We recently connected with Sexy Coyote and have shared our conversation below.

Sexy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

Creative work is real work. Creative jobs are real jobs. But they come with the added bonus of not being thought of as such by a lot of people who consume the fruits of creative labor nonetheless.

Working as a performer, for instance, demands far more than the perfomance itself – which on its own requires expertise an overwhelming number of skills and carries magnificent personal risk. It also requires a critical and business-savvy approach to all negotiations to ensure fair treatment and compensation in an environment of sufficiently intense competition and notorious potential for all kinds of abuse. It requires too a gift for budgeting, accounting, design, marketing, technological prowess, networking personability (on and off stage), and often even manual strength and dexterity to be able to transport your own equipment to and from performance venues. All this through your own means, of course.

Our society has grown up to expect creatives to give absolutely every piece of themselves to their craft and the vehicles through which it can be observed. It hasn’t been enough for a very long time to simply make art, which is the “job” as advertised. And although most professions in our age suffer from a dismal lack of work / life balance, the lines for creatives are especially blurred.

And what’s worse is that creative jobs lack the material respect needed to ensure that creative workers who don’t come from an abundance of resources are paid wages enough to support themselves through these careers alone. Almost every creative we’ve ever met including ourselves requires at least one other job to survive in this late stage capitalist nightmare we’ve all wound up in. We’re all trying to keep our heads above water, gasping for air, while drowning in a climate of disrespect, class domination, and deadly greed.

Yet creative jobs still exist, and we take them. Artists are among the most essential workers. We need art to make life beautiful, exciting, meaningful. Without artists what quality of life can any of us peasants ever strive for?

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.

We’re a band of musicians made of teachers and chefs who bonded at our favorite dive bar’s weekly karaoke night where we eventually played our very first show. We are heavily supported by our families, friends, and community of local musicians. Together we are all keeping music alive and well, and we’re happy to have stepped into the scene to help it grow.

In our short life as a band, we’ve revived old material, written new material, and played both all over the state while celebrating costuming, lighting, and other theatrical disciplines. We’ve made two music videos so far (which we love and were made possible with the help and support of many of our people), including a shadow puppet movie and a live-action one-shot film.

However, what we are most proud of is our dedication to keeping our live concerts interesting by incorporating new material, instruments, effects, guest features, and thematic visions at every single performance. You can never see the same Sexy Coyote show twice, and we work for that.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

To start, universal healthcare, affordable housing, preventing the hoarding of wealth, and focusing on saving the planet.

We are less impressed by the existence of an Albert Einstein then we are haunted by how many Einsteins we’ve lost to preventable deaths. There’s no excuse for a species with this many resources and this much technology and coordination potential to allow anyone to go without food, shelter, or medicine.

The next Virginia Woolf or Madame Curie probably just died because she was born in a redlined neighborhood and some billionaire needed their third palace instead. Seriously, think about it.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

For as passionate as we are about doing our part to change the world for the better by condemning what harms it and supporting what helps, our vision for this project is much more simply to have fun. The world is full of despair and tragedy. We owe it to ourselves to enjoy our short time here. We care about art and music being fun and exciting. We care about the people in the room with us having a good time. And we care about ourselves living lives that will make us smile and laugh when we see them flash before our eyes one day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sexycoyote.com

Image Credits

photos by Abby Flores, John McSweeney, and Kamen Ross