The Unstarving Musician

Peter Wilson and his bandmates in Four Trips Ahead have been showing up again and again to build a following around their music. The New York based hard rock band punched their way through the pandemic by releasing new music and preparing for the return of live music. In this conversation we talk about Peter's vinyl collection, his band's journey into self producing, comparisons and genres used to...

The secret to writing and recording songs to completion is something that Marc Dold wants to share with all musicians. He is a songwriter, platinum-selling producer, Apple certified Logic Instructor and indie artist known as Mawk Phoenix . This is Marc's 3rd appearance on the podcast. Celebrating The Wins And Struggles Along The Way—Mawk Phoenix (Ep 131) Today's Indie Musician—Mawk Phoenix (Ep 165...

David Andrew Wiebe thinks about creativity, music, entrepreneurship and leadership in everything he does. He is a musician, composer and published author with three best sellers. Among his books is the 2022 edition of The Music Entrepreneur Code , which David says is more ninja than its predecessor. He is also the host/creator of The New Music Industry Podcast, and he wants to share what he knows...

Zack O'Malley Greenburg is working on a new book project called We Are All Musicians Now . He calls artists canaries in the coal mine of modern business. Zack has written a a few books on hip hop, which include the Jay-Z biography Empire State of Mind and A-List Angels: How a Band of Actors, Artists and Athletes Hacked Silicon Valley . He was a senior editor at Forbes for about ten years. He has a...

Jared Judge is dissecting everything that goes into being a successful gigging musician. He's doing this on his Gigging Musician Podcast , in his book Gigging Secrets: The Underground Playbook to Making A Living Performing and with his music business app BookLive . We think very much alike about gigging and Jared's story is great. He graduated from music school with a Bachelors in Music Education...

Ori Winokur is Head of Music at Artlist , a stock music licensing company that was in 2021 named one of the hottest startups in Tel Aviv by WIRED.  Stock music isn't for everyone. The concept may in fact be a turn off for many musicians. This episode may change some minds.  Artlist's platform provides users with straightforward licensing agreements and AI-powered recommendations. Ori has two decad...

Singer songwriter Seth King found that success on TikTok was good, until it wasn't. When we connected he had over 180K followers on the videocentric social network. Seth was taken by surprise with his TikTok success, but he embraced it. Today he's more focused on new music releases and Spotify. With over 300K plays on Spotify, Seth is planning a 13-song album release in the New Year. This will fol...

Michael Gilbride of telco has translated perfectionism and passion into his latest release please come home. He joins me to talk about his musical perfectionism, getting a late start on his music endeavors, and how not to have fun while making an EP. These are all themes with which I can relate. This is our second conversation for the podcast. Hear our first conversation in episode 198 . Most of o...

UK music artist Otto found excitement over the press coverage for his summer release "Amelia." There was a noteworthy moment leading up to this excitement. Otto caught the attention of Eurythmics co founder Dave Stewart. Otto had been holed up in his historic post office apartment when we last spoke, but the solitude allowed Otto to do a good deal of songwriting and recording. In this conversation...

Bradford Loomis has a 2019 song release called "Tried To Love A Woman." It was written as a compliment to his prior release "Righteous Kind." That song was placed in the movie Still Water, featuring Matt Damon. Rock isn't Bradford's main thing, although he admits that he likes rock. He in fact tries to include at least one rock song on each of his albums. His primary style is more that of a folk s...

Brooksie Wells is amplifying female voices over 50, including her own. She and I met in a thing called Music Marketing Method . I've mentioned Music Marketing Method on the podcast before. It's a program designed to help musicians find our fan base, grow our audience and make a consistent income with our creativity. Learn more about Music Marketing Method Brooksie has had a rich music career. She...

Andrew Chris' music explores influences that range from 60s guitar rock to modern hip hop. His list of early musical influences read very much like mine. Yet he's no less than 20 years younger than me. When I asked about his infatuation with artists like Hendrix, Zeppelin and Ten Years After, he gave the expected answer–his dad turned him on to them. The only difference in our early music tastes i...

