Daily Inspiration: Meet Paige Byrd

Hi Paige, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I started playing guitar when I was around 13 years old. My mom said she got me a guitar because “it always seemed like I had a song stuck in my head”. Looking back, I know this was true because I always do! I really looked up to Jimmy Page in my early guitar playing days, so I started to learn how to do solos pretty early on. By 14 I was able to “shred” Jimmy Page like solos pretty well…

By the time I was 14 I was already starting bands with my friends and writing songs. I was playing shows and dipping my toes in the music industry. No one else really wanted to sing, so I decided to start doing that too. By 15 years old I knew that music is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It totally took over everything – sports, skateboarding, everything. I knew I wanted to make music my career.

I come from a small town in Missouri, and knew I didn’t want to stay there forever. After spending my late teens and early 20s totally submersed in the music scene, playing shows, writing songs, living with my bandmates, we finally booked a 2 week tour that was supposed to end in Austin, TX. We got a last minute gig opportunity to play a show in Oceanside for $150 at a place called “Tony’s Sports Bar”. It didn’t take much persuading to convince ourselves to go check out California for the first time in our lives.

About a week later we arrived in Brea, CA at a friends house we had went to high school with at about 11 p.m. at night. We asked her “hey, do you know anywhere we can park this van and go to sleep? Preferably by the beach (we wanted to be by the beach because we didn’t have that in Missouri)…” She recommended we go to Huntington Beach and stay the night in the van. She said it was a nice town and we could probably get away with it for a couple days. I’d never heard of Huntington in my entire life, but we took her word for it and arrived at about 1 in the morning.

The next morning we woke up to the biggest, most beautiful culture shock I had ever experienced in my entire life. I crawl out of the van and see a halfpipe on the beach, bands playing, 100’s of people walking around partying having a good time…my first ever experience of a day in California by the beach was in the middle of the Summer at the very start of the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach. From that point forward I was completely and totally hooked on the California lifestyle. I never wanted to leave, and started plotting my eventual permanent relocation to Southern California.

We ended up staying in SoCal for another 6 months or so, living in the van and playing shows. We had really high high’s and low low’s. Eventually the party came to an end and we our bassist decided he wanted to go home. I was super hesitant but told our drummer and my best friend, Jarred, “hey man if we go back then lets save up our money, grab all our stuff and do this thing the right way…we’ll come out here prepared and find a place to live and just discover more about the US and the music industry.” So that’s exactly what we did. A year and half later Me, Jarred and our friend Will who had taken over on bass moved back out to SoCal and finally found a place in Long Beach, CA.

Since then I’ve put a ton of time, energy and effort into my band The Captain’s Son. But as of 2023/24 I decided that I would take time to put into starting my solo career in music, something I had been wanting to do for many years. As of now I have 6 songs released as Paige Byrd (my name) with more on the way. “A Fake Smile” just dropped on October 18th, so barely even a week ago. It’s got a couple thousand streams and most came from the Spotify radio, so I’m pretty happy about that. I have another song in the works “Just Can’t Get Enough” scheduled for release in about a month or so.

2024 has been a year of focusing on my solo career in music. I still love my band and will never quit The Captain’s Son, but I’m very satisfied with being able to put time and focus into making content for my solo stuff, playing solo gigs and just focusing on that. The Captain’s Son also has a couple songs in the pipeline I’m looking to release. So stay tuned, I have some really exciting songs about to come out for Paige Byrd music!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Oh there’s been plenty of struggles…finding affordable places to live, trying to get attention of venues/bars to play gigs. Trying to build an audience when no ones ever heard of you. Putting massive amounts of time and energy into creating content and music for people who don’t know you exist. Running into road blocks in my private life with work, writers block, stability, etc… Nothing is promised. But I feel like lately it’s starting to pay off in weird ways lately. Lets be real – no one wants any part of you unless you’ve made a name for yourself in some way shape or form. Unless you have followers, or tons of streams, listeners on Spotify…it’s a cynical viewpoint, but those are some of the struggles we face as musicians. If you don’t have a ton of followers and/or engagement people definitely care less about you. It’s a sad world. It used to be that if you were just really talented, someone might see that and give you a shot. Now, it’s not about that (or doesn’t seem to be) – it doesn’t matter how talented you are. If you’re not making money or have a huge social media following, people are very unlikely to want to work with you. It’s sad but true. That’s why I work so hard on my social media and getting my stuff out there. And I have had some success with it, and that’s awesome. But there’s still plenty of work to be done, and I won’t quit anytime soon. I’ll never quit.

And hey maybe I’m wrong about these things. Maybe my above opinion isn’t true. But it seems that way to me now. And it’s whatever, no one owes me anything. But I’ll never give up and I’ll continue to put time and effort not only into my music, but my content creation/marketing as well.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a singer songwriter who writes all my own music and plays all the instruments on all my songs. I also record all my own music and even mix it myself. I think thats what sets me a part from a lot of other artists. Most people just get beats from online from somebody else or a producer or whatever, but I write every aspect of all my music myself and I record every single musical element myself. Not only that but I’m mixing it too. Which I 100% enjoy doing! But I would like to start delegating some of the mixing tasks to other people…it’s very time consuming, and I can’t create as much music I want to be creating because I’m spending so much time into the production side of things. So if anyone out there is reading this, if you want to partner up and help me mix some of my songs, please let me know! I could use the help, we could build a team and get a really cool thing going together. Even on the content creation side of things. Let me know!

But anyway all of these things above – that’s what I’m most proud of and I think that’s what sets me apart from most artists of today. All the skills I have in songwriting and playing a ton of different instruments, as well as recording and audio engineering knowledge.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Definitely consistency and authenticity. And of course being skilled at your craft, but that’s super subjective. Being consistent and authentic – that’s something you have more control over and that will really get you places in this industry.

Pricing:

• Guitar Lesson consultation – Free/TBD based upon needs. I offer guitar lessons and a program. Depending on what your goals are, we could work out something.
• Live shows. Also TBD based upon how long of a performance you need and what equipment you need me to bring.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://beacons.ai/paigebyrd
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paigebyrdmusic/ @paigebyrdmusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paigebyrdmusic/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCacxF9v_iriu-YqU2HkMGjw
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@paigebyrdmusic — [email protected]

Image Credits
Yes please credit Courtney Colgan for all images taken. Please tag her instagram: @paintbox630 …it’s very important that she gets credit as these were professional photoshoots. Thank you for understanding.