Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Clifton
Hi Jon, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in the quaint midwestern town of Grand Rapids, MI. 10/10 would recommend. I played tennis and was taking piano lessons but mostly just spent a lot of time outside skateboarding in the summer and sledding in the winter. And yes, I was a band kid… but let’s skip that part.
Fast forward to halfway through my college years in Ann Arbor (Go Blue!) I started DJing at Study Hall Lounge, one of the LEAST popular bars on campus, but that experience was so important in getting me more interested in music. That’s when I started producing and writing songs – bedroom pop / indie electronic type beats inspired by NoMBe, Tom Misch, Louis The Child, and SG Lewis. I was singing too, but didn’t quite have the chops to put it all together.
I graduated from Michigan with a computer science major and business minor, which landed me at an investment conference in Vegas where I met one of my DJ hero’s manager. I asked him for some advice and he said “step one, get out of that monkey suit.” Since then it has been my goal to never need to wear a suit or pull out my resume, to get a job.
Shortly thereafter, in June 2019, I came to LA “for the summer” in the middle of a Master’s program. Lo and behold – i loved it here, started working as an assistant to a producer, and never left. Since then I’ve been writing, producing, DJing, and, more recently, playing live shows. Two years ago I went to hit-songwriter-duo Stargate’s mentorship program called LAAMP which I would happily recommend to any aspiring producer or writer.
In the last year, my production, writing, singing, DJing and guitar have all come together for really the first time. Last month I played at the Moroccan Lounge, opening for my friend Rob Tirea; I played a hybrid electronic set including DJing, live sampling, singing, bringing out guest singers, and shredding on my ‘96 strat like it was going out of style.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Covid hit 9 months after I moved to LA, but honestly, that was perfect timing for me. So yes it was stressful and scary and hindered meeting new people, the timing worked out for me to hunker down and work on my skills as a writer and producer.
One big challenge for me was learning how the music industry works, and more broadly how to think like an artist and musician. It was a lot of unlearning the highly pragmatic, methodical problem solving based thinking that I learned as a computer science student or working internships at finance companies. People here just care about different things! Which I’m not sure my family will wrap their heads around. Luckily, they’re very supportive, and I couldn’t be blessed with a better group of close friends and collaborators that inspire me every day.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My artist name is VREDEN and I primarily write and produce dance / house, pop, and RnB music. I’ve started dabbling in UKG, Drum and Bass, and bass house but my strengths are more disco house and tech house.
I’ve also said yes to nearly everything that’s come across my path, which has led me to some interesting opportunities that I wouldn’t have expected. For one, I do quite a bit of mixing (like mixing and mastering). I play guitar at Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. As a producer, one of my main strengths is my vocal production, so that has become a bigger part of my work beyond the records I’m producing myself.
I’ve been focusing on developing as a producer and artist and my sound has been gradually filtering into two buckets: one is funky pop house with some notes of future RnB (think Kaytranada meets Disclosure but with more traditional pop song structure) and the second is more high octane (130bpm+) festival grade disco house. Stay tuned for some of that to come out later this year.
I also co-host a podcast with my friend and frequent collaborator, CasPark, called Friends Do Music. Check us out on IG or listen to full episodes on Spotify!
What are your plans for the future?
I have four upcoming releases, all collaborations, that I can’t wait to share. The first one (called “Movement”) coming out July 12th is a duet with Nahima. She’s a generational talent. I’ve worked with her a lot over the last two years but this will be our first joint release.
After that will be some late summer anthems with other super talented friends including Lucia Haze, DallasK, Rory Hope and Viktoria Liv.
The rest of 2024 I have some big pitch records coming out that I can’t talk about quite yet.
My next show will be at Müs Night in West Hollywood on 8/3
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vreden.music/
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/vredenmusic
