Today we’d like to introduce you to Ted Wulfers.
Hi Ted, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
First off thank you for reaching out. It was wonderful to do an interview with you a couple of years ago and I appreciate you checking in on what I’ve been up to these days. You ask how I started, how I got here and what I am up to today and I am constantly amazed and profoundly proud of how so wonderfully connected the phases of my life and story have been that I’d be happy to share some of it with you. A life in the arts is a beautiful but challenging existence and I find that the trick is to ride every wave in order to be inspired by the blessings and curses, that your very existence itself becomes art.
I’m a musician, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist of a myriad of instruments, a producer, composer, recording engineer, photographer, filmmaker, instrument collector, tour guide and avid history buff. Some refer to me as a “polymath” but it’s best to just call me Ted or Teddy… I write songs, I release albums, I perform them live, I make music videos for them, I produce, record and play on albums for other artists at my studio, I score soundtracks for films, TV shows and video games and I’m constantly making photographs of landscapes, instruments and people. I have released original music in the rock, pop, folk, jam, ukulele, blues, dance, film score and classical genres.
As of autumn 2022, I’ve just released my 12th original studio album, I currently have music in two award-winning films on the festival circuit, I’m working on several new releases planned for 2023, a giant Pacific Blue Marlin I caught is in exhibit on display at Chicago’s Field Museum, one of my songs is in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, I’ve appeared in numerous books over the last two years, my photography has been published in magazines, I am directing a documentary film about Gibson Acoustic Guitars after Bob Dylan rented mine and I’ve just returned from a soulful month of adventures in Belgium and France after mourning the passing of my best buddy Jagger, a black maine coon cat who was loved around the world.
Throughout my career, I’ve played stages huge and small throughout most of the US and Europe and I’ve had numerous songs on the radio with a couple of them turning into hits and as well as music on ABC, ESPN, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, HBO, The Hallmark Channel and in numerous award-winning films.
I write all of the songs on my albums and I play most of the instruments or sometimes all of the instruments on my albums but I have had several well-known guests over the years as well such as Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famer Rami Jaffee from the Foo Fighters, Kenny Aronoff, Matt Walker, LP, Gia Ciambotti, John Payne from ASIA, Mark Cantwil, Doug Pettibone, Mike Frantantuno, Paulie Cerra, Rob Humphreys, Katie Ferrara, Zak St. John, Dave Raven, Taras Prodaniuk, Carl Byron, Aaron Weistrop, Chris Lawrence, Jessy Greene, Gary Morse, Phil Hurley and the tin whistler/piper from Titanic and Braveheart, Eric Rigler just to name a few.
How it started… I was born in the Chicagoland area in a town called Arlington Heights. I began playing piano by ear at age three when I’d play themes and melodies from the radio and TV on piano. I started lessons soon after and was performing recitals and classical concerts from age 3-5 around the Chicagoland area throughout my childhood. I remember in 4th or 5th grade in a music class at my grade school when the teacher needed to leave the room for any period of time, she would ask me to play piano for my classmates. I was a child prodigy in music and making it is something that has always come so completely natural for me. When I say music is breathing for me, I mean it. It’s what I’ve been up to my entire life.
My piano teacher died in 6th grade and I celebrated a break from having to practice the piano. I hated practicing the piano. It’s something I knew I had to do but I saw it more as a chore than anything fun. Besides…playing baseball was fun and practicing piano was not. So the piano gathered a bit of dust after my teacher died. Then my Godfather died a year later and the only way I knew how to deal with the news was to go and sit at the piano. I was in 7th grade and I can remember this moment as if it were minutes ago. The grief in me was so overwhelming that the only way I knew how to express it was to noodle about on the piano and seconds later, I had done something that I’d never done before. I’d written a song. It was magic. Out of thin air, I had created chords, a melody and lyrics and was playing and singing to myself this new invention I’d just written. From that moment on, I didn’t practice music…I PLAYED music and I was on my way.
