We recently connected with Tarious Hill and have shared our conversation below.

Tarious, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

Well the first time I knew I wanted to pursue music professionally was when I was with my first band and I got a $100 payday! LOL!!!! I was thinking to myself this is so cool to get paid doing something I love doing! It actually felt empowering! The place I performed at was some bar near the University of Alabama campus. It was a cool experience. I was like $100 for just 3 hrs of playing! This is more than what I was making at my full time job in one day!!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Tarious Hill. I’m a musician, jazz artist, and music producer from Holt, Alabama. The instruments I play is guitar, bass guitar, and keyboard but my main instrument is guitar. The services I provide is solo Jazz guitar performances for events, DJing, music production for any genre, available to fill in if you need a guitarist or bassist in the West Alabama are. I also can play guitar or bass on recordings. The thing that set me apart from others is my versatility and my distinct guitar style. Which is a blend of a smooth jazzy, bluesy, but yet funky style of playing. My main genres of music is R&B, Blues, Southern Soul, Smooth Jazz and Hip Hop but I do Rock and Pop too. The problems I solve for clients is providing music for any situation any kind of event. If it needs music I can provide it. For music production I provide custom beats that’s tailored for that particular artist. I also provide beat leasing for pre made beats at my beat store.

I got my start with music actually by rapping and songwriting as a teenager. I didn’t have a cost effective way to record songs back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s so I don’t have a lot of released music from that time. I never played any instruments in school because I was so busy playing football but I always a great love for music! I began to play my first musical instrument when I was 25. I was listening to a lot of Jonathan Butler and I loved his guitar playing! During this time the guitar was just calling me! LOL! I knew that was the instrument that I wanted to express myself with. So I got the cheapest guitar I could find which was a $30 acoustic guitar off of Ebay. Once i touch those strings it was no looking back and I been playing ever since! How I got into the music industry is I was playing guitars in a music store and a band leader can in and heard me play and told me to come and try out for his band. I came to the audition and he liked what he heard and I played in his band for a little while. After that I played in several band for the next 15 years.

The things I’m the most proud of in my music career is having the versatility to play any style of music on the guitar. This helps me provide a better product when working with clients. Another thing I’m proud of is getting induced into the Alabama Blues Hall of Fame this past April.

The main things I want people and potential clients is that I’m a cool and laid back person that’s easy to work with. I got out my way to make sure that the client gets the results that they want.

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

I think the way society can best support artists and creatives is to have easier way for creatives to get their work seen by the masses online instead of getting lost in the gatekeeping algorithms of social media and other platforms. Also, the royalty rates for streaming definitely needs to increase. Lastly, society needs to value creatives more and not take us for granted. We work really hard and put a lot of time into our craft. So society can support by buying creatives they like work, come to shows and events, also sometime just donate. Doing these things will help artist and creatives so much.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is the freedom of expressing myself through music. Making a soulful piece of art of nothing. In my opinion that’s God’s work to me.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hebrewchile
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tarious.hill/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarious-hill-285b8072/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@hebrewchile5144/featured
• Beat Store link: https://airbit.com/profile/tarioush

Image Credits
Digital Burn Multimedia, Tiffine Unian Daniels