We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Seth Kaye. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Seth below.
Hi Seth, thanks for joining us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your career and how did you resolve those issues?
As an independent artist, nearly every step of my creative process rides on my shoulders. Oftentimes that’s a lot of administrative and managerial responsibility that might seem out of place in the creative life, but it all boils down to the fact that, if you have a job to do – creative or otherwise – you’ve just got to get it done. At the end of the day, if you don’t have goals that you can distill into a series of tasks, then nothing will get done and your art might not be shared. I’m no stranger to managerial responsibility. I’ve worked enough jobs, and spent enough time in school to learn how to manage my own workflow and crush a task list, but I often marvel at how much of the work I do is administrative, when I used to think that being a songwriter meant that you just write and release songs all the time. I failed to anticipate all the in-betweens of the writing-to-releasing journey, but with my latest single and it’s upcoming release, I got a full-throttle reminder of how much of being an artist is really just having to be a boss. I have a new song coming out on July 7th. It’s called “Balance,” and it’s the proverbial fifth chapter in a concept album that I’ve been releasing one song at a time since February of 2020. It might come as a surprise to learn that I actually wrote this song in 2018 while touring with my last band, EVERS, but this song has been gestating for a long time. It’s felt long overdue, but it’s finally the right time for it to fall into place and the wait has been worthwhile. It hasn’t been entirely pleasant though.
I wrote “Balance” the night before leaving on tour with my bandmates, and I remember sort of workshopping it in between rehearsals and soundchecks, knowing it had potential but also sensing that it might be a little while until it was fully formed and ready to share. I had no idea that “Balance” wouldn’t find its place with EVERS, and MASSIVESAD didn’t even exist at the time, so the joke was on me.
Fast-forward to 2020, and I’ve begun a new project, surprise-released my first single and the streams are flowing in. I was so excited to see the momentum building right from the start … and then … PANDEMIC. I thought that releasing my concept album would take me about a year and a half, but when Covid put the entire planet in slow-motion, my plans slowed down right next to everyone else’s.
Now, three years into releasing songs as MASSIVESAD, I’m only just now halfway through the concept, and while it’s thrilling to feel looking like I’m finally getting a taste of the “B side” of this project, it can be a little disheartening to acknowledge that I’m only halfway done.
I missed out on so much studio time during the height of the pandemic. I had to do multiple remote mixing sessions over Zoom and FaceTime (it’s doable but not preferable). Even when “Balance” finally reached it’s final stages of mixing, my buddy Evan Eliason (my studio engineer and co-producer at The Vanguard Room in Lakeland, FL) and I had to delay and reschedule final mix sessions multiple times, and I couldn’t just drive down the road to him like I used to, because I moved from Florida to Texas in the middle of recording the song.
After mixing was finally wrapped, we sent the track to Jonathan Berlin (my mastering engineer and artist friend in LA) for mastering. When the master came back I caught some errors in the song that I hadn’t heard in the mix, so we had to retrace our steps and that cost me another couple months of back and forth, just to repair the tiniest of errors. (It’s always worth it to take the time and do it right, by the way … even if it’s only for your own peace of mind.) So we ended up with two rounds of mastering that would typically be done in a few days, but took us over a month.
And the issues did not end there.
In the last round of mastering we experienced some miscommunication that led to another round of back and forth – all of us living in different states, living our own lives, and working with our own clients and artists – and that cost us yet another month in getting the final deliverable of my song.
All of that was pretty draining, and it was not at all glamorous. It was the dark side of independent artistry. The gut-punch reality of having to organize everything yourself. Having to initiate and endure all the hard conversations and confrontations. Situations like these really drag things out and drain the excitement and creativity from a release.
Finally, the day came that I had my song in it’s final form and I was ready to upload it to distribution.
I felt like everything went smoothly from that point on, I collected all my artwork and all my audio and all of my metadata and got it plugged in where it belonged and I was finished. The song was sent out to every streaming platform you can imagine.
Then, I got slapped upside the face again.
One week after sending my song to distribution, while submitting my song to my sync contract with SoundSync Music, I discovered that I had uploaded the WRONG VERSION to distribution. I was entirely deflated. Not only did I feel entirely defeated, but I was also furious, with myself and with the whole process. It felt like the final straw. I was also embarrassed, because after all of the edits and repairs in mixing and mastering, I had gone and goofed it up when it really counted the most. In retrospect, I’m still not sure how I messed it up, but I’m confident that I was so so so ready to be done with it that I may have been delusional in my relief that it was “finished.” I knew I hadn’t cut any corners. No shortcuts taken. I listened all the way through – intently – every single time … and still I’d messed it up.
I was so discouraged, and the following few days consisted of many phone calls and text conversations and emails with customer service and researching workarounds online, until I decided to entirely remove my song from distribution and start all over.
