We recently connected with Spenser Harrison and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Spenser, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Early on, I just practiced guitar a lot. It’s probably not a super exciting answer to read about, but that’s what happened. I might have played a little throughout the week but typically I’d do most of my playing on Saturdays, usually for hours on end. Would it have been better to practice a bit everyday instead of practicing a ton on one day? I’m sure some people would probably tell you so and I’m not necessarily saying one way is better than the other. What really matters is wanting it enough to practice at all. I think practicing that way early on helped create a solid foundation for me as a musician and over time how I practiced changed as necessary. At that point though, there was so much for me to learn that I think just about any practice was good practice. Eventually, I realized I needed to learn more about songwriting because that’s what I ultimately wanted to do and while I had dipped my toes into that side of things on a couple occasions, I didn’t really know what I was doing. Pretty much all of that was instinct and hoping I’d get lucky enough to have a full song materialize because I wasn’t really able to elaborate on ideas back then. Life played out in such a way that I decided to go to school for music (which I hadn’t initially intended, even though I obviously loved music.) A couple degrees later and you get a more recent version of me, which isn’t to understate how huge of an impact my college career had on my music, but I also don’t want to give the impression that it’s like a magical switch gets flipped. Again, what matters is how much you want it. I happen to be very serious about music and I also generally enjoy taking classes, so going to school for music made sense for me personally, but there are plenty of artists that don’t go that route that do great. While I could say something about when I finally learned how to elaborate on ideas, or how to write a chorus, or do a certain production thing, etc, I think the most important part is having the determination to get yourself through the learning curves of all of that. If you’re determined enough, all of those bits of information come eventually. I will say though, ego can really conflict with determination. Looking back, there were some times that I likely would have benefitted from putting my ego aside. I probably would’ve learned more in those moments, but I don’t beat myself up over it. I just try to be more aware of it going forward. I think that goes for learning anything. Just being able to say you don’t know how something works or asking for help and/or clarification can take you far. Or if you’re just incredibly stubborn and refuse to quit, you’ll probably go pretty far too.

Spenser, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got into music at about 14 when I started learning to play guitar. From there I took up production, bass, and drums with the only one I don’t do anymore being playing drums (although the experience helps with programming drums for my songs now.)
For most of my life, I’ve gravitated toward the more alternative side of rock and pop. Bands like The White Stripes and Red Hot Chili Peppers were huge for me early on in my musical life and both continue to have an influence on what I do even if it’s not always super obvious.
Eventually my tastes led me to experimental music with Captain Beefheart and Death Grips being some big influences in that realm and it was at that point that I felt like I’d found my home musically. Finding those artists really helped me think less in terms of genre and more about my individual artistry and how I could combine all of the different influences I’d gathered over the years.
I feel like over the last year or two all of these influences have come together in a cohesive way and like I’ve found some sounds that feel true to me. The first instance of this is with my experimental rock project, Junk Food Charlie, and the second instance being my most recent project, Vanilla Quintessence. The latter resulted from my wanting to have a project that I could just fool around with because the Junk Food Charlie material tends to be very conceptual and while I enjoy that, sometimes it’s nice to mess around and do something just because it sounds cool.
Both projects are active in some capacity but right now a lot of effort is going into Vanilla Quintessence because I now have this outlet for all of these ideas that never really made sense under the Junk Food Charlie name from a branding and/or sonic standpoint.
Due to the nature of the Vanilla Quintessence project, it’s not as easy to label as far as genre goes, but I think labeling it more in terms of its philosophy makes it make more sense.
Regardless of genre, all of the material for the project (which is largely unreleased at the moment but on the way very soon) is tied together by the ideas of irony, absurdity, the contrast between beauty and ugliness, and postmodernism generally (or maybe it’s post-postmodernism, I don’t know, maybe it’s neither, but someone else can worry about the correct labeling.) Of course, these ideas are represented in different proportions from song to song, but that sums up pretty much all of the material I have so far.
The fact that the material has covered so much ground stylistically already is actually one of the main points of pride for me. I like that each of the albums has its own identity while maintaining the same artistic ethos. I’m also very proud of the sheer amount of material I’ve produced in such a short time (this project has only officially existed for about 4 months or so, though some of the songs associated with it may have been written as far back as a year ago and I just didn’t initially know what to do with them.) While I’m eager to spill the beans and give some specific numbers pertaining to that, I’ll just say that the end of this year and pretty much the whole of 2025 will have plenty going on, so I’d recommend anyone that’s into alternative, experimental, and outsider music to hop on the ride early. Let’s get wacky!

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Two come to mind immediately:
1. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus – I’m really into philosophy, especially Existentialism and Absurdism. Reading books like this one have made a big difference in how I navigate life. It’s not for everyone (what is?) but it really clicks with me. Absurdism has a sort of punk appeal that helps me to take the pressure off of myself when I’m creating, or really doing just about anything for that matter.

2. The story of Master P’s success with his label, No Limit – There are a few stories like this I could reference but Master P’s really strikes me because you can pretty much see the whole progression by now and how it played out. I honestly don’t know the entire No Limit catalog but the numbers don’t lie. Clearly they were doing a lot of things right as a label at their peak. As with anything, there were bumps in the road, but the work ethic backing all of those projects from their heyday is incredible and inspires me a lot. Although that was a group of people and I’m currently a solo artist, I often think about what my version of that can/will be.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Absolutely! I’d say the biggest one is simply the process of getting better at what I do. Those moments of accomplishment, whether it be making a song that sounds like nothing I’ve done before or some artwork that has a similar feeling, are a lot of what keep me motivated. Influencing the experimental music scene used to be a big goal of mine and I still feel it’s achievable but because a lot of the desired outcome with that is in the hands of other people I’ve reframed it to “just make it to where you can’t be ignored.” That kind of work ethic inevitably leads to influence.
I’ve learned to enjoy the creative process itself a lot more and in many respects that itself is the goal. As gratifying as it is to put out new music, I’m usually multiple steps ahead. So while I make it a point to enjoy those moments, I’m usually putting a lot more focus on creating the next thing.
Art for art’s sake is the mission.

Contact Info:

• Other: TikTok
  https://www.tiktok.com/@vanillaquintessence?_t=8qJ1hFEI1lK&_r=1