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

Joseph, appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

So originally when I started creating music it helped me process feelings I felt emotionally at a time when I didn’t have any other healthy ways of doing so, and the music was tied very personally to my overall growth. Then organically as I shared the music I was working on it opened the opportunity to work with different people in the industry and I started working with Croshal Entertainment Group who were the first people to try and shift my music making into a music career. As I worked with them I was given the freedom to still create music that not only helped me process my emotions and help me move through various aspects of my life that before music I either numbed with substances or just carried them internally leaving me feeling raw to day to day life, but I was now not only able to share my music on a larger platform but in doing so it also became a central goal to hopefully make music that might connect with people feeling or struggling with processing aspects of their own lives or having feelings of isolation especially because for my whole life music has done that for me. So as the focus started to shift from something for my own growth into something hoping for a larger reach it created a powerful drive to not just create and share my music but to dedicate myself to always strive to grow and get better at my craft. Then as life often does I stopped working with Croshal Entertainment Group ,with whom I will always be grateful, and I started working with my now manager Chris Curry who before was strictly my business manager to now also being my career manager as well as help run my independent label Afterlife Records. Now as I navigate through not just the creative process of making music I also try to become more acquainted with the industry itself and as things progressed I have been given the opportunity to work and collaborate with other artists and producers. This process and growth that started simply by messing around in music programs has been the catalyst for almost all the growth I have made in my life by opening me up to thing like yoga and meditation as well as building routines and structure to my life and because of this music has become very tied to my beliefs in spirituality as I explored sound and vibration making me realize that vibration lies beneath everything so it made the world a vibrant, fascinating, and a beautiful place that I hadn’t seen before. Looking back and listening to my music from the past up to what I am creating now I can hear a heaviness of the soul when I was first was creating music and as I healed and grew it progresses and feels lighter with more joy and sometimes touches of silly lightheartedness even though I do still make music that reminds me of my music of the past which is a good reminder that I am never done growing. I guess I lastly want to say music has been a blessing to me long before I started creating it myself, and the idea that my music even if to just a few people honestly it could be one person are where to make them feel connection hell just feel while listening to my music well that is why I will always be willing to work and sacrifice to continue to not just to do something I love and that gives me joy but to do it with purpose and intention.

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?

Well let’s see about me. I think to understand my journey we need to start with my failures because I learned far more from them than the things I did right. I would say for most of my life I wandered would be the best way to describe it never feeling like I had a purpose as well as having a propensity to unhealthy habits and behaviors some stemming from things in my past to others just being poor choices. As a teenager and a young man I struggled with addictive behaviors culminating in a heroin addiction as a young adult. These choices and the reckless lifestyle I lived would have severe consequences which the most notable being I was in two comas one of them while on life support for two weeks with an expected survival of less than 5% all before I turned 30. Let’s just say not the greatest start to young adulthood as I constantly tried to escape how I was feeling while I romanticized and tried to emulate the unhealthy artists, writers, and musicians that I idolized. Working jobs I wasn’t really interested in while struggling with depression, anxiety, and self worth. Then as I overcame my heroine addiction with a system I came up with were I personified heroin so I could transfer my negative feeling of myself on to the personification of heroin I created, which for me was a beautiful woman that was rotten inside, that way it represented something that at one time was attractive to me but as I got to know it more I saw it’s true nature. This helped me also create distance from the drug itself from me and the perception of myself as well as coupling that with a reward based system as these things helped me pull myself out of the cycle of dependence I had created for myself. At that point without being numbed by substances I entered a period of stagnation being trapped by the emotional turmoil that I hadn’t addressed. Then out of a desire to just change something or anything I started exploring creating music and it opened the floodgates to self exploration and self healing. All of these factors contributed to my belief that art is the expression of our experiences our failures our triumphs even sometimes the mundane moments when life seems to be just a matter of enduring one second to the next. This made me realize that experiences no matter what they are can be turned into art because to me art is the closest expression of life we can achieve encompassing everything the good, the bad, the joy, the despair, and even the moments that seem meaningless. So I think the simplest answer to who I am is I am flawed but as I have experienced that is part of the beauty of life to not be perfect cause really what is life but seeing the beauty of our imperfections when we live in a vast universe filled with questions we will never understand or know answers to problems we might never solve but to live striving to be curious and be understanding of things we might not believe or even disagree with and to me in those moments that is where we are most human and exactly who and what we should be, and that is why I strive to be an artist because art to me is when we capture those moments however fleeting they may be.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is it is a journey that never ends. You can always grow, always get better, and always evolve. There is something so incredibly beautiful and rewarding to me about that, and just as important about being an artist to me is the potential to connect with the people that experience the art form you create.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think Brian Eno, who is a huge influence, artist, and producer I look up to, explained creating art best and that art is one of the few ways that adults can still play. There is a reason you say you play music. He also explains that as children play is a vital part of how we learn and explore and as we get older society tells us it is time to stop playing and be an adult. As for my personal journey as a creative it might not be clear to a non-creative why making music has such a healing and joyful effect on me, but if I can put it into words I would say creating something through expression that didn’t exist before and bringing it into the world feels like nothing else I have experienced. It is a mixture of feeling proud and a satisfaction of starting and finishing something as well as a great way to release emotions you are feeling. I also believe anyone can tap into creativity sometime it is just a matter of finding one’s creative outlet and expression.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sp8ceowl.com
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• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoo72IcHQJsv5wigOmXCXXA

Image Credits

All photos except for studio shot taken by Sayuri Beretta.