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

Rob, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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?

My day job is teaching voice, while my music and shows help supplement my income as well. I get to share one of my biggest passions with students and help them achieve their goals with the techniques, tools and experiences I have in the field. This also keeps my technique sharp by running scales with students every day.

If I had a chance to start over with the knowledge I have now things would be very different.

A. I would trust in my ability to write, I spent far too long feeling that I needed to compromise creatively or wait for others to come up with key ideas for songs, the more I took charge the more people seemed to listen. A good quote from Paul Stanley is “everybody wants to steer the ship but nobody knows where they want it to go”, initiative and decisiveness are critical elements in the collaborative process.

B. I would lean into exploring sounds outside of rock earlier, the more I branched out from the constraints of rock/metal, the more I was fulfilled as an artist and the more people seemed to enjoy it.

C. Trust my instincts as a voice coach, one of the best things I’ve done as a coach is cutting out working with middle men and investing in my own business. Many schools take an unreasonable cut of the money and don’t do enough to get your students.

D. Invest in advertising early on.

There’s others but if I did those 4 things my life would be massively different than where it is today, not that I can complain.

Rob, 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 Rob also known as the artist Power Rob, I’m a singer/songwriter/vocal coach with about 20 years of experience in various worlds of singing. I’ve won awards in theater, electronic, rock, and metal, when I’m not performing I’m teaching voice from my home studio around Baltimore.

As a coach I use my varied, extensive background as a singer, actor, writer to help my students grow with practical, effective pedagogy using skills I’ve amassed on stage and off stage. I tried to create a system that I would have wanted back when I studied voice, nothing esoteric, just positive reinforcement and no frills technical analysis.

As a writer I have an obsessive ear for quality both from a compositional standpoint and a performance standpoint treating each song with care and precision. Vocally, I spent years pushing my voice to it’s limits in terms of technique and versatility releasing everything from bluegrass to pop to heavy metal at a professional level, in terms of range I have over 6 octaves documented on various releases and years of touring, recording under my belt sometimes in extreme conditions such as the Mojave Desert.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

At the most recent Neotropolis Cyberpunk festival in the Mojave Desert I sang over 20 songs spanning over 4 octaves across three nights while dealing with the extreme effects of the Mojave Desert. I obsessively prepared my technique and respiratory system to deal with the effects, everything from amino acids, mast cell stabilizing, altitude training, you name it, I created a system that leveled my voice up to handle the constant punishment of breathing in the sand that constantly permeated the air during the event.

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

Hearing from fans, I recently signed a vinyl of my new album, Dark Star for a superfan in China. Getting strangers in my inbox hitting me up about how much my work means to them is priceless.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Robbradley.net
• Instagram: PowerRobMusic
• Facebook: PowerRobMusic
• Twitter: PowerRobMusic
• Youtube: PowerRobMusic

Image Credits

Selvinia Selene
Leia Cunningham
Thomas Kearns
Scott Spengler
Dan Eachus