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

Maddie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I’ve worked on many projects that were meaningful to me. Meaningful gigs, meaningful albums I’ve worked on, but one thing I think about is how to find meaning in whatever project I’m working on.

I think being aware of the different mediums we have to create in and giving them each attention is very important. Musicians have to make music of course but these days we also have to be writers, photographers, videographers and directors, models, teachers, designers, etc. The more respect and attention we can give to those each of those roles individually, the faster we can start enjoying some of the prospect of self promotion.

I started having more success when I started thinking of my videos as little movies with a beginning, middle, and end. Learning basics of good lighting as well as being aware of my audience dropping in for a moment, and then scrolling away after. It makes video projects more fun and meaningful from the perspective of working in a different art medium, and working towards the algorithm is brutal, but can be an interesting challenge and puzzle to solve.

I think one thing many artists struggle with in content creation is that it can feel terrible to give your artistic baby to the algorithm only to have it either catch on, or just kind of disappear. It’s for this reason that I mostly don’t directly share content (tiltoks, reels, posts just meant to get attention) of my original music. Instead all of my content is fiddle tunes, random bits of music I’ve learned through life, other people’s solos, my other obsession and passion which is coffee, thoughts on music and learning, all these things that i’ve learned over the years for no particular reason, with the intention of both playing something nice to listen to, and demonstrating a level of technical skill and knowledge of the idiom that will let audiences trust me when they hear my very non traditional original music. It’s important to me to keep my most meaningful creations a bit protected, and sacred, and understand the difference between true art and content.

The pace of the algorithm is so relentless that I think it’s impossible to always enjoy every aspect of self promotion and making content. But I try to find what’s meaningful and interesting about every creative aspect of the job.

Maddie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a musician. I started playing the mandolin and playing gigs when I was fairly young. Through the mandolin I learned about music in general and eventually went to the Berklee College of Music. I helped start a band in college and we had some success for a few years and learned a lot about making good music and reaching audiences, touring while maintaining a high level of performance, and music business. Later I freelanced for a couple years in NYC, playing bar gigs and private events and leaving town on occasion to play with various artists. Then I joined the band Della Mae for a couple years until the end of 2022. After I left I wrote, coproduced, and played most of the instruments on my first solo album, Astronaut.

For the last couple years I’ve been freelancing as a mandolin player, teaching privately and at music camps, working as a barista for a moment there, and more recently I’ve been getting into content creation and a Patreon as a means of trying to monetize some of the things I’m good at and have more steady income. I can enjoy it if I understand it as a way for people to find me and my music and maybe understand me a bit. It’s been going well and I love the freedom of my time and of the content I produce.

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

competing in capitalism as an artist these days is nearly impossible, and to stand any chance you have to be a content creator and an influencer in addition to the art you produce. It’s a problem,, it doesn’t make for good art and although I can make an art out of content creation, it isn’t the medium I love.

I think nothing will meaningfully change until housing is addressed. The greatest periods of artistic growth for humanity come out of places and times where a people were supported enough to have the time to make art. The current cost of housing and rent doesn’t let anyone stop for a moment and be still. It doesn’t leave room for artists who can’t manage to turn some aspect of what they do into a perpetual content machine.

The best thing society can do to support artists, is provide housing as a basic human right to all people.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.maddiewitler.com
• Instagram: @maddie.witler
• Youtube: @MaddieWitlermusic
• Other: patreon.com/MaddieWitlerisamusician

Image Credits
Dee Farnsworth Maddie Witler Vickie Vaughn