To make it all worse, the errors and the difference between the version that I had submitted and the correct version were so minute that nobody but me would notice if I had let the song come out that way. But, I had spent YEARS, and so much effort and money and energy, getting “Balance” just right. I couldn’t slack off now. I couldn’t take a break. I couldn’t ignore it. I had to fix it. So, I did.
I pushed back my release date. I re-uploaded my song and all it’s metadata. I resubmitted my song for playlist consideration. I made a new PreSave link and let all of my friends and followers know that I needed them to PreSave the song a second time. I pushed through the mortification and the embarrassment and the feelings of failure, and I got it right after everything that had gone wrong.
And it was worth it.
Today I’m looking forward (again) to an exciting release of a song that I believe in – a song that I genuinely enjoy.
I’m looking forward to the people I care about connecting with my music and my lyrics, and I’m not concerned with any lingering errors in the art that I could have slacked off and settled for.
I’m proud of all the work that went into this song finally being born. It put up such a fight!
I’m definitely surprised that so many things could go wrong with just one song, but if that’s what it takes to share the songs I’m writing, then I’m going to keep at it. And, if I have to do it all myself, I will.
Sharing songs is what I love to do most, and I’m going to persevere. I’m in it for the long haul.
Seth, 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 a songwriter, building a new micro-genre that I’ve coined “Cinematic Singer-Songwriter.” I grew up on filmscores and soundtrack music (shout out to the “Remember the Titans” soundtrack that changed my life), and that has had a profound influence on my sonic landscape and writing style. I am currently performing and releasing music under this project title, MASSIVESAD, but my goal is to be as prolific a writer as possible, so I have other (currently secret) projects in the works as well (perpetually and at all times). I also produce for other artists, both locally and nationwide, and I really enjoy helping artists release their first batch of music. I’ve sort of found a niche there, because when I started sharing my songs, I didn’t have anyone to tell me what to do or how to do it. I had to figure everything out on my own (with my bandmates, of course), but now I enjoy expediting that process for other first-time-music-releasers. It brings me a lot of joy to sort of hold that gate open for friends and aspiring artists.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
My friends and fellow artists here in Austin are trying to cultivate a scene of independent artists who are committed to showing up for one another and helping one another as we all move toward our creative aspirations and goals. It’s a sort of “the tide raises all ships” mindset that we’re clinging too, in the hopes that when one of us is discouraged, the others can be encouragers and helpers. I think that friends and family and fans can be a part of this as well. I think it’s a beneficial shift to view life as a garden where everyone is growing something nutritional and nourishing for the community. Everyone has their space, and when we all tend to the garden together, good food grows and we all flourish.
Showing up to shows, or listening to music out of a spirit of support and loyalty goes a great deal farther than doing all of these things in the spirit of unintentional spectatorship .., or as if our performance is a spectacle …
I think art takes on a richer and deeper tone when we all commune around art as if it were a meal, rather than a grocery store … or worse … an old Blockbuster (where you just mill around looking for an experience, but spend all your time grazing).
Art will nourish and help to heal the soul, but you have to sit down at the table with your friends and eat.
I hope that the community I am in can view my art, and my friends’ art, this way.
It’s less transactional. and more of a nourishing act of sharing with one another.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
MASSIVESAD is a creative endeavor that I’ve intentionally designed and purposed to invite people into a safe (though not risk-free) space where they can confront their struggles, face-to-face, and really give combatting sorrow and sadness a real go. Mental health can be pretty buzz-y these days, but it’s still a really important topic to engage with and discuss honestly. It took me a very long time before I first had to come to terms with my own mental health and gave it a good look. I spent most of my youth in an ambivalent disregard for my own feelings and the underlying causes beneath them. It wasn’t until I crashed into a season of major burnout that I had to painfully dig into my own mental (un)health and the state that I was in. I needed a safe space that I could sort of use to host a cage fight – me VS my sadness – because I found that, under all of my frustration and disappointment and anger, there was just this tiny, little vulnerable seed of sadness that had suited up in all this armor of emotion and action in an attempt to preserve me. I needed to take the time to sort of duke it out with that realization, and that’s when MASSIVESAD became the proverbial ring for that cage match. I’m trying to invite everyone I know (and anyone who might come in contact with my art) into the ring, where we can all put up an honest fight together, and help one another when the going gets rough. Healing happens so much faster inside of community, and it’s my hope that MASSIVESAD can serve as a meeting place for all those who are willing to step into the ring with their sadness and take that first step toward doing something about it – take action toward health and healing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.massivesad.com
- Instagram: @_massivesad
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/MASSIVESAD
- Twitter: @massivesad
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo305PjNDpUvCPaNsPKqauQ?app=desktop
- TikTok: @massivesad
- Patreon: www.patreon.com/massivesad
Image Credits
Mason “Sasquatch” Mansfield