I wanted to play drums and begged my parents for a drum kit in high school but a reasonable and more audibly manageable compromise was made and I was surprised on Christmas morning at age 14 with an electric guitar. You wouldn’t be asking me any of these questions if that guitar hadn’t appeared in my life that morning. We were inseparable…still are really haha…but that would allow me to write and play music in a different way than on the piano. I taught myself guitar, then bass, then mandolin, then dobro, then lap steel, then drums and tons of other instruments and then I taught myself how to record them using cassette tapes on a cheap Sony boombox, Radio Shack microphones and eventually a Tascam multitrack. Some of my early recordings as a teenager ended up getting passed around and a few even would be played over the morning announcements PA at my high school. My first “radio play” if you will. Soon after, I started my first few bands in high school. That lead to playing shows, school dances, summer festivals and eventually recording my first album of original music when I was 17. Two years later I’d have songs from my second album on the radio, I’d be playing festivals and clubs and I’d be opening for bands like the Doobie Brothers, the Disco Biscuits, Chicago, the Freddy Jones Band and the Lemonheads.
I kept writing hundreds more songs, recorded more albums and received more radio and TV play and the band morphed into my solo career with bands and without. In my 20s came touring and TV appearances and playing 250 shows a year living on the road in hotel rooms, sleeping in the van, living the glorious adventure of life on the road to the fullest extent of everything that comes with that pirate ship. When you live your life half behind the curtain, you end up meeting some of the most fascinating people on the planet and having experiences that very few people get to enjoy. But sometimes behind that curtain means you learn a bit too much about certain things. It steels you, it opens your mind, it lifts you in a way and it certainly expands your grin to extremities you never dreamed were possible. “Something of Everything” is my song that got the first big-time radio play and those lyrics I wrote back in the summer of 1999 seem to be a mantra that has summed up my life and career with all of the art I have released and been involved with.
Writing, performing and recording hundreds of songs for so many years put me in a place where I really had a good sense of my way around the recording studio and people loved the sounds I was getting. It was around the middle 2000s that I started then producing albums for other artists. This was a fun and different perspective for me because I could help bring these musicians’ sonic dreams and visions to life and I could play as many or as little instruments on the projects, putting my heart and soul into the music but it wasn’t my “face on the Wheaties box.” To date, I’ve recorded hundreds of songs for dozens of artists in a wide range of musical styles and genres. Though my sweet spots have always been rock, pop, folk, jam, roots blues, and experimental.
Soon after film, TV and video game scoring entered my life and every single film I’ve scored music for or had music in has won numerous awards. I love scoring films and it is such a fulfilling task to craft a soundtrack that matches a director’s vision for that perfect marriage on screen and I’m very proud of my track record thus far.
The middle 2000s and 2010s brought many more albums with more radio and TV success with “The Carl Rogers Blues” going into the Nashville Independent Radio Hall of Fame, my songs “S.W.E.L.L.” “Jade In My Pocket” and “Fishnet Woman (The Wisconsin Song)” getting big time radio play and TV appearances. My Drivin’ Barefoot album was the very first double album released by CD Baby and iTunes and neither company knew how to handle an original double album format in the digital age. ABC7 Chicago presented a holiday Christmas TV Special for my What Would Santa Do? album. That was a really big deal and the night before the live on-air TV performance, I learned that my Father had stage four cancer and was given 30 days to live. The TV special was something I should have been enjoying but I was far too numb and shattered to take it all in. The show of course must go on and it did with great success. In 2011, my song “Here We Go” blew up on top 40 radio in tons of markets beating out the Foo Fighters and others and gaining praises from Brian Johnson of AC/DC. ABC7 Chicago did another TV special about my song “Think of The Good Times” and my song “I Got Home Late” which features the amazing vocalist LP on duet vocals has become a hit in Europe and Canada as LP has risen to be a global superstar since we recorded the track years ago and her loyal fanbase has since discovered and fallen in love with the tune. My song “San Luis Obispo (Take It SLO)” is considered the official song of the city of San Luis Obispo and the music video for the song has been aired on TV numerous times as well as becoming strangely popular in Germany. In 2016 I wrote a song the night that the Chicago Cubs won the world series and I stayed up all night recording it and released it around 7am the next morning. By 11am