Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeremy Beavers.
Jeremy, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was always obsessed with music as a child. I was homeschooled and grew up around classical music, so I had a Walkman with speakers attached playing classical music incessantly on my desk where I did school. Later when I discovered the Beatles, I was always recording cassettes of their music off the radio to be able to listen to whenever I wanted.
I started playing classical guitar at 13 at my mother’s encouragement. My brothers started to play instruments when they were a similar age and one is a professional classical guitarist today. I loved the blues and taught myself to improvise by trying to play along with the radio, later falling in love with the instrumental guitar virtuosity of Eric Johnson. I wanted to be Eric basically, or in some way be a performer and guitarist as my way of life and was not really sure how. I took classical lessons and got a degree in classical guitar, falling in love with singing in choir and opera during college.
I taught music lessons (still do!), formed a band, started songwriting a little, got an EP released with them before eventually honing in on my love for songwriting, fronting my own project, and producing (which I started learning out of necessity to stay on a budget).
Over the last couple years, I have released two self-produced and engineered singles under the name Jeremy (Warpath and 645 are on Spotify and everywhere else), performed a LOT, fallen in love with audio production, written music incessantly, opened for national act James Supercave at the Masquerade, and most recently headlined the Atlanta Room at Smith’s Olde Bar for the release of my latest single 645.
Has it been a smooth road?
Ha, no. Or maybe it has and I have made it rough for myself? Hard to say.
I think one of the hardest things has been figuring out exactly what I want to do. For a while growing up I wanted to build guitars because I liked music and building things. I got a classical guitar degree even though that was never what I wanted to do long-term. I had an alt-rock band for several years. I guess it will always be changing and evolving but right now I love songwriting; singing; lyrically-driven music specifically; performing with a band or solo with electric guitar; putting on a really energetic live show with the band regardless of the size of the room or crowd; and recording and producing my own music. All of those feel like relatively recent developments and things it took me a long time of trying a lot of things to find out, and the more I do it the more rewarding it feels to find an increasingly specific niche that is uniquely me.
Making a living while seriously pursuing any form of creativity is almost universally not a very straightforward adventure, and that has been true for me as well, I have also had big learning curves in learning to be a singer, a frontman, a producer, a promoter, and a manager in the last few years.
Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
I write music all the time. Sara Bareilles mentions in her book the moment she realized fundamentally she was a songwriter more than a singer or anything else and I relate to that.
I perform either singing chill, intimate sets with my guitar or doing my best shot at bringing the energy of an arena to a local show with a full band – jumping off the stage, dancing in the crowd, making the whole set a cohesive story and experience rather than just a series of songs – bringing that energy and that experience is what gets me excited and what I am most proud of.
I love to produce my own music and while I am sure eventually I will work with other producers, it is very important to me that I am proficient at building and mixing my own tracks and I am continually pursuing that. Production is the lens through which you perceive a song and your experience of the song is vastly changed if that lens is a ukulele and a glockenspiel or 808s and synths. Exploring and creating sounds that no one else could make is one of the most rewarding things to me about the world of audio production.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and the least?
Potentially my least favorite thing is the underdeveloped public transportation. I live OTP up I-75 and would LOVE to have a train running out here. I have lived in the Atlanta area all my life and did not know what I was missing until I visited Beijing and later New York City and experienced their train systems. My mind was blown.
I love a lot of things about the ATL but what comes to mind first is the diversity and community. You can find anything you want here if you look for it. That applies to the music community as well as to many other things from food to nightlife to the outdoors. I love how green Atlanta is – how many trees it has and how surrounded by nature you can feel kayaking on the Chattahoochee or walking through Piedmont Park even in a city with a metro area population of over 5 million.
Pricing:
- I have new t-shirts! $20 at https://jeremyneither.com/store
- You can subscribe to my Patreon and see my music come together a step at a time for $1 and up per month – https://patreon.com/jeremyneither
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jeremyneither.com
- Email: jeremyneither@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/jeremyneither
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/jeremyneither
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremyneither
- Other: https://patreon.com/jeremyneither
Image Credit:
Brianna Joseph Photography, Jonathan Becker, Bianca Mac, Jeremy Beavers
Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
