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

Tod, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I think everyone- EVERYONE- has a creative spark somewhere within them; it’s one of the cool little prizes that come in the cereal box of being a human. I was very fortunate to be encouraged to be creative from a young age by my parents. Drawing was my first love, but music crept in right around preschool age with a stack of scratchy old 45 records my sister and I got from my mom. I latched on to Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up” right away. My other top jam was the Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo”. What can I say? It was a wild stack of records.

I loved drawing and music all the way through school, but it wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that it occurred to me to ask my parents for a guitar. Contrary to many musicians’ stories, it wasn’t a slow-burning obsession; I honestly remember being almost as surprised as my parents when I brought the subject up. Bless their hearts, they indulged me, although it came with a caveat from my mom: “I’d better not find it buried under a pile of airplane books in a few weeks.”

She need not have worried. The guitar quickly took over my life in all ways. I started tentatively growing my hair out, switched from constantly drawing airplanes to constantly drawing guitars, worshiped at the altars of Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix and, over that first year of falling in love with puzzling out riffs and songs I liked, began to waver on my long-charted course to become a fighter pilot in the Air Force (oh, well- I sucked at math, anyway). This was the 1980s in rural Ohio, mind you; there was no real clear cut road map to making music for a living in the Pre-Internet Age, and certainly no local music scene in our tiny little town, so I found myself inadvertently following the path of my favorite 60s British guitar heroes and going to Art School.

At the Columbus College of Art & Design I was exposed to a lot of new subcultures and the music that came with them, and I soaked them up like a sponge. For some reason, though, it took me several years of weekend rehearsals in a series of casual, progressively-less-dreadful cover bands before it occurred to me that I could actually write my own songs. I’m not sure why it took so long to grasp that concept; obviously, SOMEBODY was writing all those songs we were playing. But in a way, my slow start at writing had a silver lining to it- turns out, I was attending two colleges at once: the “official” Art School one and the “unofficial” University of Songcraft I was learning from by keeping my ears and mind open. Any regrets I have about not starting writing sooner are balanced out by the education I was getting by taking my natural inclinations to analyze things and focusing them on the music and artists I loved.

All of this is to say that I had a pretty good handle on basic song arrangement by the time I started writing my own songs. That’s not to say I was hitting home runs immediately, however. Like everyone else’s, my early songs were clumsy, derivative, and generally unpleasant to listen to. But, also like everyone else’s, those songs gradually got better, and I started developing my own voice.

My dad was a high school English, Literature, and Creative Writing teacher for over 30 years. He would sit at the dinner table reciting sonnets and poems, and he instilled in me a fascination with words and the magical ways they can fit together. This fascination came in very handy in songwriting, where one doesn’t have a lot of time or space to make an impact. I’ve had enough people compliment me on my lyrics over the years to be very grateful for the serendipitous gift Dad gave me, and it’s been an essential part of my trick bag ever since.

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 Tod Weidner. I’m a singer/songwriter/musician. I’ve been playing guitar for 38 years, writing songs for over 30 of those years. I’m Rust-Belt born and bred, originally from Ohio, but based in California for the past 5 years now.

I’ve played in bands since my teens, everything from Hard Rock to Garage Punk to Pink Floyd tributes to Indie Art Rock to Folk, appearing on dozens of recordings in the process. Nowadays, I’m predominantly a solo artist, having released 10 singles under my own name over the last few years.

I have a deep love for any music that comes from a place of purity, and I would describe what I do as “Lyric Driven Americana with Soul”. If you can imagine a cozy room with Leonard Cohen and Tom Petty battling for turntable time, a candle burning in the corner, and a sunrise in the wings, you’re in my general musical zip code.

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

I consider myself a student of the Neil Young School of Communication; I’m always looking for ways to close the distance between what’s in my head, what’s in my heart, and what’s in my hands. My musical appetites are pretty voracious and all over the map, and the biggest challenge for me is to distill the essential humanity of a given song or performance, the emotions I feel when I’m experiencing it, into my own voice and channel it through my own personal filter. I don’t always hit the bullseye, but I’ve gotten a lot better at it over time.

I feel like there are two types of “honesty” in music. You can be honest by opening yourself up and making a song that’s bluntly plain-spoken and autobiographical. I admire the bravery in that, and I have a handful of songs that fit into that category. But I also try to keep in mind that songwriting is storytelling; a song can be semi-autobiographical or even totally fictional, shrouded in metaphor, but delivered in a fully emotionally-invested manner. A good method actor’s performance can be incredibly moving, and a good musician can sell a performance to the audience in the same way. Art opens up emotional channels in the listener or viewer when it’s done with purity of purpose. That’s the kind of honesty I aim for.

In an age where creatives are increasingly pressured to fill a variety of administrative duties and churn out “content” on social media, it’s easy to lose sight of the reason we do this to begin with. I may be totally delusional , but I firmly believe that if I am steadfastly honest in my music, that music will eventually reach the ears it’s intended to reach. My intention is the only thing I truly have control over. Casual listeners will always move on to the next shiny object that comes along. I’m looking to make a family, and I’d rather truly knock out 10 people than mildly entertain 100.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Successfully accomplishing what I talked about in the previous answer: reaching the listener. Having a song that resonates with them on a human level. It doesn’t even need to be interpreted in the way I meant it to be; as long as it speaks to them and elicits an emotional response with them, I feel like I did my job. It’s good work if you can get it, as the saying goes.

On a more selfish, but no less important, level- I just really, really love doing this. Playing and performing takes me to a place I enjoy. I’ve always been predisposed to melancholy, and music has always been the cure, my go-to dopamine hit. Nothing makes me feel better more reliably than losing myself in playing guitar for an hour or two. If I can help the listener at the same time, that’s the icing on the proverbial cake.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.todweidner.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/todweidner
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@todweidner684
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/52rETQqjxm39BVis0W9sR0https://todweidner.bandcamp.com

Image Credits

Photo 6: Christopher Corn / Corn Photography
All others: Tod Weidner