We recently connected with Tara Kye Maines and have shared our conversation below.

Tara Kye , appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

Since I was eight years old, whe I first saw the movie Grease, I had always dreamed of becoming a singer. Throughout my life I had been told to get a real job. When times got rough the first thing my parents always advised me to do was to quit my music and focus all my energy on getting a real career. Pursuing music as a creative professionally doesn’t always entail earning a living doing so. The music has a hard time to breathe and live when food, lodging and basic necessities are not covered. it’s a great time to be in music because anyone can get onto streaming platforms but it’s also the worst time to get into music because there is literally no money to be earned as a musician, the admins at spotify earn more in one hour than their artists earn in one year, so I would say there is a definite wage disparity there. Once upon a time, artists ruled the world, and now there are very few people who earn more money than anybody could have dreamed possible. i hope that more artists can earn a living on streaming and that the music industry begins to reward music for it’s real value and pay the musicians for their music instead of the tshirt or merchandise they try to sell to earn a living. i started trying to really earn a profession as a creative in 2016, in 2024, I am still trying, but I do realize, I need more than one career to pay the bills in today’s society as a single lady….

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 had always wanted a piano, but my dad had a sailboat and wanted me to play a more “portable” instrument than a piano, this was in the days prior to electronic keyboards and the idea of a piano on a sailboat was very simply silly. In the early days of playing Saxophone. my dad asked me to go play my saxophone on the beach on a rock, I cried saying I wouldn’t know which notes to play. Dad patiently said I will never know which notes are right and which ones are wrong, whatever you feel you want to play will make a song. So I chose to play saxophone on the beach instead of doing dishes, I was 14, so the answer was obvious. smile.

That one “push” taught me to create. To innovate. To write and be free. The saxophone sings it’s own song…

I loved to sing and play saxophone growing up so very much, however, I was told I needed a real job. A real career. So off to university I went to become a Biochemist and a Geneticist. I set the music aside and chased the scientific career. Working 3 to 5 eight hour shifts a week to put myself through university while attending full time studies took a toll on me and I ended up with cancer fighting for life at 24. During my treatment, I was encouraged to balance my healing with chemotherapy, nutrition, spiritual healing and dissecting my life to see why “my soul” had died. My answer was the sax but the cancer left me too weak to play my saxophone so I opted to do voice lessons to recondition my lungs. My parents had bought me that electric piano I had always wanted, yet the chemotherapy damaged my veins and nerves. I would play scales for hours loving how beautiful the notes sounded in my headphones, whilst tears from the pain strolled down my cheeks until the euphoria of the music stopped the pain and then I could play for hours. Singing was really tough. The chemotherapy had completely ruined the elasticity of my lungs so badly I couldn’t walk half a block so singing at home was something I had to do to be able to breathe. Afterwards, then I would nap and try to walk. I would open up my saxophone and stroke it but i couldn’t blow not even one note.

Then life started after the cancer, I went back to work and had no energy for anything. Unsurprisingly, my marriage didn’t work and I ended up divorced.

So I called up my friend John Dean and said let’s write that album together. One song led to another and then to another.

I had a second marriage, then he asked me to never play music again, so we got divorced.

Then John Dean and I really recorded that next round of songs… Moten Metal was our first song to celebrate my life and our twerty year of friendship and music. One song into another song, one album into another album., song to song to song. Music is life, love and magic.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

When I was a teenager, I loved my saxophone so much! I had two ganglion cyst surgeries in my left hand then my doctor suggested if i wasn’t going to give up my saxophone, I would need to learn how to take a very heavy book like a bible and smash it on my hand while my hand was flat on a surface to smash open the ganglion cyst until it next appeared. Repeat. so I did this bible smashing on my hand until one day like thirty years later, another ganglion cyst appeared and I said to my friend the voilinist I wish they made a saxophone that would heal my hand so i could play for hours and hours and never stop and never have another cyst. My friend smiled and said let’s rehearse and take our break at the music store. I found the most beautiful P. Mauriat saxophone, it was perfect. I could play and the cyst healed, the pain went away… Pure bliss. i wish I had instead of my parents paying for that plastic surgery, they could have bought me this beautiful saxophone if only we had known.

Have you ever had to pivot?

So, as my concrete business as an agrologist became obsolete due to droughts, floods, and diminishing returns on farmers’ profits… I started to look at music to be a career, but the diminishing returns had hit that market also. Gratefully, I have returned into sales, of beautfiul metals as a career. Music is a business which requires a larger investment than a return on the investment for many many years… I find myself in a crossroads currently. I am grateful for a new career in sales with what seems more like an addiction to both agriculture and music. I feel optimistically hopeful and grateful for my three careers. Here’s the thing, my passion for music, arts, beauty and food make it feel as though I am not working at any of my endeavors. Where my future is I am not sure but I feel as though it will incorporate my love of music, architecture/building, and food (farming)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tarakyemusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tarakye/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tarakye/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-kye-maines-56354022/?originalSubdomain=ca
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaraKye2017
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@tarakyemaines6946?si=ZGFvhIMCgTZzGQc1
• Other: Super grateful to have the opportunity to work with some amazing artists in helping them to boost their social media game also in Big Records and JETSet Music Media.

Image Credits
Tara Kye Maines