Today we’d like to introduce you to Colin Devane
Hi Colin, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My young self knew I wanted to be a musician—I have some elementary school journal entries to prove it—but I forgot about that for a long time. Music was something my parents met dancing to, something I absorbed as a distracted kid running around the jazz or bluegrass festivals my family would attend during the summers, something my mom would play loudly on the living room speakers to wake us for Saturday AM cleaning parties. So it made me, highlighted the times when we got to connect as a family, and structured the rhythm of our life. It was also something my dad did for fun on occasional evenings, but not simply for fun: when he made time to sit with his guitar or mandolin and his books of tablature, his stress would seem to evaporate and a special sort of peaceful focus would take over. Music felt like a power that could create small but significant islands of calm in an often chaotic world. I also got to make some music of my own, much of it probably not so calm. But I did have plenty fun praying with my power chords to whatever god made Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix, and slouching my way through ‘Tequila’ with the rest of the elementary school concert band…so slouched that the teacher predicted that I’d be a jazz musician on the basis of my posture alone. Miles Davis would turn out to be my favorite musician.
I particularly remember my first music “fan”: my friend’s mom who would get very happy when I’d play old spirituals like “Down by the Riverside” on my trumpet. For a 4th grader, I had listened to my fair share of Louis Armstrong, but she was also probably being encouraging…either way I felt a first dose of genuine appreciation (from someone who wasn’t my grandma and thus wasn’t obligated to clap) for how me playing music could bring great joy to others. Thank you Tanya.
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?
So my childhood was rich in music, but being a professional musician? That was something other people did, and somehow those people were different than us, so I’d better get a real job, at least that’s what subconscious program I seemed to be running. But I also put up much young resistance to that dreadful destiny. A adolescence made turbulent by many such acts of resistance led me away from music, and, after an expulsion from High School, to a lock-down “behavior modification” facility for troubled teens in El Sauzal Mexico for over two years. Juvie for the bourgeoisie. Not much music was listened to or made during the “modification,” but I do recall one mystical moment where two guys and I sat and, for no immanently explicable reason, started singing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” in a spontaneous 3-part vocal harmony, an innocent accapella prayer. The weight of the uncertain sentence…you had to “earn” your way out, couldn’t just wait out your time…would be temporarily lifted by escape in books, but nothing they could give me could compare to the lightness and liberation I experienced in that unanticipated moment of music.
Back in Alta California, while getting a literature degree at Golden West Community College, I happened to walk past the band room one day while the Jazz Improv class was going, and felt a deep upwelling of memories from my musical past. Inspired, I dug up the beat up trumpet we had rent-to-owned from the elementary school, and strutted into class, not officially enrolled. I hadn’t played for years, and trumpet is a notoriously athletic instrument, so I was farting around on it at best, but Tom Kubis, the renowned director of the program at the time, heard what I was reaching for, and let me stay. I got good enough to play some gigs, but a jaw injury sustained while playing out of my league, straining for high notes in a salsa/cumbia band, forced me to give it up for a time. After moping for a while, I started playing keyboards, which I had only been using to compose and arrange before, now taking them up as my main axe. Again, after a hand injury sustained while working at a mobile book-store took 3 fingers out of commission for almost a year, I used the two working fingers on my right hand to learn to play the bass, each injury challenging my spirit but ultimately pushing me further into my commitment to playing.