it was all over the radio and became an instant hit. So much so that it was played constantly at the 5 million person gathering days later and the following Monday I was contacted by the National Baseball Hall of Fame that the lyrics had gone into their collections and archives. The following April, the song was Record Store Day Exclusive vinyl release and the vinyl album then also went into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Also that spring, a song I wrote about America’s gun violence epidemic called “Thoughts & Prayers” blew up and went viral. A few media companies made different versions of my music video for the song and they went instantly viral. The song was then studied at the college level and used in keynote speeches as an example of art that brings both sides together to think about what needs to change. As an artist, for something we create to have the effect of slightly bringing change and helping people think more clearly is truly the highest compliment. Then my music video for “The Ghosts” blew up and was featured in American Songwriter Magazine. I’m so proud of that video. My buddy Erik Nielsen brought my unique vision and idea to life and we did some camera/photographer/video tricks that others told us we wouldn’t be able to do. Always rise to the challenge I say and I’m really proud of “The Ghosts.” It’s such a meaningful song to so many people that hear it and it was a lot of fun to pair it with a special music video that looks amazing. It was during this time that I began directing films and had a lot of very special performances and tours in the US and Europe.
When touring and performing live, if I’m not playing with a band backing me up, I’ve turned my solo show into a slightly full band experience. Since I play so many different instruments and since I basically live in a recording studio, I’ve invented a live performance rig where I play electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, ukulele and keyboards and can switch between them all seamlessly. I can loop them or send them to different amplifier sources and produce a cornucopia of diverse sounds all live and completely in the moment. This allows me to cover a large number of songs from my catalog live and it’s fun to improvise and build sections together to jam them out and see where the music takes me.
The 2010s also saw the birth of my recording studio 663 Sound in Los Angeles when I moved to LA and in 2011. I started to produced albums and singles for dozens of artists and scored films and TV scores for dozens of films and every one of my own albums since 2013. Besides my own musical successes and the award-winning films, songs I’ve produced for artists such as Tarra Layne, Joseph Eid, Nikki O’Neill, Annette Conlon, The Buckhenries, Duff Ferguson, Tom Bishel, Fabienne Grisel, Matt Bunsen, Ronny Cox, Eric Schwartz and so many others have blown up on radio and can be heard around the globe in restaurants, shopping malls and nightclubs on a loop while another song I produced for Katie Ferrara and co-wrote Katie and Patricia Bahia ended up being a hit on the Hallmark Channel.
When the Covid 19 pandemic hit in 2020, I hunkered down in 663 Sound and was so inspired that I began writing and recording so much new material, performing dozens of live streams and producing albums for artists around the world remotely.
It was during the pandemic that via numerous DNA tests, I discovered that I have some very ancient DNA. It can be traced back to very early Irish, Scottish and Nordic Kings and nobility but most impressive to me was to learn that I am a direct descendant of Sir William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling and former Secretary of State for Scotland under Charles I. He was a poet, a playwright, world traveler and intellectual as well as a contemporary of William Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh in Queen Elizabeth I’s court. He was hired by King James VI/I to translate and edit Psalms for the King James Bible and was brought together with 50 other poets and scribes to Hampton Court in order to produce the Psalms contained in the text. He is also first on the speculative list as possible contributor or substitute author of some of William Shakespeare’s plays as several of Alexander’s own plays published prior to Shakespeare contain extremely similar styles. Whether this is true or not, it’s a pretty cool shortlist in literary history to be on! Outside of publishing his own plays and poems, editing and translating Psalms for the King James Bible and possibly writing or co-writing with Shakespeare, while he was Secretary of State of Scotland in the 1600s under Charles I, he founded Nova Scotia and for a short time had ownership of what is modern-day Long Island, NY but lost that to the Dutch. This failure wrecked him and he returned to Scotland and England disgraced and died rather penniless in dismay. His offspring would eventually end up as settlers in Jamestown. I am looking into researching his involvement with Nova Scotia and Long Island and am eager to learn the good, the bad and the ugly of exactly what happened. Whatever roads that lead me to, either way he was a truly fascinating fellow and he also happens to be my 15th Great Grandfather!
