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

Marc, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

Back when I was in college, my parents never pressured me to major in a field they thought would be lucrative. My father, in particular, always said that I should major in something I was interested in rather than something I thought would lead to a job. The idea was to learn as much as I could and to become the kind of person with enough breadth of knowledge that I could continue to learn and adapt in any field. Their view of higher education as a means of developing a broader worldview as opposed to a focused mode of career training allowed me to become the kind of person I always wanted to be–what people used to call something of a renaissance man.

Marc, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m really all over the place. On any given day, you can find me assembling my weekly radio show, interviewing musicians for my blog, laying down drum tracks for various artists, rehearsing with Philadelphia-based power-pop band Scoopski (I’m their bass player), recording music for my own wide-ranging projects (solo and otherwise), experimenting with film and animation, mixing music tracks for friends, or designing album covers and concert posters for fellow musicians. On top of all that, I’m a full-time college professor with a healthy catalog of publications to my name, including a book on the Beach Boys’ Holland album and an illustrated children’s book titled Frankie Lumlit’s Janky Drumkit.

My weekly radio show, The #Tweetcore Radio Hour started in 2022 when Oregon-based AMS Radio jokingly tweeted a call for DJs. Given my longtime interest in underground music, I immediately put together an hour of tunes from my favorite independent artists, and a week later, the first episode was going out to an international audience.

Along similar lines, my blog, Abominations, serves as a platform for interviewing independent musicians and gives me an opportunity to meet and learn from artists who pique my interest. My questions attempt to get at the heart of what makes particular musicians tick: why they make certain musical choices, how they approach the craft, what drives them to do what they do. Above all, the point is to give readers a glimpse into the many facets of music creation.

The blog has led to collaborations with a number of musicians, most notably Brian Lambert, with whom I record in a project called the Star Crumbles, and Scoopski. I also do a lot of other music-related work, including mixing and graphic design.

When I’m not working with other artists, I record my own music. Broadly speaking, it’s rock music, but the definitions get a little hazy: shades of alternative and indie with a hint of the experimental. In terms of influences, I look to Elvis Costello, Brian Eno, and the late Frank Zappa for inspiration—not just in terms of sound but for their eternal desire to venture into new territory as they collaborate with and learn from other musicians.

Ultimately, it’s all of a piece for me, or all part of the same continuum: blogging, writing, making music, doing my radio show, even teaching. It’s all about connecting with other people. All about learning. I like to think of myself as an artist in the broadest sense of the word—someone who enjoys looking at the world from a lot of different angles to see what I can find. When I think about it that way, it’s not a matter of finding time to do a lot of different things. It’s really just doing one big thing a step at a time.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Before I was as invested as I am in music, I was heavily into writing. I had a few books under my belt, served on editorial boards of a couple of literary magazines, and regularly saw my work in print. The trouble was that I didn’t enjoy it. In fact, it was making me miserable. But I had spent so much time becoming a writer and building not just a reputation but a sense of identity around writing that I couldn’t imagine an alternative. Eventually, though, cognitive dissonance got the better of me: I was depressed and anxious, so I started seeing a therapist. Our sessions allowed me to get some insight into what was making me so miserable. At the same time, I also realized that whenever I was trying to avoid writing, my go-to activity was music. I used to feel guilty about “wasting” time on music when I should be writing, but once I realized that I preferred making music to writing, I felt the weight of “being a writer” lifted from my shoulders. I still write, of course, but the pursuit is not nearly as monolithic as it once was, and making music has has allowed me to diversify my portfolio, as it were.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I feel like non-creatives tend to see art in all of its forms in terms of the finished product. When you look at it from that perspective, it’s easy to take a reductive stance and ask questions along the lines of how much money the product made or how many people know about it. By way of contrast, I like to focus on the process as I make what the artist Manny Farber called “termite art” or, in his words, art that “goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.”

He wrote that in a film journal in 1962, and he was championing low-budget B-movies over big-budget blockbusters. What I like about his description of termite art is that it’s all about pushing outward. The termite isn’t thinking inside the box because it isn’t even aware of the box–or the box office. It just keeps chewing away because it has no choice but to move forward.

My favorite artists do the same thing. They’re not trying to adhere to some artificial paradigm that they think is going to score them a big hit or win them a massive following. They’re not even trying to do the old “well, I’m trying to rewrite the rules within the system” dodge where they play the game with the goal of subverting the game. They just keep their heads down and make what they want to make. Sometimes other people take notice. Most of the time, no one cares. That’s fine. The artist keeps going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.marcschuster.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marc.schuster/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marc.schuster
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/marc_schuster
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Marc_Schuster
• Other: https://marcschuster.wordpress.com/