown away by the finished product. It was then that I knew I wanted to stay focused on the music and was the catalyst to my starting The Big Apple Indie Music Series aka TBAIMS in 2013. I knew I wanted to provide a platform for independent music artists to perform in front of music, entertainment, TV and film industry executives including A&s.

But I must back track a bit here. I first had to learn how to effectively network to meet the right people so I could do what I wanted to support these artists. I read a book called Endless Referrals by Bob Berg and started to attend an average of four networking events a week in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area joining over 36 Meetup groups as well as attending local chamber of commerce events in the surrounding cities. I also started to set up my social media sites getting a profile on to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Stage32. By the time I started The Big Apple Indie Music Series, I had built a very large following. In my networking efforts I was introduced to the Gibson Guitar Studio located on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan where I found the perfect place to start my showcases. This was a place kept under the radar as it was mainly used for headliners to rehearse before a major concert. And I was able to invite some very prominent people in the music, entertainment, TV and film industry.

This was a learning experience from the very start. I was fortunate enough to meet one of the Founders of ReverbNation that had over 4 million songwriters/bands listed from across the globe. I was able to put up a artist submission page on ReverbNation that brought in from 2300 to 4800 submission a month from across the globe which gave us instant credibility to the artists on that website.

I was also fortunate to find three other people that wanted to be a part of my vision that helped with vetting the artists we invited to perform for us. Though at first we would choose these artists based on studio recordings they submitted for us to review, we quickly learned to only choose the artists by seeing video footage of a live performance or they would have to audition live via Zoom.

We wanted to choose the artists based on their stage presence, how well they engaged their audience, the ability to sing on key without the use of apps like auto-tune and originality of material.

By being very picky about how we chose our artists, we became one of the top music showcases in New York in the short time we were there from 2013 to 2015 prior to my relocation to Florida.

: Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to create a music showcase concept unlike any other. By that I mean to start with one venue in one city, build a brand on the concept, now calling it Connecting Through Music. Then take that concept and replicate it at additional venues in all the major music cities across North America and then globally. In doing so, I am also building a “family” of independent music artists that I can send them to these other venues to perform and by doing so, building their fan base organically.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In the first several months of my showcase at the Gibson Guitar Studios, one of the reps from one of the sponsors of our events decided he could duplicate our showcase himself using our MC Announcer and in the same venue.

He even invited me to attend this event not telling me the whole truth behind what he was doing. I went to this event realizing what he was trying to do and welcomed it as it was simply him confirming my idea was great.

I ended up removing the MC from my events as I felt that was not in my best interest in keeping him and simply replaced him and continued with my events.

I later learned he failed in making it with his version as he did not really understand the dynamics of what I was doing.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tbaims.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/tbaims/
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TheBigAppleIndieMusicSeries
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/tbaims
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/tbaims
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/creativejon
• Other: http://www.reverbnation.com/jonlanders https://open.spotify.com/playlist/797K7w3tfjpa21HHgp1p3G

Image Credits
Photographs by Michelle Kawka