All the while I was on course to be a career academic, focused on literature and critical theory, but I couldn’t stay away from music. During grad school, even when (perhaps especially when) papers were due, I’d be up late at jam sessions on weeknights. Mainly to listen and catch a vibe. Sometimes to play. Through years of schooling, tutoring and teaching literature, selling books and working other odd jobs (none of which had anything to do with music), I had managed to maintain enough of a connection with my love for music, and enough chops, to occasionally jam with these great musicians I was watching. By this time I had found the electronic trumpet (EVI: electronic valve instrument – looks kinda like a fancy duck hunt gun), and was able to jam with some of the greats of the Long Beach music scene at The Factory, Roxanne’s, and then Fight Club LBC at Que Sera. Self-doubt and fearing I’m not enough have been my biggest internal opponents and teachers in life, and those shared spaces were inner battlegrounds for starting to confront those feelings in relation to music. But they were also most importantly places to meet great people, musicians and many other creatives, and to start to connect with people more widely and more professionally over our shared love of music.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I can tell you more about what I do through what connects me with others. So those Long Beach jams were where I really started to step into my musical calling, really thanks to the inspiration of a healthy artistic community. Huge thank you Long Beach, and to everyone who makes that beautiful city what it is. Shoutout to Jairus Mozee aka Jmo for inspiring so many to continue such a great tradition of jams, and to Neon Phoenix, Tom Kendall Hughes and more for keeping it going. Jammed with so many great people there, including my bro Kelsey Gonzalez, now of the Free Nationals, who wanted to start a band. So Via Leaves was formed, the same year I left grad school in 2014, along with the event Fight Club LBC, where we played as the house band from 2014-2018 steady every month. That’s what really kicked off my music career 10 years ago. During those years I produced an experimental hip hop project with the great Long Beach based MC .rael_one called Ashé, did a remix album called Goodbye and Hello My Child, did a few tracks for the great Minnesota based rapper Tall Paul, and was DJing often. I became the house DJ for Reggae in the LBC 2017-18, and then musical director for the event’s house band from 2018-20. Released my first single, Beautiful, around that time. I also DJ’d afrobeat, dancehall and more alongside Via Leave’s drummer, Joose (who goes by @JooseOnDrums), in a duo called Hipsway, worked in studio with master producers Shafiq Husayn and Aden Joshua, and freelanced with multiple reggae groups in the greater LA area from 2017-2022.
In 2020, concerned with the state of the world and wanting to do something positive to help our collective resilience, I founded “GYO (Grow Your Own) Productions” which focuses on producing educational gardening, ecology and permaculture videos and courses, curating plant adoptions and reggae shows, as well as continuing the musical work I had already been doing. I worked regularly with roots reggae singer Freddy Rutz and No Surrender Sound from 2019-2022, and produced Freddy’s debut single “Red Hot Stepper.” Since early 2022, I reside mainly in Hawai’i as a full time musician, gigging, occasionally throwing music events and plant potlucks, putting in work on the side in permaculture practice and education, as well as participating in musical community and projects, including with organizers like Cab Spates of Optimysstique, artists such as Laupepa, Stephen Harris, Styles of Sugarcane Boys, Sons of Yeshua, and the musical collectives Deep Aloha on O’ahu and Kalolu Kollective on Maui.
Thankfully I’ve been back in LA/Long Beach often as well, working with Via Leaves and the great singer Ms. B Royal. I’ve also stepped into the world of film scoring thanks to my good friend Andrés Taboada, director of the film Alta California, which he cast me in as the pseudo-enlightened but violently-entitled gringo. That was fun. Shadow work. Just completed the score for a 15-minute short he’s producing, wrote an original single dropping soon from that, and my sister Nat Day actually hopped on the soundtrack and crushed the main theme. She’s a very talented singer-songwriter and video producer as well…she also did the incredibly low-budget but very creative video for my latest single, Good Love. I’m actively–if too rarely–releasing music, still would like to do some production for others, and want to continue get into film scoring and synch licensing more as well.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Really that’s been my definition of success, I’m living it, thank God. Getting to make music and participate in creative projects while supporting myself financially and supporting the careers of others as well. And getting to do so with friends and family, and in beautiful places like Cali and Hawai’i. Having open horizons. Eating good food from the earth, aiming to live in right relation with our sustainer, and staying connected as I can. For about a year and a half I’ve been full time in music. I will go back to teaching and other forms of contributing, like ecological farming and work in the food system, but I’m very happy to be focused on my musical career now. I’m very grateful to LA for putting me around so many awesome, creative, inspiring people, and very grateful to Hawai’i for welcoming me and putting me to work in such a fun way. Thanks to y’all for letting me tell my tale, and thanks to anyone who’s reading! Much love
Contact Info:
- Website: https://colindevane.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colindevane/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cdevane1/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@colindevane
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/cdevane1
