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

Alright, Nicholas thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Have you been 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? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I do earn a full-time living from my creative work. I remember trying to get some private teaching income rolling between my first and second year of college at Berklee College of Music and I mistakenly thought I would get a lot of students by undercutting the going rate (which still would have been more than I would have expected to make hourly at most jobs available to me as a teenager), but very few people signed up. The following summer, as my confidence increased, I set my rates above the standard going rate, indicating that I saw my teaching as a high quality product, and lessons sold like hot cakes (to use an old colloquialism).

I also started playing in “gigging” bands in between years at college and continued that work after. There were a lot of mediocre opportunities to sift before finding the good ones! The quality of the experiences and the pay scale increased gradually over time.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was born in Anchorage, Alaska and at the age of 45, I’m still growing up here. By about the age of sixteen, I felt fairly certain I wanted to pursue music professionally. I was a bit of a juvenile delinquent and was going about music in a mostly feral way, playing thrashy music in garage bands and punk shows in old military bunkers. My parents were encouraging me to go to college. I half-heartedly got out one application, which was to Berklee, and at the time, you didn’t have to be good to get in, so I went. I quickly realized I was a small town kid who needed to learn how to hold a guitar pick. I was behind the pack but I worked hard, and everything I needed to grow into musician was on offer there.

Over the years, I played in many groups and had the opportunity to see much of the world as a touring musician. I made pilgrimages to Brazil and Spain to study some of my favorite guitar styles and lived in New York and Miami to saturate myself with more cosmopolitan music culture. I earned more degrees, but those haven’t mattered much, mostly they just give my colleagues something to make fun of in between songs. I am pretty proud of my paper though- “Collective Time: Exploring Interaction in Music That Swings.” Anyone who shares my fascination with the bottomless topic of musical timing will find some thought-provoking insights there.

I still perform quite a lot, but somewhere along the road I realized that I’m a bit of an introvert. I can be the front person and engage a crowd and be entertaining, but it is more natural for me to share music by sharing how to make music in small groups or one on one. There’s more “zap” in that mode of musical connection for me. Raised by a lawyer and an English teacher, I’m hyper-verbal and I pride myself on being a skilled communicator. I also feel like I “channel” when I’m at my best as a teacher, like the guidance needed by the student is present in the air around us and I just start talking and let the truth flow through me. I often hear myself providing knowledge and wisdom that are certainly not my own, much like when I’m playing an improvised solo that consists of phrases I have never heard before and certainly never practiced.

I don’t honestly have much of a brand or any notoriety to speak of, my base wherever I plant myself tends to be a small community of people who are deeply committed to cleaving for depth in their musical practice. I like it that way.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

(For those who don’t speak Harry Potter, this reference will be lost on you, so go read the books please). I was surprised when the Sorting Hat put me in Hufflepuff, but I ultimately realized it was correct. The ripples that go outward when I teach, and especially when I teach teachers, are of a greater amplitude than the waves that come off my amplifier. Positively impacting the lives of others through teaching music is an exponentially more powerful resonance that simply making music myself.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

There are people in my family and friend network who are well-intentioned and ultimately just concerned with my comfort and stability, who only comprehend a monetary value system. Any artistic accomplishment is met with “can you monetize that?” or “isn’t that just as good as stuff that’s on the radio, how come you’re not…” etc., etc. They don’t seem to be able to see the enormity of the value of being involved in the lifestyle of creativity, and that it’s worth more to me than any amount of financial recompense could ever be. The life is the work of art.

I once had a student’s parent who heard me sing for the first time exclaim “Wow!! You’re really good!! Are you going to, like try to make it BIG?”

I didn’t have the answer right on the tip of my tongue, but it came to me later- “Thanks for the sentiment in that, but honestly, I’m already so big you can’t even see me :-)”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nicholaspetumenosmusic.com
• Instagram: @nickanthonyband