We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Molly Healey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Molly below.

Molly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with 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 do now. It was a slow process of playing shows and also operating my own private studio of music students. I graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in Music, but in my early 20s, I was working full time at a travel agency and doing music on the side. I decided after having my baby at the age of 27 that I wanted to go back and get my masters so I could teach in the schools. But I learned quickly that classroom teaching was not my forte, no pun intended. I went back to work as a server and started building my private studio. Serving was wonderful, because there’s never any pressure to be full time; so over time, I was able to slowly taper off the serving while I built my performing and teaching career until in 2020 I didn’t need it at all anymore. Now I perform with the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, as a solo artist, a studio musician, and I even compose some film scores. I teach anywhere from 25-30 students throughout the week as well.

Molly, 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 have always had a love for music, I came from a musical family and they provided me with plenty of opportunity when I was young for singing, playing, and just being around it. I knew from a pretty young age that I wanted to do something with it, I just wasn’t sure what. Most of my upbringing was classical music, and I had a very strong taste for musical theater and the performing arts. When I entered college, I thought I was going to move to New York to try to be on Broadway. That quickly fizzled as I realized the only thing I was really good at was music, which wasn’t good enough for a career that also needed skills in dance and acting. I took up the violin again (I had put it down after high school, I wasn’t very good at it at all) and started getting into fiddle and improvisational playing.

I definitely wandered around for a good long while. Between working at a travel agency, waiting tables, getting my masters degree in education and then deciding I didn’t want to pursue public education, I definitely took a long time to decide what was really going to work for me. I guess you could say I just kind of went with the flow. I put myself out there pretty heavily in the beginning as a fiddle player, asking bands if I could join them on stage when I still had NO idea what I was doing. But soon enough, I figured out things that worked and things that didn’t, and started to get asked rather than me doing the asking, and that was when I realized that there might be something more in it than just a side project. I took on my first students. Started getting back into classical. Picked up the cello, and then the guitar, and now I’m learning piano. I got asked to join the Daredevils, and started my solo project in 2015. It was just a long, steady climb full of hard work and tons and tons and tons of practice. But here I am, and while I’m not rich or famous, I’m completely happy. It’s funny, if you had told 20-year-old me I would be doing this for a living, 20-year-old me would have said “no way”. But when you work long and hard enough on something, eventually it comes back to reward you.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

That there is just one or two measures of success, and those being money and fame. There are a lot of people in this world, and an infinite amount of levels of “successful musicians”. It wasn’t until I started touring with various bands that I realized just how many of us were out there, and how many different ways they could be successful. I don’t know that there’s a single aha moment for me in this, but I never dreamed I could be successful without being famous on some level. But now I know that’s not true. You can be successful in your community and they will support you. And then I realized that it’s been there all along, and my dad was a great example of it, being a community choir conductor and teacher.

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

Being able to share music with my daughter and give her that gift. She is now graduating high school and wants to pursue a career in it. While I know it can be a tumultuous path, I also know how much joy it can bring. It’s wonderful to see her becoming the musician that she is becoming.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mollyhealey.com
• Instagram: @mollyhealeymusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MollyHealeyMusic
• Youtube: @MollyHealey
• Other: TikTok: @mollyehealey

Image Credits
Scott Peterson, Tracey Bradley, Matt Loveland, Kevin Dingman