Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Marcus Tinsley . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Marcus , appreciate you joining us today. Are you 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?

Like most artists, my musical journey started alone with just me and my guitar. I was 15 years old at the time. I would spend hours locked in my room watching Youtube videos of other artists, trying to mimic what they were playing. Over time, I started writing my own songs, performing at coffee shops near my house, and eventually formed a band with some friends. Over the course of 2 years, we built a small local buzz, recorded an album, and started talking about our first tour. Almost all of us were new fathers or husbands, but I seemed to be the only one concerned about leaving my family behind to “go be a rock star”. They wanted to keep the band life separate from our family lives, which created a lot of unsettling friction in our relationships with our wives, and each other. It was then when I realized how toxic the entire situation was becoming.
In the end, I decided that nothing in the world was going to keep me away from my girls, so I made the decision to quit the band and stop music all together, to be a full time father. Fast forward a few years, one night my daughter (Taylee) and I started singing together in our kitchen. My wife ,Jacey, happened to get a video of it and posted it online. A year later, we got a call from a few TV shows (including the The Ellen Show), because the video was going viral. This led to us posting numerous duets of Disney songs, which in the end, rekindled my love for music. However, there was still an unsettling feeling in our stomachs about getting back into the music business again, due to our negative experience in the past.
The truth is that a lot of the music business if full of ego. There is a common mindset that puts being rich and famous above everything else, because that’s what happens when you “make it big”. That mindset can be what tears families and relationships apart. Being able to see this from the outside, we were able to make a decision that we will pursue music, but as a family. While we continue to chase our musical dreams & push my singing career, we will continue to do it as one… putting each other before anything else. This is what led to our brand ‘F.O.E’ (family over every.) Our hopes with F.O.E is to continue to spread a reminder to everyone.. that family is not an important thing— it’s everything.

After my time on American Idol in 2021 with my wife, daughter and pet pig (Katy Perry requested Penelope the of to come along 😆), we planned to pursue music full time. It’s a huge risk to quit your job and join the millions of other people in the world trying to make a living playing music, but an even bigger risk when that job is supporting my whole family- so we decided to keep my 9-5 as back up. Well, the universe ended up having different plans. It was in Spring of 2021, when I got called into the owner’s office at my work, and learned that the company was down sizing due to Covid, and my management position was no longer needed. During this time, my wife Jacey had a tanning salon, which went out of business due to Covid. So there we are, sitting in our car (jobless), and I can honestly say now, that it was THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO US! It was extremely scary at first, but we finally had no more excuses not chase our dreams as hard as we could. We worked hard, and way more hours than we ever did. (12-15 hrs everyday) We had no choice…our family depended on it. My wife (Jacey) is honestly the reason why I’m even able to do music full time. She spends her days making every flyer, booking every show, building the website, promoting every gig, designing my business cards, invoicing clients, writing agreements, working with booking agents, and pretty much everything else in between. She also comes with me to every gig, and helps set up, does sound check, lighting, etc. I call her my “wife-ager” 😆 I honestly could NEVER do it without her and all her hard work. If she’s not busy doing behind the scenes works, you’ll often see her up on stage with me and our daughter, interacting with the crowd, and throwing toys out. Having them by my side is the only way I’d ever want it.

Since then, I’ve had one of my recent songs ‘Butterflies’ premiere on SiriusXM, which also got singed to Universal Music and charted #4 on Music Week.

It’s definitely been a lot of work- but happy to say It’s now been two full years of us doing music full time as a family!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

As we all know, the social media landscape is packed with extremely talented people all Working towards the same goal. Yes it’s important to be talented and show the world what you can do, but I’ve learned that consistency is key, if you want to be successful.
To be honest, I’m still not as consistent as I know I should be. Yes, we can all make the same excuse about how life is busy, and being consistent is hard, but the truth is that the only way to be successful (in anything) is consistency.
My advise to anyone wanting to leverage a social media presence to achieve their goals, is simply consistency. (Just keep swimming lol) and eventually you will get where you need to go.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

This is an interesting question. It correlates directly with a new song I will be dropping soon, because I feel like I finally found the perfect words to describe why I love making music so much.

So we all can agree that music has a boarder line “magical” component to it. It doesn’t matter where we are, or what we are doing… we all have those songs that will instantly teleport us back to a special moment from our past, as soon as that song starts playing. I guess you could say I just want to be the ‘Soundtrack To Your Memories’.

Music is also a powerful healer. Melody’s are a universal language that every living thing responds to, and I’m extremely grateful to be apart of that magic.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.MarcusTinsleyMusic.com
• Instagram: www.Instagram.com/MarcusTinsleyMusic
• Facebook: www.Facebook.com/MarcusTinsleyMusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarcusTinsleyMusic