We were lucky to catch up with Wesley Hill recently and have shared our conversation below.

Wesley, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I’ve connected to music for as long as I have memory, but I remember when I was 6 or 7 laying on our couch after putting my mom’s Jimi Hendrix CD, probably a greatest hits or something, and listening to the entire thing through and thinking I need to figure out how to do that. Specifically the sound of his guitar. I probably knew it was guitar, but I couldn’t comprehend how it was happening I just needed to know more and figure out how to create something like that. That’s when I knew I wanted to create. So then I went on to learn guitar for a while. long story short, I started entertaining the idea of singing because I had started connecting to songwriting and vocals and lyrics. I sang in my car to and from high school. Then I went off to college and started writing songs. All this time, I was never somebody with a lot of confidence, so I never really shared my music passion with people, until some friends in college started encouraging me. During this time is when I started gigging and sharing my music with people and by the time I was graduating I had to make the decision to go all in so thats when I started gigging a lot more, and working on self producing and releasing my music. I had to have couple of side jobs for a while until I had enough regular gigs to make ends meet, but it’s been a little over two years now without a “regular” job.

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.

My main goal is to be a good artist, which I know sounds dumb and over simplified, but what I mean by that is that I want to create art (in my case music and all things that go along with that) from a genuine place that accurately represents me, and by doing that, hopefully connecting to others giving them some sort of either joy, encouragement, coping, etc. All the artsy artist things being said, I do have a goal of making a living from my art, so I am studying a lot about business and marketing these days in order to find my audience and be able to serve good art to the people that want it. I currently make my living from being a musician, different from artist. So, I’m a gigging musician playing at every bar/restaurant/party/wedding that will hire me, which is incredible, because 1. I love playing music and 2. It keeps my live chops up so I feel like a better performer than ever and when more opportunities come to play my original stuff I’ll be ready!

I’ve been self producing my music for a few years now out of my bedroom. This was a major learning curve and has proven to be one of the most challenging and rewarding things I’ve done. Everyone knows that writing and playing a song is an art-form, but producing/mixing/mastering a song is absolutely equally an art-form that needs vision and taste. It can completely change a song. So I really like the idea that I’m the only one touching my art. whether for bad or for good, it is 100% me. I really like artists that do this. To me it makes me feel like I know them better. Of coarse, one day I’d love to collaborate with other cool artists.

I feel like an artist can’t really explain why they’re an artist, it’s just something in us that compels us to create things. Because of my faith, this makes sense because I believe people are made in the image of God and so all of the good qualities that people have, including creativity, are mirrors of God’s characteristics. We can see in the world around us that it’s the greatest piece of art there is.

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

I think in general, resilience is one of the essential characteristics you need if you’re going to be an artist, especially an independent one. What I’ve been learning from others, and what I’m experiencing currently is that most likely it’s going to take a long time of consistent effort before gaining traction and an even longer time before feeling like you’ve secured a career. Even in our world of virality on the internet, the way algorithms work, consistency over time is what seems to trigger it. Obviously people liking and responding to your song for example, is important, but that won’t even have the chance to happen if you’re not consistently promoting. So for the past almost three years I’ve been consistently releasing and promoting music using social media, along with playing live as much as possible. I have not had anything blow up or go viral at this point, but I have had consistent considerable growth. Emotional resilience is important for me because before you’re “successful” in most people’s eyes, it’s very easy to feel embarrassment or self-conscious in releasing your art and promoting yourself because art is very much a part of you. Something else I’ve heard and believe is true is that there is an audience for your music out there no matter how small the niche. You just have to find them and that takes time, effort, and resilience.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

During college is when I knew I wanted to try to pursue music as a career, and I had a couple of college bands with me and couple friends and did gigs for free starting out eventually doing paid gigs more and more regularly. Then with the more current version of the band we started coming up with songs and decided we wanted to use our gig money to record at a studio. So we did and had a great experience, but studio time is very expensive and we felt we could’t be as creative because we were pressed for time. My friend/drummer always brought up self recording/producing, but I thought there was no way I had the capacity to learn how to do all that, at least at a quality level we could be proud of. We did end up messing around with recording ourselves, but nothing we’d want released. Eventually the band was basically over just due to life and bandmates moving away, so I needed to figure out how to still pursue music. I always wanted to be a member of a band, not a solo artist, but around this time I decided that’s what I had to do because I didn’t know anyone else to start a band with. During the pandemic I had time so I started messing around more with recording myself making little songs and I fell in love with it. I knew it was going to take a lot of time messing around, trying things, and studying producers I admired if I was going to be able to do it, but I couldn’t think of any better way to keep pursuing. Eventually I got to where I was comfortable enough to release the first song under my name, and I’ve kept them coming ever since. So I had to pivot into being a solo artist when the band didn’t work out, and I decided to take on learning self production when I definitely couldn’t afford much studio time. Both pivots have ended up being better than I could’ve imagined.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wesley_hill_music/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wesleyhillmusic/featured