In 2022 I’ve released two albums…my 11th and 12th studio releases so far. February of 2022 was a special month for we who delight in numerology with all of the 02.02.2022’s and 02.22.2022’s so I decided to challenge myself and try to write, record and release Twenty Two songs starting on Feb 2, 2022 and release the album on Feb 22, 2022 and try to keep all the songs around the… two-minute mark! 22 2 Minute Songs written, recorded and released between 02.02.2022 and 02.22.2022. And that’s exactly what I did and it was such a fun record to make and a challenge to meet. Some of my most interesting songs thus far are on the album and it is called Little Renaissances. It will always be fun to look back at that album and know the exact moment of time and frame of mind I was in while creating it.
My other album release of 2022 took a completely different turn and is an album I’ve wanted to make since I was a teenager and is an album people and fans have been asking me to make all my life. It’s an all-solo classical album called Piano In June. I moved my 663 Sound studios to Ventura County in 2022 and I’m in the midst of new sonic and visual adventures in a beautiful new space that’s a little closer to the ocean. But soon after I moved in, I decided to hear what my 1904 Steinway Vertegrand piano sounded like in my new studio and I put up mics and played piano for about an hour. What you hear on Piano in June is the result. It’s a live album that wasn’t supposed to be an album at all but it’s a collection of solo piano pieces I wrote in my teens and early 20s as well as spur of the moment improvisations recorded live. I’m very proud of this album and I was nervous to release classical music that’s a different direction from my rock/pop career but it has been so lovingly received and I look forward to releasing many more albums in this style and some with a bit more orchestration. Little Renaissances and Piano In June were a ton of fun to bring into the world in 2022 and I almost released two other albums this year as well but I’m saving them for later dates.
2022 has also brought success at the movies as I mentioned earlier. I scored the soundtrack for the film Arrow which keeps winning awards and I am especially proud of my involvement with Mark Sutherland’s beautiful film, Abby’s List (A Dogumentary.). This moving film is so beautiful and keeps winning awards. Mark reached out to me about my song “Find Some Peace” for the last moments of the film. “Find Some Peace” has become one of my most requested songs over the years since its release in 2014 and a fan favorite. I was a regular guest on Mark’s Static Beach radio program and he was a huge fan of the song. I’d played it live on his show as well as the album version from my You Are Here album. When Mark asked about the song for the film, I sent him the album version and he replied that he remembered a different version of the song. It turns out he had a recording of me playing the song for the VERY FIRST TIME ever the day I’d finished writing it on his radio program. By the time I had recorded the song, I’d played it live on tour and had an arrangement that I’d been playing the last 10 years so this first early live recording sounded very different and had a very interesting energy to it. So I re-recorded “Find Some Peace” to match that early version and it fits Mark’s amazing film perfectly. It was a lot of fun to re-record one of my most popular songs in an arrangement of the song from before it was popular and for now that version to be popular in an award-winning film. I am so proud to be a part of this film and it’s really cool to have two different versions of the song out in the world. Art and life are weird that way…either way it’s always good to find some peace.
I am looking forward to many new releases and tour dates in 2023 and beyond as well as producing and hosting many new album projects by artists from around the world. If you’re an artist looking to make the best record of your career….let’s get in touch! Until then, I hope I see you all very soon in person or via the inter-webs.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
The last time we talked, I went into a lot of challenges artists and musicians face as well as several hurdles I’ve encountered along my path but I think the biggest elephant in all of our rooms right now has been the pandemic since February 2020. It hit the music community and live touring industry like a brick in the face. There was a period of time in 2020 when nobody knew if anyone was ever going to play live ever again or if audiences were ever going to congregate again or if we were all forcefully retired until the nightmare was over. Was it safe to sing in a space other people were breathing in? Was it safe to be around a crowd? Was it safe to record in the same studio as someone else or would you get each other sick? Early on in the pandemic, musician friends were dying from Covid and other musician friends who decided to go out gigging or recording in person got Covid and became very ill. Dark times for certain.
