Today we’d like to introduce you to John White.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
What started the entire journey was listening to music and going to shows with my dad. I always told myself that I wanted to play shows in stadiums, but I had to reverse-engineer that and figure out what it would take to get there. I feel as if, professionally, I’ve only worked on it for a little more than a year, even though I’ve been making music for ten years. I think my father was the one who always put the battery in my back and made me believe that I could do it. One of the things my dad always used to say was, “Anything in your life that you do, you have to approach it with love.” If I ask myself how I got here, it was the love that my dad and I both had for music and the relationship we had together.
The “why” has changed over the past couple of years, but I think one constant has always been in my message. I want my music to be a source of light for people, as cliché or trite as that may sound. I think the purpose of music is to uplift people and inspire them and make them feel like they’re not alone. That’s what music has always done for me.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, it has not been a smooth road. I think most of my struggles come from within and the pressures I put on myself. I’ve learned to make a living and do what I love in freelance work, which has been a beautiful thing, but sometimes the years go by and nothing really changes. It gets hard to hold onto this dream when you feel like you’re constantly chasing something that’s just out of reach. For the most part, I’ve learned to surround myself with people that are also driven and ambitious, and that’s helped keep me inspired. But life can also throw some crazy things at you that can almost force you to want to forget about your hopes and dreams. For some reason, music is the thing that I always come back to and the journey is always going to be the best part. Regardless of how bumpy the ride is, it’s still worth every second of it.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I make music. I can write, I can produce, I can engineer, I can sing. I’m known best as a songwriter because it’s what I do for work, but I just consider myself an artist. When it comes to my work, I’m most proud of figuring out a way to make the type of music that I want to make on my own. For a long time, I struggled bridging the gap between songwriter, engineer, producer, mixer, and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I finally figured out the missing link that kept everything from flowing out naturally and finding my sound organically. To me, that missing link was my idea of what a song has to be. In the past, I was trying to play in the game of making a Top 40 record, but I wasn’t making things that I was proud of. I felt like I was a machine, but once I stopped putting expectations on the songs I would write—everything just got easier for me. I’m very thankful for that because it took a long time to get to this place. I don’t think I’m that different from anyone else trying to do this, I just think I’m very particular in the way that I do things. I have a vision as to how I want certain situations in my career to go, but at the end of the day, I feel like I’m just another guy that makes music. If anything, I feel like the “why” is the reason that I might stand out a little bit more from other people. Not to say that it devalues anybody else’s “why,” I think sometimes I just believe in the energy and the message I’m trying to put out into the universe. Sometimes to the point of distorting my reality, which could be good, could be bad but—I guess we’ll see.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I feel like I was a pretty cookie-cutter kid. I was into football, I liked to play video games, I liked to ride dirt bikes; pretty much anything outdoors with my friends, I was down for. I am an only child so I definitely kept to myself in school, didn’t talk to anybody, but I grew up on a street where we had a bunch of kids my age so when I got home from school I would do my homework and run outside to do something crazy thing around the block. I think I’ve always kind of liked my alone time, I like doing things by myself and I’m not sure if it’s because I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Looking back, I spent a lot of time doing some soul-searching in my teenage years and I think that’s very important because I was able to figure out who I was early on.
When I first started writing songs, I would go to a studio that had mostly older people there. I think watching them and what they did and how they would write songs definitely influenced me, but it was still me trying to write a song and now it’s about letting songs come to me and not forcing anything. I was very insecure about a lot of things. Mainly my home life, that my parents were divorced, I was a little bit overweight, I didn’t have anyone to help me make music, so I was struggling to do things on my own. Now, it’s completely the opposite. I have a great relationship with my mom, I eat really well, I take care of myself, and the beauty of being able to go to the studio and sit down at the piano, or pick up a guitar, or just open my laptop and, no matter what happens, I’ll be able to make something I’m proud of has been the biggest takeaway when looking back at all of those years.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnwhitesmusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnWhiteMusic
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnWhitesMusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@officialjohnwhite
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/johnwhitesmusic
Image Credits
Michael Choi
