We were lucky to catch up with Seth Findley recently and have shared our conversation below.
Seth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?
In short, yes I am happy however I don’t think happiness equates to success or showcases the nuances that come alongside dedicating your career to your art. 2024 is special because it marks one decade of pursuing music as a career from my early solo project Seth’s Island to my band of eight years Honest Men to now moony which feels like a natural progression, culmination, summit, and continuation of my musical endeavors so far.
A few things I’m more sure of than ever at this milestone: one, if you work hard enough and long enough at the thing you love and want most, success (which is a moving target) will come. Two, what you envision as hopeful contentedness in the future is not how you’ll feel once you arrive (find peace in the process, the ending doesn’t matter nearly as much). And three, pure authenticity will get you the furthest (both internally and externally).
While I’m a full-time artist now, I had a regular job for most of the last decade so I don’t wonder what that would be like. If anything, it taught me that having a regular job and making music simultaneously is entirely possible but also that your art paying your bills is a silly goalpost probably rooted in the feeling of entitlement. None of us are entitled to a paycheck from our art. Sure, we can work toward and eventually receive that paycheck but losing sight of the thing that made us want to create in the first place can lead to feelings of emptiness, dissatisfaction, and burnout.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m Seth Findley and I make music as moony. I started moony as a side project in 2020 while living and working in Austin, TX front-manning my band Honest Men but have since moved to Nashville, TN and turned my side project into my main project after the band came to an end late 2022.
Prior to that, moony really began to take shape in the spring of 2021. I thought it was going to be a simple minimal pop-focused outlet after releasing my first single “pretty”, but as I tried to write more songs along those lines I quickly came up dry, realizing moony couldn’t be a project that I gave myself rules or boundaries for. With that in mind, I set out to write and produce songs from the soul, scratching every itch and impulse I’d been wanting to explore. This turned into a somewhat genre-spanning discography ranging from pop to indie rock to punk to avant-garde aggressive alternative metal. I also started working closely and co-producing with the wizard himself (and close friend) Michael Guillot who understood and captured the vision of what I wanted – no, needed – moony to be, from the get-go. It’s not that I think I’m doing something revolutionary, but I’m not going to let myself overthink this.
Soon, I’d amassed a collection of four EPs – “moon ep” and its alt-version successor “moonier ep”, a collab EP titled “moony n frens”, and my latest EP “podunk”. Along with “podunk”, 2023 also marked the release of my latest single “FALLLLLLLLL IN LOVE” and it’s alt-version “(on the highway)”. I tend to think visually as much as I do sonically, so each body of work is tied closely to a visual world and storyline that goes alongside the entirety of my journey as moony, on display across my socials (@sethismoony), as well as written out in story form with my first comic book “MOONY’S IMPENDING DOOM”, available for purchase on my website (sethismoony.com).
There’s a lot in store for 2024 as the story picks up where “FALLLLLLLLL IN LOVE” left off and a new world is revealed, its fruit ripe for the picking, helmed by my new single “INFINITY IDIOT”, set to release February 8, 2024. Are you watching closely?
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
This isn’t exactly answering the question above, but here are some of my favorite movies, shows, and books that have impacted and inspired the way I view myself, my art, and this life:
Movies:
– Magnolia
– Donnie Darko
– The Shawshank Redemption
– Fight Club
– Parasite
– Everything Everywhere All at Once
– TÁR
– The Prestige
– Aladdin
Shows:
– Watchmen
– The Curse
– Severance
– The Office
– I’m A Virgo
Books:
– The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)
– Watchmen (Alan Moore)
– Illusion (Frank Peretti)
– This (Michael Gungor)
– The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (J.R.R. Tolkien)
– The Circle Trilogy (Ted Dekker)
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
It’s such a saturated market nowadays but I’d love to see a shift back to finding your 5-10 favorite artists then consuming everything that artist has to offer. Buy their merch, stream their music AND buy it physically, come to shows, show your friends, interact with them on socials, etc. It’s easy to have 100 bands/artists that you like but what can you do FOR and WITH the 5-10 bands/artists that you simply can’t get enough of? Drink it all in, we have a lot to offer as artists beyond just streaming the music on a playlist every once in a while!
Contact Info:
- Website: sethismoony.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/sethismoony
- Facebook: facebook.com/sethismoony
- Twitter: x.com/sethismoony
- Youtube: youtube.com/c/moonyisseth
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3agqtDm9DE1tKj7sXrKqpZ?si=maD5WP-gRNG98KaVKkv18g Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/moony/1522038478 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@sethismoony Discord: https://discord.gg/Q5mKmXAxxx
Image Credits
Photos by Samuel Greenhill (instagram.com/abrokenlightbulb)