Today we’d like to introduce you to Ted Moock.
Hi Ted, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My musical journey began at five years old when my mom became friends with a woman in my childhood neighborhood in Edmond, Oklahoma, who taught piano lessons to kids out of her home. I took piano lessons with her until we moved out of that neighborhood five years later, and at that time, I started taking choir classes at my school and was cast in my first musical theater production at ten years old. But the moment where I truly fell in love with singing was when I was 14 after my mom strongly encouraged me to sing in my school’s talent show. The reception to my performance was incredible, and it was then that I thought, “I should keep doing this.” It’s hard to describe what it feels like to find the thing you were meant to do with your life, but that was definitely the feeling. Throughout the rest of high school, I continued to sing in the choir, musical theater productions, and in local Oklahoma City coffeeshops, accompanying myself on piano. When I went off to college at Vanderbilt University, I joined an all-male a cappella group called the Vanderbilt Melodores, and that group changed my life. We traveled all over the country singing in various competitions, but in my senior year, we competed and won NBC’s The Sing-Off Holiday Special! We performed in the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles for a crowd of thousands in the room and hundreds of thousands watching at home, and winning the show alongside some of my closest friends was the highlight of my entire college experience. Afterward, we got to go on tour with “The Sing-Off,” performing for about 2 weeks straight in incredible venues around the country, including the Ryman Auditorium in our home city of Nashville. It was a dream come true.
But my professional singing career actually started the summer before all that happened, thanks to a Youtube video of one of the Melodores’ performances where I sang the song “Sweater Weather”. That video ended up in the hands of the producers of the “Pitch Perfect” movies, and I was cast as a “Treblemaker” in “Pitch Perfect 2.” That experience validated my desire to sing professionally, so soon after I graduated from college, I decided to move to Los Angeles. Since then, I have been lucky to receive amazing credits as a session singer, including solos on shows like “The Simpson’s,” “Songland,” and background vocal credits for artists, including The Jonas Brothers and Rosalia. I also worked in a recording studio for three years and learned how to record my own music, and I am now writing and releasing my own music under the name Van Buren. I named my artist project after the street that my wife and I live on and where most of my songs have been written. It’s also a Dutch name (which is my ancestry), and it literally translates into English as “from the neighbor,” which describes how I want my songs to feel. Personal, familiar, and a source of connection in an increasingly lonely world. I’ve been releasing a song a month since June of 2022 and have a debut EP titled “The Long Way Home” releasing June 2, 2023.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Such a great question. Yes and no. It has been a “smooth road” in the sense that there have been a lot of moments in my career thus far where I can look back and think, “that was supposed to happen.” I’m a follower of Jesus and a deep believer that God orchestrates the events in our life for our good, and there have been several moments in my career and in my personal life where my only explanation for how it happened was that God opened a door. The Pitch Perfect experience is a huge example. If that hadn’t happened, I’m not sure I would have ever decided to move to LA. And when I look back on the years since then, I can sort of see a through-line of ways in which God has continually showed up, even when times haven’t been easy.
It certainly hasn’t been an easy road the whole time. About six months into me living in LA, I was working as a server in a restaurant and had the realization that the way the paycheck cycle fell that month, I wasn’t going to have enough money to pay rent. I had many 16+ hour days working in a studio where I would just wait hours for the last session to wrap before I could go home. I’ve always known that I’ve wanted to be an artist and tour and perform, and maybe get to dabble in movies and tv. I’ve gotten to do a little bit of those aspirations but haven’t really established it as a career. I’ve held a variety of jobs in and around the music industry, but being the artist is something I had never really gone for because…I’ve been scared of it? Music and performing is all I’ve ever seen myself doing, but (surprise) I care way too much about what people think of me and how I’m perceived, and so putting myself out there as an artist is something I’ve dragged my feet on. I probably spent too much time in my twenties worrying about how life was all going to work out rather than just living. That’s definitely a regret. But I didn’t let it stop me – in 2021, I left that job at a recording studio to finally put all my energy into pursuing a career as an artist. Putting out my own songs and playing my own shows has been a goal of mine for a very, very long time.
But THAT certainly hasn’t been easy either. I could talk forever about the struggle of being an artist in the Tiktok-era of the music industry, but the way that the music industry is so algorithmically-driven now can be very demoralizing as an artist, being tempted to think that your songs have to have a viral moment, or else there’s no point in releasing them. Wrestling with making music that feels true to who I am vs. making music that has a better chance of going viral or getting placed on some popular playlist is a battle that I know every artist feels right now. On top of the ever-present self-doubt and second-guessing that already plagues (most) artists. The challenge is believing that the music that I want to make IS important, despite whatever the numbers add up to be.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As a songwriter, I am a melodic top-liner and pianist with a great ear for harmonies and vocal production. I recently signed a sync licensing deal with Baxter House Music, co-owned by Brent Kutzle of OneRepublic, and have worked with Grammy-nominated and Billboard-charting songwriters and artists such as Casey Smith, Zach Skelton, Ashe, Andrew DeRoberts, Jon Hall, Joseph Tilley, Zoe Nicole Giosa-Hirsch, Jordan Sherman, and more. You can find my original music under the name Van Buren, wherever you get your music. I also work as a session singer in LA, with film, television, and soundtrack credits including Pitch Perfect 2, The Simpsons, Rosalía, John Legend, the Jonas Brothers, and Songland.
How do you think about happiness?
I think happiness largely comes from the people around you and the experiences you share with them. I just saw a study showing a huge decline in overall happiness since the pandemic began, and I think a lot of that is due to our increased isolation over the past few years. So this is by no means an exhaustive list, but here a few things I try to do or enjoy often that make me happy:
My wife’s smile when she or I come home at the end of a day. Singing. Three-part harmony. The burger from Father’s Office. The back patio at Jackson Market in Culver City. Long conversations over beers. Hatchet Hall’s Old Man Bar. Cinnamon snickerdoodle flavor ice cream from Salt and Straw. Watering my plants. Going to the movies. Road-trips. (I’ve been to all 50 states!) Making cocktails for friends who come over for dinner. Talking about Jesus and issues with the Church in America. The rare occasion when traffic should be horrible but isn’t. Any movie with Jack Black in it (School of Rock is my favorite). The Dadville podcast with Dave Barnes and Jon McLaughlin. Looking at maps (I have a weird obsession), and reuniting with old friends.
Contact Info:
- Website: tedmoock.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisisvanburen/?hl=en
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisisvanburen
Image Credits
Ali Futrell, Amy Waters, Bryce Glenn
