We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Timo Ellis . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Timo below.

Timo, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

I would have to say, although in some ways it’s not entirely their doing…the now unavoidable commercial and social centrality/ ubiquity of the tech giant big streaming services; Spotify, Apple Music etc., who in cahoots with the big record companies, now have made it nearly impossible for smaller/ independent artists to generate any significant revenue from their music getting played (even millions of times!) on their platforms, as the payouts are obscenely, pitifully small; essentially this entire big streaming business model functions more like a sharecropping system, relative to anything approaching even being remotely fair or equitable.

A larger picture/ longer-term understanding of how this happened would IMO require a much longer and more nuanced analysis: but overall, the fact that the system is set up so the majority of regular consumers currently won’t consider paying an artist directly for their work, but are happy to pay a giant tech behemoth $15 a month, for an (exploitative) service…IMO is just another instance of the larger (and deeply entrenched) accepted economic practices of the general exploitation of workers/ labor (*framed deeply euphemistically, but typically, by the big players as “consolidation” and “innovation”) …and which are now just mundane part and parcel of our (increasingly ruthless/ callous) hyper-capitalist economic system.

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 Timo Ellis (pr. TIH-mo) a native New Yorker, Gen X son of relatively liberal > leftist baby boomers, and I grew up in extremely intense, insane 1970s and 80s NYC

With my parent’s support (*and, um, to our neighbors chagrin ;) I started playing guitar and drums as a pre-teen and already had a sense of deep passion (and even vocation) about it, even then; however it wasn’t until my third year of college that I decided that it might be actually possible/ viable to pursue a career as a professional musician.

I began playing music professionally in my mid to late 20s, recording, performing and touring as a multi-instrumentalist sideman (playing drums, guitar, and bass, and singing) with various well-known artists (Yoko Ono, Cibo Matto, Joan As Policewoman, Spacehog, and many others) …and after around seven years I began developing my solo work, as well as launched a commercial music production company; writing and producing music for brands, short films, TV spots, etc.)

Basically my professional and creative life for the last nearly 20 years has alternately consisted of these four simultaneous channels/ avenues; being a musician in other band projects, producing work for other artists, producing commercial music, and creating my own extensive body of work as a solo artist, and in my own band.

Relatively speaking, I believe one of the things that sets me apart from probably the majority of other people in my field, is that I play multiple instruments at a reasonably very advanced level, and also have always had hugely, radically diverse tastes in music… Which have enabled me to be a sort of “renaissance man”, in terms of my my brand and skill set overall; I am just as comfortable creating latin and classical music, as I am creating hip hop, hard rock metal, pop, country/ folk, and disco/ dance / electronic music… And I’ve drawn from all of these genres for all my commercial clients, as well as within my own body of solo and band work…ultimately culminating in an reasonably huge body of work, spanning many different sensibilities and genres.

+ Truthfully, the “thing that I’m most proud of” would be my own body of artwork/ music…as from the very beginning, I’ve always consciously gone to great lengths to never “play to the gallery”/ felt compelled to conform to musical trends; so for this reason, IMO I’ve created a totally eccentric, deeply unapologetic, and (relatively) totally original “genre-fluid” body of extremely personal music, about which I am extremely proud. I basically “followed my own lights”, and on a personal and philosophical level I believe this is THE most important thing I could have done (and will always endeavor to do) as an artist and musician.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In the broadest sense, IMO the fact that I have stayed completely sober for the last 17 straight years, I would consider to be the most profound “living act of resilience” in my entire life

After a chaotic, and in some ways neglectful and emotionally abusive childhood (along with a few other acutely traumatic experiences I had as a teenager) ..initially using drugs and alcohol had a genuinely restorative effect; however (unsurprisingly) my drug use gradually spiraled out of control, and I developed a serious substance problem from the age of around 22 to 37 (even though I was actually relentlessly working the entire time/ was what is known as a “high functioning addict”.)

However when I was around 36 y.o. my mental and physical health finally began to falter significantly, and I started to realize that I probably was going to need serious help to begin to turn my life around.

The following year, after a series of terrifying cocaine-induced, paranoid psychotic episodes….I finally checked myself into a CBT-based rehab in Clearwater Florida for 30 days… and with the help of a rigorous therapy practice that began as soon as I got home…I’ve been able to stay completely sober ever since then.

Obviously this is a much longer story…but the entire long term process of getting sober has necessitated my having to continually (and arduously, stubbornly!!) cultivate the skills to: much more maturely regulate my emotions, set healthier boundaries, rigorously root out self-destructive and limiting beliefs, and finally develop much more serious self-care routines (nutrition, exercise, meditation, etc.) Considering how physically and spiritually sick I had become, the fact that I am where I am now…I believe is about as dramatic of a “reversal” of a person’s overall life trajectory…even humanly possible!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The years of early sobriety (for most recovering addicts) can often be extremely emotionally and socially clumsy/ awkward- and while not exactly a “lesson”, one of the main psychological habits that I had to actively endeavor to unlearn was my longtime habit of “people pleasing”, which caused all sorts of chaos in my life, personally and professionally

The skills I’ve developed to calm my nervous system (mainly Buddhist meditation) have had the biggest impact in terms of helping me fundamentally minimize this tendency…and overall have helped me orient myself with greater and greater degrees of presence, authenticity and restraint, in all my affairs.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.timoellis.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oomasooma/?igshid=MjEwN2IyYWYwYw%3D%3D
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timoellismusic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timo-ellis-39861430/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@timoellisworld/videos
• Other: https://www.netherlandsband.com/

Image Credits
pics by Jordan Galland, Jammi York and The Tinfoil Biter