Then one day I sat down at my piano to play and I said…what the hell…let’s turn Facebook Live on and play piano for whoever is watching out there. People loved it and I did it the next day…and the next. We learned that we could continue to perform but we now were performing at home for other people who were also locked down at home. I called my live stream concerts “Quar & Ted” shows while I was in quarantine. I’m still confused by people who asked me what “Quar & Ted” meant who hadn’t looked up the word “Pun” in the dictionary I guess haha. Some of these streams were 4 hour shows, some 1 hour, some 3 hours. Some were guitar-heavy, others piano, one I played a lot of my hit songs using only a banjo. Sometimes I wore a star wars helmet, one time I streamed from outside. These were really fun and innovative ways to keep gigging, and keep making music for people and really became oxygen for both artist and listener/viewer. The only downside was we had to learn and figure out how to do it well so every musician on Earth was learning how to stream and how to plug audio into computers to get the best sound and how to light your room and how this and how that. There were so many phone calls and texts….hey…what jack are you using to do this or that? Haha. This streaming technology that so many of us had scoffed at over the years was now becoming our lifeblood. But it came with a cost. If you lived in a huge house or castle and had an enormous performance space dedicated to live stream…good for you! I did not! haha. My little townhouse recording studio basically became a giant TV studio with lights, mic booms, lighting stands and gear set up everywhere to bring these livestreams to people. As they developed and the pressure was on to sound and look better and better, space really filled up and it was impossible to walk in my living space…let alone live in it. And when you’re locked down in quarantine and you’re spending all your time at home and then you can’t walk in your home anymore because of the amount of camera gear you have set up to make your live stream happen, it begins to ruin the mood and desire to produce a live stream at all.
The other really weird thing for me about live streaming was a reaction I’d taken for granted since performing in my teens. Usually when I finish my songs or as I’m finishing a song, the audience…whether huge or small claps, cheers, howls, screams, yells or makes some kind of noise and sends energy. It’s what we as performers feed off of and it’s truly a conversational communication..almost a contract we have with an audience. We’re going to take you on this little audio trip and give you minutes of entertainment, taking you to another world but as we finish, you will send us your approval or heckling or yelling or clapping. When you’re live streaming, you give out all this energy…you perform and sing your heart out and you give a truly great performance and you finish the song and….. silence. You’re playing to your wall! You’re playing to your camera. At least I had my cat Jagger to play for but he’d heard all the songs before too haha. Yes, you’d get likes or hearts or tips or comments during the stream but there was always a delay and there was no live energy returned your way. So it really felt like you were rehearsing on camera. So many of my jams in the streams were completely impromptu and improvised but my songs are songs I’ve written and sang for years and I love moving people with. To play those songs and get no immediate live reaction from the wall became tough after a while and for me really took the joy out of doing them. But I’m so glad that the 50 streams I did during that time brought so much joy to so many people around the world during a very dark period of time in humanity that I felt very noble in my art form. I love that they are also there living online forever for people to enjoy and I get weekly messages about them to this day from people going back and watching them. There’s several DAYS worth of music since so many of the streams were so many hours long so that’s a body of work in itself that I’m proud of.
I was so inspired during the pandemic though and there was a period where I couldn’t STOP writing and recording for weeks on end. Just hundreds of songs and ideas. I’m still going through all the material because it’s overwhelming. I know some people were really frozen by the pandemic. I’ve always enjoyed working alone on music as much as with people so for me it was a joy to work on music all the time. Plus I play so many different instruments that the remote recording sessions became really quick and easy. You could zoom or call each other to discuss parts, sounds and sections and then I’d record the song and put it together and email it to you within an hour or two. One more zoom or phone call and it was finished. It was as if we were in the room together. I really flourished during that time and didn’t mind being alone working on music all day and all night. I loved it actually. So much of the grunt work of all the years and hours I’ve put into building my craft was finally getting its moment to shine.
