Meet Ari Herstand

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ari Herstand.

Hi Ari, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I went to the University of Minnesota as a music education and classical trumpet major. Since eighth-grade band class, I thought I wanted to be a high school band director. But my freshman year of college, that all changed when a group of friends and I stopped into campus coffee shop where a singer/songwriter happened to be performing. I asked the barista if I could get a gig, and soon I had my first show. A few months later, I found myself in the music section of a Barnes & Noble staring at the bright yellow All You Need to Know About the Music Business book by Donald Passman. I bought it and finished it that week. I had found my calling.

I sat my parents down that spring and told them that I was not going to be a band director and I was not going to finish at the University of Minnesota. I had found a contemporary music industry school in St. Paul and told my parents I was going to transfer there. With credits transferring, I got in and out in three consecutive semesters with an associate degree in music business.

When I graduated in August of 2005, I got to work on my first solo album. Soon, I was collaborating with bands like Cake, getting my songs placed on TV and started an artist development company where I eventually became the go-to person in the Minneapolis music scene for music business advice.

In 2010, I moved to LA where I continued to write music and launched Ari’s Take to help independent musicians navigate the new music business. Today, Ari’s Take is a fully-fledged company that includes Ari’s Take Academy, the New Music Business podcast and more. I also wrote my book How To Make It In The New Music Business, which is currently being taught in 300+ universities across the US.

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?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. I didn’t have a team (no manager, agent, etc.) and had to learn everything through experience. That’s why I started Ari’s Take. There are many companies and individuals from major record labels down to local promoters that prey on naive musicians. I made it my mission to educate musicians so they didn’t get taken advantage of and could run successful careers in the New Music Business.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My latest album, ‘Like Home’ tells the story of getting my heart broken and discovering what it means to love again.

For the majority of my twenties, I was in a very serious relationship. We met in college, toured the country, moved to LA, started a life here, and a little over a year ago, decided to part ways. This relationship lasted 1/3 of my life. Over a decade. The breakup wasn’t dramatic in the traditional sense. But it was monumental and painful. An end of an era. For the first month of our conscious uncoupling, we still lived together. That presented warped versions of reality and an imbalance unlike anything I had experienced up until that point.

I moved into a new apartment on the other side of town and began to build my new life on my own. Reclaiming myself.

You may also know that over the past five years, I haven’t released any new music under my own name. I launched a funk band, released a couple of books, launched a podcast and an Academy – which all kept me busy. But I wasn’t writing songs that were personal to me. I either didn’t feel the need or was afraid for what it would uncover. But after this breakup, I realized that the only way to process what I was going through was through songwriting.

I’ve been seeing a therapist for a few years and he’s great. Very helpful at enabling me to see clearly and uncover the why and the how. But not the what. Therapy, for me, has been all head. It wasn’t penetrating my heart. The only way I can adequately process what’s going on inside my heart is through songwriting.

For the first couple of months of living on my own, I was very unstable. I was living amongst boxes. I couldn’t unpack my former life into my new one until a friend came over and forced me to. I hadn’t quite learned how to stand on my two feet and hold myself up – on my own. I buried myself in work, in community, in live music and occasional sexual explorations which were fun but confusing.

It wasn’t until I carved out Tuesdays for songwriting, did I start to actually process what I was going through. I needed one day a week where I didn’t focus on anything else but songwriting. My entire routine shifted. When I woke up, I didn’t grab my phone. Instead, I grabbed my sneakers and went straight to the gym. At the gym, I didn’t listen to podcasts like I normally do, but rather music. I kept my phone on Do Not Disturb and stayed off social media and email. When I got home, I made myself breakfast and coffee while either continuing to listen to music that was inspiring me at the moment or began the writing process if a melody or lyric was bursting out.

Then I retreated to my studio to write. Sometimes a song poured out in an hour and other times, it took an entire day. If the music wasn’t coming, I would learn a favorite song by someone else. I would play their song over and over again until it eventually ceased to become their song and started to become my own song. This exercise was awfully helpful when I had trouble getting the process started. And for the record, no, the end product sounds nothing like the song that inspired it, Marvin Gaye estate.

I took myself on solo writing retreats – like to Mammoth Mountain where I skied during the day and wrote music at night. Or just spent the day songwriting.

Sometimes I went to my friend Brett Nolan’s place to write with him. He and I created the Brassroots District record together and I loved collaborating with him.

I wrote about 40 songs last year without intention or direction. Sometimes people write music intending it to be *for* something or *for* someone. I didn’t. It was *for* me. I needed it. I’m fortunate I have songwriting as a tool to help me process my emotions. I didn’t turn to alcohol, drugs, sex or adrenalin. I turned to songwriting.

I worked *through* it. It wasn’t easy.

I remember one day, after a full day of writing, my friend Andrew came over for dinner. As soon as I opened the door he said, “Hey!… Woah are you alright?” It was all over my face what I was going through. I had spent the entire day *in it*.

Writing about heavy topics is not easy. It’s heavy. I force myself to feel everything. It’s therapeutic. And it’s how I came out on the other side intact and a more complete individual able to love again.

This first song I’m releasing today I wrote with Brett Nolan and is called “Retrospect.” It’s the first of many I’ll be releasing over the coming year about this experience of reclaiming myself post-breakup.

I recorded it at 64 Sound Studios in Highland Park, CA last December, live, one-take with a band. If you watch the video, you’ll see us in the room together. These musicians are good friends and phenomenal musicians, and I was so honored that they joined me for this.

I hope you enjoy it.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I grew up in a lower-middle class Jewish family in Wisconsin. Well, the first six years of my life we moved from Milwaukee to small-town Iowa where my younger brother was born, to San Diego — where I learned to swim — back to Milwaukee and settled in the suburb of Shorewood where I attended elementary school. We had my grandfather’s upright piano in the house and I wrote two songs on it before I really remember other memories. I begged my mom for piano lessons and took lessons for a couple of years where I learned the fundamentals but kept writing on my own. I sang in the Temple choir and became obsessed with the local high school musicals. So much so that I made a lifetime goal of starring in one someday. I split my time between swim club practice, piano, biking to Walgreens for Caramellos, Hebrew school and then trumpet.

The Summer before high school, my friend Danny pulled out an acoustic guitar at a party and all the girls swooned. My girlfriend especially. Which is when I realized that trumpet and drums weren’t going to help me in the girl’s department and I needed to learn guitar. I kept extremely busy my high school years — doing all the plays and musicals, taking as many music classes that my schedule would allow — including playing trumpet in the city-wide Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra and a local Mariachi group (all Mexican elders save for the two teenage white trumpet players they recruited from our high school) on the weekends — and playing in a ska/funk/rock band (where we would regularly cover Dave Matthews Band, Tracy Chapman and Reel Big Fish in the same set). We had an identity crisis.

I became obsessed with the local New Orleans style brass bands (Madison oddly had two) and funk band (we had one good one) and attended every concert of theirs that age restrictions would allow — I remember a couple of Credit Union opening parking lot bashes. I dove into the jam world and anytime a jam band came to town to play an all-ages show, I’d be there. In addition to the folk world. Every time Bruce Cockburn came to town, I was at his show — I was by far the youngest person in the room by about three decades.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://aristake.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aristake_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aristake/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/aristake
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXWCcmka1bZu-BIfF2YN7-w
• Other: https://ariherstand.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits:
Shervin Lainez