We recently connected with Jonny Rodgers and have shared our conversation below.

Jonny, appreciate you joining 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 think it’s important to start with the idea that there’s no one path to success as an artist. Paraphrasing Rilke, you have to know you want to make art at your core, and if you do, and you decide to pursue a life in art, it can make for a deeply meaningful life. Even if your income comes from elsewhere.

I grew up touring in a rock band with my brother Steve in the 90s. We started our own record label and left high school early to perform and record full time. We were awesome. We never broke into mainstream radio, but with college radio charting, we did 250 shows a year for most of the 90s. We never had any money in our pockets; every cent we made we poured back into the band, making art and touring. We had enough money to eat, and lived on the road. I didn’t have a home for 4 years. We toured in these modified campers, lived in a commune in a warehouse owned by the greek mafia; lots of adventures. By the time I was 25 the band dissolved and, living in NYC, I had a midlife crisis. I had to ask myself if I was really a “lifer” as a musician. The answer was yes, but I had to go deeper into what I loved. I followed what I call the Charles Ives model for a decade: He’s a composer who sold insurance during the day and wrote wild experimental music as his passion. Instead of insurance, I taught music to kids for money, toured as a side guitarist playing to the biggest crowds I’d ever seen, and kept my personal music and my financial life separate for a while so I could really stretch out musically without the music having to meet the demands of the “marketplace.” I studied composition privately, worked hard at that craft, and did a lot of musical experimenting. I created a 9 piece chamber group to play my new songs—it was quasi-collaborative, but I paid everyone else so I could maintain agency over the arc of what I was creating. I’d play sold out shows and come home with no money in my own pocket after paying the band. But it was worth it to make the work. One of the threads I was following at the time, making music with Tuned Glass, ended up becoming a central feature to my career. I wouldn’t have found that without this experimental time. I now tour and write under the monicker Cindertalk. I live in Oregon. My wife and I moved to her family’s farm. We grow food. I drive a tractor. I spend most of my days in a studio in a barn on a Christmas tree farm up the mountain from where we live, writing music full time. I see fir trees out my window. I go home at 5:00 every evening a make dinner for our daughters. I’m very happy.

I recorded my first album at 16 and have made a lot of records since then. I was always interested in doing the arrangements, and in using the studio creatively. However, I didn’t know how to “man the helm” in my early days. If I have one piece of advice, it would be to get a good laptop, interface, microphone, and learn how to engineer and mix yourself well, not to bypass working with people who are better than you at it (definitely collaborate with great studios and with great engineers who have honed their craft) but to have some control over your creative input in the recording environment, and to be able to make work privately and know yourself in the studio without a clock ticking. I wish I’d gotten started on that part of things a decade earlier because that’s a part of the craft that it takes a lot of time investment to master.

I’ve had many seasons in my creative life, and currently I make a living composing. It was a bit of a journey to get to that point. But I moved in that direction because it was something I could age into, not out of. In today’s industry, one place you can still earn real money is from music synched to or written for picture—movies, tv or advertising. Streaming (e.g., Spotify) has decimated musicians’ ability to make money from selling music to listeners; even millions of streams don’t pay the rent. It’s a frustrating state of affairs, but the current reality, and there isn’t really a workaround unless you’re a huge artist. If you go back through history, you’ll see a pattern of musicians “going where the money is.” Bach wrote for the church. Mozart, Wagner, they wrote for wealthy patrons. John Williams went toward film. I’m over-generalizing here, but the takeaway is that it’s important to position yourself in a place where you can keep making art, and you never know when, on your own timeline, you are going to make your best work. But the chances are greater if you are always making work. A couple of friends brought me into their team for film composing or advertising projects, and after a few smaller projects I got my footing as a composer myself. Smaller projects led to bigger projects. I write music for films, TV, advertising, and art stuff, the last of which pays the least but is probably the most aesthetically rewarding. But everything here feeds every other thing creatively. I’ve written some of my deepest music because, e.g., I created some weird, beautiful keyboard patch while composing music for a hospital ad, and went “hold on a sec, I gotta record this other idea for my next album,” and then ended up crying for an hour writing some of the deepest lyrics I’ve written in months. Creativity breeds creativity.

People say never work on spec, and always get paid for your work. I don’t disagree on principle, but strategically, sometimes spec work or lowball gigs really pay off. I was living in New Haven, CT, which is a cool town, but a smaller market, and not as favorable an environment for experimental stuff as NYC. I decided that for a year, I’d say yes to any cool show in NYC, even if I wasn’t getting paid or even if I was just doing one song on a bill, as long as it was in a community that felt like “my people.” That paid off in a huge way, because I ended up meeting so many people with whom I still work, and finding where I fit instead of just doing “gigs.” Another time, a good friend approached me with a pitch to write some songs on spec for a project where each synch would garner us $1.50 to split. I thought it sounded interesting, and poured myself into one song, brought one of my female friends in to sing it (splitting any potential backend with her), and created something really special. I cried when I heard her sing it. And it got used A LOT. That one song earns more money for me than any other project has—many thousands of dollars a year via the mailbox. You never know. Follow your hunches. One other example: I collaborated with a good friend on a small project a decade ago and we enjoyed working together. Now he’s grown his business into robust agency doing these beautiful international TV spots which we work on together. Grow together with good, kind people you like and trust, and who are always looking to make better work.

I have a self-imposed rule that I never do anything half-assed. Even if I’m months into a commission piece and it’s still not satisfying the person who commissioned it, and I’m on my third version of something “great,” and we’ve gone way over the amount of time the budget was worth, I give each piece my whole self—my very best. Some pieces just end up in the weeds for a bit, and others come super-easy. Sometimes it’s me. Sometimes I’m working with a nit-picking perfectionist. But no matter. I feel, if I’m committed and doing what I feel is good work, I’ll come out ahead in the long run.

