Today we’d like to introduce you to Conner Cherland
Hi Conner, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My name is Conner Cherland and I’m a singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles, California. I was born and raised in Lancaster, a city just north of LA, and I’m proud of my Filipino / Minnesotan heritage. Music has always been a big part of my life – as a kid I would sing when I was nervous, especially while wakeboarding or before a volleyball game.
After graduating college in UCSB, I decided to pursue music more seriously and wrote 40 songs in 6 months while working a day job. That practice has continued to evolve, and after 1,200+ shows and 400+ songs, I feel like I’m just starting to get the hang of it.
In 2023, I released my debut full-length album ‘LAKE’ which delved into themes of grief and loss. However, I found myself needing a creative reset after that heavy subject matter. That journey of personal growth culminated in my new 6-song EP, which I self-produced and released on November 1st, 2024. This project allowed me to craft a truer representation of who I am as an artist, and I hand-carved unique wooden sculptures to accompany each song.
The EP explores themes of hope, mental health, and familial love – a marked shift from the emotional weight of LAKE. I’m really proud of how it turned out and excited to share it with the world. This next chapter feels like a homecoming of sorts, where I’m finally making music that makes me genuinely happy again.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There’s been a lot of difficulty in pursuing music as a career. I struggle to practice, to promote, to network, to translate my live performance into my recordings. But I try to zoom out of my day-to-day a lot in order to get my priorities straight. I can’t tackle everything at once, so I have to acknowledge my limits and take small meaningful actions every day to inch closer to the goals.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
When I write, I try to branch out subject-wise so that my songs cover a range of topics, although I specialize in making songs that are highly introspective and inward-focused. It seems like when I try to write about other people, I’m guessing, and it shows. I’m the person I can see at the closest level, so I try to use myself as a kaleidoscope (a way to see, knowingly distorted) when imagining the motivations of other people.
I care about physical things…real instruments…real artwork that exists in the world. Things that I saw with my own eyes and touched and played for myself whenever possible. I want my art to exist in the physical world as well as the digital space. I’m worried that the digital landscape is getting very crowded, and I want to embrace being a physical thing as much as possible these days.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Good luck: I’ve been well-loved since I was a child. Not perfectly, but truly loved. This made me grow up to think I deserve true love anywhere I go, and it keeps the less-loving people at bay. As a lactose-intolerant (and unloving-intolerant) person, I can tell you that fake cheese is a poor substitute for the real thing.
Bad luck: My parents were educators and athletes, so they couldn’t exactly advise me on how to be a full time entrepreneur or artist. They remain my role models in almost every other area, but we live drastically different lives, and there’s no better teacher than a personal mentor.
Pricing:
- Wedding Music (Ceremony): ~$600
- Wedding Music (Ceremony + Cocktail): ~$800
- Pickleball Lessons: ~$80
- House Concert: ~$200
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ConnerCherland.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connercherland/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/connercherland
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@itsconnercherland