It’s been such a horrible period in human history but it’s also been a blessing for people to make big changes in their lives, to look in the mirror and figure out exactly what the hell they’re doing and what they truly want to do. There were moments of beauty. And then there were some horrible societal decline. It’s as if humanity was given a great gift…a great pause to take good turns instead of bad and a reenvision of our world to take steps in a better direction. There were glimpses of that but then…nope same as usual haha. Ugh. That’s why I wrote my album Little Renaissances. If you look back into history, you’ll see that humanity has variously been given these amazing gifts and opportunities to make huge and amazing changes and then it seems that dark ages creep in immediately too quickly. Those little glimpses of light really are little renaissances and they should be valued, worshiped and respected as the soulful societal nourishment that they are. But nope…back to the junk food haha. In my song “Little Secrets” I wrote lyrics that encapsulate my pandemic experience to a tee…
“I saw the light, it was bright in the night
Feels like I’m the only one
Coulda made a right turn
Coulda made a wrong turn
But the whole damn world just wanted to turn around
So I’m just drivin’ I’m just wanderin’
I’m just tryin’ to fill up my mind
With those little secrets
No one knows about
Those are the treasures that you find”
They’ve been dark times but the little secrets I’ve found out about the world, about art and about myself over the last few years have truly been treasures that I’m deeply grateful for. The elephant of the pandemic is still with us though. It’s changed the way people tour, it’s changed people’s desire to tour. Playing live is always amazing but sometimes the logistics and details in order to make that live performance happen aren’t always exactly fun and recently have been studied to reckon whether they are safe or not. Is it fun anymore? Is this what I signed up to do? Is this the calling I’ve devoted life to? The beautiful thing is that music will always carry us through.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I specialize in writing, crafting, performing, producing, recording and releasing music that entertains with a genre style of music in my catalog for every part of life’s big moments and moods. When your music is played at weddings, at funerals, at sporting events, at gatherings and as inspiration to people, you know you’re on to something.
I specialize in:
Singing
Harmonies
Guitars (Acoustic and Electric)
Bass
Piano
Organ
Keyboards
Pedal Steel
Lap Steel
Dobro
Mandolin
Banjo
Ukulele
Harp
Cello
Accordion
Drums
Percussion
Producing
Recording
Photography
Laughing
Drinking Coffee
Giving grand tours of various cities around the world
Teaching people to cast a fly rod
Magic
Things I’m most proud of:
— I’m proud to say that I’m an artist and mean it and have that mean something to others.
— Having my music part of people’s soundtracks of their lives around the globe.
— I’m really proud of the work and my catalog and the people who have helped me bring it to life over the years.
— The friendships made through music.
— The friendships made through traveling and touring.
— Having lifelong friends.
— I’m proud to have friends in so many nooks, crannies, cities, towns and villages around the world.
— How far I’ve progressed on my instruments over all these years. It’s so fantastic to keep getting better at a craft and to constantly surprise and impress yourself with new leaps and bounds.
— Learning to travel at a young age and harnessing a wandering spirit.
— The joy my music and photography bring people.
— I’m really proud of my gear relationships with the music equipment companies I endorse and who endorse me. I’m proud to say that I am good friends with every single part of my live performance rig. I know exactly where each pedal, cable, capo, string, microphone, etc. comes from and more importantly WHO they come from and who has built and designed them. This really brings a personal and spiritual level of cool to the gear you use and makes it that much more meaningful that they are such a huge part in the music that you make.
— I’m really proud of a baritone guitar I co-designed with Fabian Schweiger of Fab Guitars. I approached him asking if they’d ever built a baritone guitar before because I was bummed out by the lack of cool features in baritone guitars and they were up for the challenge and built me a stunningly gorgeous baritone 100% custom with all of the electronics exactly how I had designed. Fabian Schweiger is a genius and brought my dream to life and then some. It’s so cool to play a completely custom guitar knowing there is only one of them on the planet.
