We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Wes Anderson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Wes thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

In 2009, I graduated college with a Finance degree, and shortly after moved to Chicago and started my journey into corporate life. Soon after, I also joined a local band and we started really sinking our teeth into building the band, playing out, and recording music. That experience re-ignited my flame for music, and coincided with me quickly realizing that corporate lifestyle wasn’t for me.

After a few years of doing that, the band experienced some personnel issues which slowed us down. And around that time, an east coast band I knew of posted about looking for a lead guitarist. I was already familiar with them, and they were already touring up and down the east coast so I thought I’d shoot my shot and see what happens. But I definitely didn’t expect anything to happen.

Long story short, I quit the band in Chicago, quit my Finance job, and moved to Maryland to join a band of virtually strangers and went all in on chasing the dream. After the move we pretty much went head first into national touring, writing and recording music, signing with a manager, and going full steam of ahead.

I left that band in 2018 and have been a solo artist since. But had I not taking that risk in 2012 and gone all in, I most definitely wouldn’t be as actively involved in my passion as I still am today, and fear I may have succumbed to the corporate machine!

Wes, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Wes Anderson (the musician ha) and primarily identify as a guitarist. I first picked up the guitar in 1996 after seeing the music video for 311’s hit song Down and knew rather quickly that that was what I wanted to do.

Flash forward to 2023, and I’m mainly operating as a solo artist. I guess what’s somewhat unique about that is that I am still mostly a guitarist, but release music under my own name and get a rotating cast of artists to feature on each release. The cool thing about releasing music these days with streaming is you can do that. Anyone can present themselves and release music in any way they want. There really aren’t any limitations.

I started the solo project in 2018 with my first release under my own name, and the fact I’ve been able to keep it going as I have is probably what I’m most proud of. I’ve been able to collaborate with my musical heroes, friends, strangers off the internet, and any one in between. And consistently. It’s not easy or cheap, but I’m making it work.

By going that route, I’m also not bound by any genre, so each release may not sound like any thing else I’ve done which keeps it exciting for me. That’s also my take, so to others they may find similarities between all my songs, which are usually chock full of guitar riffs! Anything from rap rock, reggae, funk, pop/punk, metal, and hip hop is fair game in my tunes.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In my early Maryland days, the band I was in (shout out Fiction 20 Down) was touring pretty regularly. And we re-invested everything we made back into the band. I quickly drained most of my savings so I needed to find a way to make money. I was living out of boxes the first few years here, sold off possessions, lived in strangers’ basements, took odd jobs off Craig’s List like digging dirt for some guy for an entire day, and delivered pizzas for Domino’s for a year. Within a six month span I went from Marketing Analyst for a billion dollar+ investment manager to delivery driver. All of those experiences can be a major blow to the ego for anyone. But my mindset was to always schedule my life around what gives me the best chance to succeed in music. And I still carry that mindset, although I do have a very solid career in Marketing now. But I still invest a lot of my money into studio time, featured artists, promotion, etc…

Voluntarily putting yourself through those kinds of experiences is a great stress test to reveal whether you really want that life or not. 100% would not do it again lol, but am very grateful I did when I was a bright eyed young buck.

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

That you need a traditional job structure aka 9-5 to make a living That’s total bullshit. After a few years of the odd jobs and pizza grind, I started teaching myself direct response marketing. I realized I was already doing a lot of it for the band – like email list management, social media marketing, paid advertising, PR, etc… So my thought was these are valuable services that small businesses can pay me for. So I scoured Craig’s List back when that was a thing, got a few clients, then they got me some referrals, and in less than a year I was able to pay all of my bills doing free lance and contract work. Almost at a level I was at in the corporate finance gig. And I could take my work on the road so I had ultimate flexibility.

So really if you have skills that businesses are willing to pay for, you can have much more control over your work/life situation than you may think. You just need the courage to figure it out and stick to it.

Contact Info:

• Website: WesAndersonMusic.com
• Instagram: @SongsByWes
• Facebook: Facebook.com/WesAndersonMusic
• Twitter: @SongsByWes
• Youtube: YouTube.com/WesAndersonMusic

Image Credits
Homebrew Photography, J2 Media