Today we’d like to introduce you to John Tyler Kent.
John Tyler, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
My parents gave me my first guitar when I was 11 years old. As a kid I was always seeking out more chances to fill my time with music, whether it be through extracurricular opportunities at school, new bands to join, or various music camps and programs to enroll in during the summertime. When I came to Boston in 2010 to study at Berklee College of Music, I pretty quickly found myself in a similar situation; Outside of school I was playing in bands, learning to record other local musicians, composing, and even exploring music journalism.
I left Berklee in 2013 due to health and financial issues, and I used that time as an opportunity to begin learning an instrument called the chapman stick, a full range 10-string instrument that’s played by tapping. As I grew more comfortable with the instrument, I gradually saw it become a much more significant part of my work in music. I’ve been playing stick for about four years now, and in that time, I have released several different recordings with the instrument, involved myself in a variety of different musical performance and multimedia projects, and travelled all over the world with it. These days I would say that my time as a working musician is pretty evenly split between guitar and chapman stick.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I really enjoy when music gives me the opportunity to intersect with other artistic disciplines, particularly visual arts and storytelling. This has taken a lot of different forms for me over the years, such as playing in pit orchestras for local musical theater productions, performing live scores for silent films with a band, playing chapman stick in a theatrical rock show about dreams that worked extensively with animation, lighting design, and choreography. I play in a progressive rock band called GEPH that has experimented with working elements of storytelling into our songwriting.
Music is obviously a very special thing that can and should be enjoyed for its own sake as well but mixing all of these elements together makes for a lot of opportunity to create something very powerful that people haven’t necessarily been exposed to before, which to me is one of the most fulfilling things an artist can accomplish.
Artists rarely, if ever pursue art for the money. Nonetheless, we all have bills and responsibilities and many aspiring artists are discouraged from pursuing art due to financial reasons. Any advice or thoughts you’d like to share with prospective artists?
When I came to Boston, I spent a long time trying to avoid taking on a typical “day job” because I had built up the idea of surviving on nothing but music. By the time I swallowed my pride and started working a retail job, I had quite a bit of catching up to do financially, which actually further impeded my ability to make music outside of work until those financial issues were resolved.
I would never discourage anyone from trying to find the perfect job that reflects all of their personal passions, but I would definitely remind those who are struggling to sustain themselves on just their art alone that there is nothing wrong or shameful about finding an alternative source of income in order to free up your artistic environment to allow yourself to create freely. Obviously, it is possible to make a living by capitalizing on music/other artistic disciplines in various ways, and plenty of people do it, but I can only speak for my own personal experience.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
The biggest upcoming release I have coming up is GEPH’s upcoming album, Apophenia, which will be out on July 6th. The album will be available on Band camp, iTunes, Spotify, and all of your other typical platforms and we will be performing music from that album fairly frequently throughout the New England area this summer. Aside from that, I have my own music available on those same platforms, I post new content to Instagram and YouTube fairly frequently as well, and in the fall, I will be playing guitar for a few local musical theater productions, which I will post more about as we get closer to the performance dates.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.gephmusic.com
- Email: jtkent@jkideas.com
- Instagram: @jtkmus1c
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnTylerKent
- Twitter: jtkmus1c
- Other: johntylerkent.bandcamp.com
Image Credit:
Erica Baptiste, Brad Nathanson, Chris Anderson
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