We recently connected with Michael Edwards and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, thanks for 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?

I’m very very grateful to be able to say that I am now making a full time living through music, but that was most definitely not the case from day one. When I graduated from college I had absolutely no idea what to do – it was 2020 so the pandemic was in full swing which meant minimal work opportunities. I got jobs at Starbucks and as an Amazon delivery driver while I figured out how to get my music career started. It wasn’t until a few talented friends of mine asked me to help them with their music that I got an opportunity to work as a producer/ writer for someone else’s project, and I quickly realized that I actually really enjoyed doing it. After that I focused on getting as much of that type of work as possible, and over time it’s snowballed into now being able to make a living from it. To be honest I don’t think there would’ve been a way to speed up the whole process for me, I needed to make some missteps to end up on the right path.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

It’s been a journey! I started on classical piano, but really fell in love with playing music when I picked up guitar with dreams of being a famous rockstar (unique I know). I became obsessed with Led Zeppelin and learned literally single one their songs on guitar, which probably contributed to my early interest in music production since Jimmy Page’s creative direction on all the Zeppelin stuff was so innovative. Over time I got really into writing songs and was in a few bands, then pivoted into writing more orchestral music and eventually studied film scoring in college. I’ve also done and still do a good bit of touring as a guitarist.

These days I’m really focused on being in the studio as a songwriter and producer, and I love it. I think the fact that I’ve been so all over the place with musical interests throughout my life has really worked out in my favor, especially as a music producer where being creatively malleable is so necessary. One of my absolute favorite parts of the job is working with artists that make such different creative choices than I would on my own, because finding the middle ground between my natural choices and theirs almost always ends up making something more interesting.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

An obvious one that I kind of purposely avoided for way too long was the creative people around me. The fear of asking for help when I didn’t understand how to do something as simple as how to get drums to sound a certain way or how much to charge for my work was a huge hinderance, and breaking past that has been a game changer. There are so many people that are willing to offer advice if you just ask, and what I’ve realized is truly the worst thing that can happen when you ask is just getting an answer that’s not very helpful.

I also think social media and YouTube have become such incredible sources of knowledge that it’s silly to not take advantage of them. There are producers and songwriters out there offering lifetimes of knowledge for free and all you have to do is put in some time to find the information that’s useful for you.

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

It sounds sort of twisted, but the fact that it’s so difficult to be successful as an artist and the inherent struggle that comes with that makes it all the more rewarding when things work out, and I don’t just mean financially. It can be really difficult to make “good” art when there are barely any rules to follow and everything is up to you to figure out- but when you make something that you feel truly proud of it can feel like you just climbed a mountain. For me, when I started out as a producer I would constantly compare the songs I made to the songs I actually listened to and it never felt like my stuff measured up. Now that I’ve been doing it for a while and have learned so much, it feels great to listen to something I made and be confident in how it sounds.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @michaeldanforthedwards
• Other: Production/ Writing credits: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3hxEQu6MJQb51wwzXogSzu?si=3527c099fe464b84

Image Credits

@notthiskev, @etzidamu