— Knowing that the giant Pacific Blue Marlin I caught in Hawaii on Feb 28, 2002 is now on display in Chicago’s Field Museum or as part of their traveling exhibits educating and inspiring people and kids around the world. It has been viewed by more than 7 million people to date!!
— For my song “The Cubs Won It All In 2016” to bring so much joy to so many people and be so meaningful to so many people who had waited their entire lives to feel that joy. To sum that up in a song in a couple of hours and have it on the radio only a few hours later is an accomplishment and moment in my life I will never stop smiling about. I don’t know any other songwriter or musician in history who experienced anything similar. It was truly surreal and wonderful at the time yet it all made so much sense as it was happening as well.
— Having my song and vinyl record go into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. As a former baseball player and lifelong fan of the sport, I always told my Dad that one day I’d make it into the Hall of Fame and I did…I just had to find a different way in.
— I’m really proud of this guitar documentary film that’s really coming together. For it to happen so organically and randomly is really something. Bob Dylan rents my guitar and a few years later here we are interviewing people all over the globe. Follow that muse…you never know where she takes you dancing!!
— I’m really proud of so many music videos I’ve made. You can bring an idea to life in amazing ways and you don’t need a huge budget in order to do so. You just need to challenge yourself to up your game, up your technology and bring visuals and story that match the song.
— I’m proud of meeting some so many of my musical heroes and befriending them over the years.
— I’m proud of a cool story from over this past summer where I sold an effects pedal on Reverb to Trey Anastasio of Phish when… Trey Anastasio of Phish inspired me to add the pedal to my rig in the first place. It’s called a Boomerang Looper and when Trey bought it from me earlier this year it was truly a LIFE LOOP and a true… Boomerang!
— I’m proud of the legacy my cat Jagger leaves behind. Jagger Wulfers, the Rock ‘n Roll Maine Coon. Never met a cat or human like him and I know I never will again. He touched and inspired so many people around the globe and he never even left the house haha. He acted with Academy Award-winning actors and hung out with supermodels and actresses and musicians. So many people adopted black cats because of him. He was such a sweet soul and a true being and was such a huge part of so many records, films, photoshoots and music videos. For thousands of people in so many countries to reach out to me after his passing is almost as amazing and fantastic as he was!
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Doing my best and putting everything into the work. I am very thankful for the abilities that come naturally to me but talent gets you only so far. You have to put in the time and work. You have to focus and follow the muse. You need to love it and really go for it. When I’m making a record or figuring out new songs that I’m writing and working on or scoring a film, I’ll stay up for days, I’ll forget to eat and will lose track of what time of morning, day or night it is because of my commitment to the art. We live in such an instant gratification world that nobody seems to want to put the time or effort into anything but a few of us dinosaurs still enjoy the grunt work of foreplay with the muse.
I honestly think playing sports really helped me with the work ethic because you can see the value in putting in the hours. You hit a home run and you celebrate rounding those bases but the minute you touch home plate, it’s over and it’s time to focus on hitting the next one.
When you’re playing a show, you have to give the audience your best and make sure they go away entertained. It’s what they’ve come for after all and I am always shocked and disappointed when I see musicians and artists forget that fact or reveal they never even thought about that all.
This kind of life is a calling and if you can’t feel or connect with that, I feel you may be in the wrong kind of life and career.
You also have to walk the walk and talk the talk but most importantly to walk your talk. The one time I met Tom Petty, he told me that and truer words and life lessons have rarely been spoken.
The truth gets you there. Honesty and integrity are so critical in art. At least to be honest with yourself and your audience and do your best.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tedwulfers.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tedwulfers/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TedWulfersMusic
- Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/663Sound
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TedWulfersMusic
- Other: https://tedwulfers.bandcamp.com/
Image Credits
Ted Wulfers Erik Nielsen
