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

Alright, Larry thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I’ve learned to do what I do through continued trying and keeping the idea of ‘play’ a dear part of my life – sometimes making mistakes and, honestly more often, finding success as a result. To be a performer I think it’s so essential to keep the sense of play within yourself, to take chances, and to be okay with kind of “just seeing what will happen”. It’s that kind of experimentation that has to be lived in real time. I don’t think it would be very fun to fast-forward through the process part, since that helps to build who you are as an artist. Patience and Play are definitely skills to be treasured.

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?

I started making music in high school and as Larry Wish in 2009 a couple years after graduating. All my life since I was about 2 I knew I wanted to be a musician, but it took about until 18 for me to start really believing that I could write music myself. That took a lot of playing around with how to approach making music in the first place. Definitely the most important part there is taking the first step and seeing where you might go, whether you’re writing lyrics, strumming a guitar, playing around with synths, anything – Just go! When I was 18 or 19 I started to play my own solo shows around Minneapolis/St. Paul, and honestly I was so nervous the first time I ever performed by myself in front of others I couldn’t even stand up. I think I played most of the set sitting on the edge of the stage in this amazing old DIY venue called the Medusa – no longer an active venue, but now it’s a great art space called House of Balls.

With time I recorded tons of albums, became more confident, focused, and was able to take that same idea of Play while writing/recording music and transfer it to live performance – trying out different characters, instruments, collaborations, as sorts of ways to perform my music. I’ve mimed a one person band of hyper-orchestral music, sang karaoke-styled songs like a classic lounge crooner, played sort of jazz/classical hybrid piano tunes, played psychedelic rock music with an amazing a live band called Larry Wish & His Guys, and there’s probably tons of other things I can’t even remember. Lately I’ve been doing these nu-metal children’s music performances with the artist Soubrette, performed as a synth-country cowboy, and a mysterious classical composer named “Composerhead”. I just want to keep playing to see what I can do, and to hopefully show the audience something they’ve never seen before. Hopefully I can keep doing this for the rest of my life – it’s completely why I’m here!

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

I think a big lesson I’ve had to unlearn is that it’s completely okay to do something different than what the majority of people do, and it’s more than okay to not fit in perfectly, and that I am inherently worthy of Love and any good things the world has to offer. In my 20s I was really not feeling that and just couldn’t celebrate myself – even though I loved what I was doing and creating – I just couldn’t feel it, and it made me struggle for a long time with bad depressions and anxiety attacks. That’s something I’ve been thankfully able to get through in a really positive and fruitful way. If anything, it’s almost another result of Play. Even though it feels terrible while it’s going on, I’m still grateful that I had the experience of going to those places, feeling that energy, etc, because it’s helped define who I am now and hopefully I can pay it forward to others one day.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think the best thing society can do for artists, and for any person in that matter, is to freely give all people the resources to thrive and be their best selves. It’s heinous and absurd that this isn’t the case. There’s no excuse!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://larrywish.bandcamp.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/larrywishworld/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/larrywishworld/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwishwerven/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/larrywishworld
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/larrywish
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2EY4KC5zgKmvNYVR7MedAH

Image Credits
John Oakes, moshbbaby