Ryan Rosoff is making music for friendship and legacy. His band Little King explores the intersection of metal and prog rock. They have a new album out called Amuse De Q , now streaming just about everywhere. We talk about his travels, his roots in the Seattle sound of the 90s, music as a career outside of a career, leaving a legacy, practicing music and life for motivation, meditation, venturing...

Recording artist Amiena joins the podcast to talk about defeating a creative rut, her latest release, the stories behind her lyrics, changing producers, touring and working with producer Lars Deutsch (the good, the bad and the ugly). Amiena and I were introduced by producer Lars Deutsch, who was featured in episode 204 of the Unstarving Musician. At the time of this conversation, Amiena and Lars w...

Lynz Crichton is the creator of Music Marketing Method, a program that shows musicians how to make money with their music. She is also a friend and mentor to me. I am part of the student body that is her Music Marketing Method program. Lynz believes that generating an income with music doesn't have to be about just playing live. She first appeared on this podcast in 2017, when she estimates her Tw...

JJ Lovegrove is cracking the codes of social media and Spotify playists. We discuss this and much more in our conversation for the podcast. Among the topics we cover are our shared experience within Lynz Crichton's Music Marketing Method program and the beautiful connections we can make through conversation on social media. JJ used to view social media as an unpleasant place. We also discuss JJ's...

A good EPK will make your website inviting to music supervisors, talent buyers, bloggers and podcasters. This episode is based on a most informative blog post by our friends at Bandzoogle , the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to build a beautiful website for your music. Here's the blog post. The 8 things that should be in every band's electronic press kit We all hope fans will visit our web...

Gabriel Sanchez is the founder, lead singer and principal songwriter for the modern rock band Hope Darling. We're mutual friends of Bruce Wawrzyniak of Now Hear This Entertainment . In fact Bruce introduced us. When Gabriel and I spoke, Hope Darling had been confirmed as the headliner of Rock The Park on July 1 of 2021 at Curtis Hixon Park in downtown Tampa, Florida. They had also recently headlin...

Heidi Webster is a pop singer songwriter, podcaster and business owner bent on positivity. She recently released her 5th single called Neon . The single has a well produced video featuring Heidi doing dance moves in glitter and glam. Heidi kicked off her solo endeavor during the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, she was having fun performing in Vegas and dinner clubs as part of a re-imagined Rat Pa...

Nineteen year old Edwrds has been writing, recording and self-producing music since 2016. We recorded this interview in May 20, 2021 the day before his single Look was released. To celebrate the release, we published an unedited video version of our conversation on May 21st. Hear and see our full conversation on the Unstarving Musician YouTube channel . Edwrds' music is a blend of hip hop and rap...

In this episode Tanya Winch and I meander through her journey in music, art and life. She and I are mutually acquainted with Brian Wolff. Brian is a musician and host of the Greetings From Wherever, a podcast about artistic inspiration and the creative process. Thanks to Brian for recommending I feature Tanya on this podcast. My conversation with Tanya is extra casual. I had a very nice time getti...

My guest Anna Larson shares her passion for music, story telling and beauty for this episode. I found her in my email inbox one day not long ago. She sent me a textbook perfect pitch asking if I'd be interested in having her on the podcast. We talk about that email and more. Anna has been playing piano since childhood, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a music degree, is a pian...

Roopa Mahadevan is a leading Indian classical vocalist and crossover artist in the South Asian diaspora. She's normally based out of New York City, but had temporarily relocated to San Jose, California during the pandemic. She has roots in the South San Francisco Bay Area, so the move was an easy one. Roopa collaborates with a myriad of artists in jazz, world music, and R&B/soul genres. She also p...

Justin Paul breaks down the history and evolution of DJ music and culture in this episode. He is a friend and business partner of producer musician David Franz, who was featured in episode 203.   Justin himself is an educator and consultant in the music space. He's worked in A&R, music production, television and as a performing DJ. I asked him a number of questions about the DJ world, confessing t...

Peter Rand is the co-writer of my latest release New Gods Part 2 . He is also a two time offender on the podcast, first appearing in episode 177. Hear New Gods Part 2 Peter is a member of the collaboration platform Kompoz having contributed over 800 tracks. When I signed up for Kompoz last year, his track New Gods was among the first I heard. At that time it was keyboards only. I contributed a dru...