I don’t subscribe to the model of sacrificing Everything for one’s art, only because I’ve seen that model tried by a lot of people, and the results can be damaging to the whole human, even if some good work comes out of it. Consider your life a holistic thing, and balance your art with love, friends, family, financial wellbeing (whatever that means in today’s crazy world) and health; dead people can’t make art.

Make friends with people who are further along then you in what you’re doing. Understand what’s working for them and why. Not just with their approach to making work or getting paid, but in terms of how their life feels to live in. Are they happy? Everyone can be a mentor if you watch what they’re doing and ask lots of questions. Some people think asking lots of questions betrays your own lack of knowledge, but I’ve found that it’s more often a sign of a curious mind at work. It helps me move fast and grow.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Fundamentally, I consider myself an explorer in my work. Not that I’m the most avant-garde creator on the block, but that I’m continually pushing my own boundaries, pushing against my own boredom, and creating to find something new that excites me—always a new mountain. I started out as a songwriter, and creating pieces that have some recognizable form to them still underpins my work—even in the more art-music instrumental music. I began experimenting with Tuned Glass in my late 20s, and it has since become a main feature of my music—I often joke that it’s “taken over my life,” but in truth, it’s only part of what I do on a yearly basis. I source and build my own wine-glass instruments, and I’m now a pretty good player. It has certainly helped me to have such an interesting musical feature. I’ll play anything from classical music, film scores (e.g., Wendy 2o19), TV series (e.g., Poker Face or Mr Robot), a documentary film featuring Bono, to an RnB glass remix for Coco Jones and Grey Goose Vodka. My newest art music project for detuned glass and soloists is sacred to me—I’m holding onto it closely until I’ve got three albums recorded and then I’ll make it public.

I’ll sometimes follow the thread of unusual, wild-card projects. I collaborated with author Scott Guild in 2023. His debut novel Plastic was coming out on Pantheon/Random House and the protagonist, a plastic figurine in a dystopian future world, sang all these songs in the book. He approached me about an actual album of these songs. We brought in singer Stranger Cat, mix engineer Peter Katis (Jonsi / The National) and made this beautiful record, PLASTIC, which was covered by the New York Times, the LA Times, NPR. We did a book tour with music. We didn’t know where it was going to end up, aesthetically or in terms of its public arc, but the idea was too cool not to jump in.

At the core, when I work with people, no matter the context, I’m always asking, “can we create something magical together?” It really matters to me that every project “gets there,” and the only real yardstick I have to measure that is that excited feeling I get when I (or We) get The Idea.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I think of my own relationship to resilience, I think back to my first year composing full time. I was three weeks into a project where I’d thrown this wild-card demo into the ring for a TV ad, and the creative team loved it. We made tweaks for weeks, working long hours. The payout on the project was going to be a real windfall, so I bent over backwards to make it work, especially since I was just establishing myself that year, and we had NO money. After three weeks of constant work, we finished the project, and it went to the client’s client (a multi-national corporation). They killed it because the wild-card music wasn’t “on brand.” The kill-fee was not nothing, but small. I remember going into the back field of the farm we’d move to, and sitting with my head in my hands. It was a tough loss. Now I’m used to the losses—it’s kind of part of the gig of competitive composing. You’re up against a lot of talented people, and writing for mercurial clients. In that first few years I’d win one out of ten tries. But interestingly, all the pieces that lost went into this big library of music I’d made, and licensing those pieces is what paid for the births of both of my kids. ALWAYS OWN THE MUSIC YOU WRITE IN PERPETUITY, or sell the ownership (Publishing) for a fair market value! One piece of advice: It really sucks living hand-to-mouth as an artist. If you can, position yourself so you’re a few months ahead of the bill cycle, at least. Like, keep a few months of expenses in savings and stay ahead of it. Pinch pennies for a bit until you get there. Because it’s really distracting to be worried about money while trying to create. Or thinking of each job or gig as a make-or-break for your finances. It’s so stressful. Working for weeks on a competitive composition job only to lose it in the 11th hour (when I wasn’t ahead of the bills) made the loss way more crushing.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One thing I had to unlearn, is that there’s such a thing as “selling out.” I grew up in this post-punk music environment where selling out was a sin. “Gotta keep the music pure! Art for art’s sake!” There were handfuls of things I swore I’d never do. That ethos is underpinned by the idea that art should have its own value, which I definitely believe in. But I’d recommend not making that a hard-fast rule. There are evil people who I’d never sell my music to for any amount of money—Monsanto, and the Republican Party for example. But weigh each instance. It’s ok to sell that beautiful song for a restaurant ad, and use the money to record another album of beautiful songs. Or in the case of U2, it’s ok not to license Where The Streets Have No Name to a car commercial in 1988 (they didn’t) because that song feels like a spiritual moment in concert and maybe that moment is diminished if it’s suddenly just the music for a commercial. Trust yourself to know what work of yours is sacred and what work can handle some time in the “marketplace.” I have some music that I’ve written that’s just for me, I haven’t shared it with anyone. There’s something valuable in recognizing that some pieces of work can be sacred. But also value in recognizing that it doesn’t automatically sully a piece of music or you as an artist to sell it somewhere you didn’t originally intend it to be. Take the money, support yourself and your loved ones. Make more beautiful art.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cindertalk.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejonnyrodgers/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonnyrodgers75
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonny-rodgers-62418445
• Twitter: https://x.com/thejonnyrodgers
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJbqP6_nLvs
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4MNZmqvJpUT1pvbXjOCLZQ?si=824aab24abb34a9a

  On Composing For Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl2YQvrSmCs

Image Credits

Glass Photo: Elizabeth Maney

Head Shot: Desirea Still