Today we’d like to introduce you to Tony Chetta.
Hi Tony, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My introduction to what is now my career began when I produced an 8-song EP for a couple of friends in my high school when I was 15. I had put out an album of my own instrumental music for a brief period of time then but I hadn’t yet been responsible for someone else’s music. The project was supposed to be just guitar/vocal recordings, but I decided to surprise them and add other instrumentation and arrangement ideas. Of course, the quality was what you’d expect from a 15 years old kid but it was the process of taking what was once someone’s precious idea and turning it into something tangible, along with their reactions to the work, that I fell in love with.
At 17, I moved to Nashville, TN to attend Belmont University where I co-founded a small production company with a good friend. At this point, the model was to record, produce, and mix songs that were already written for pop, rock, and folk artists around Nashville. But after about five years of this path, I began making my way into the pop writing scene and that really seemed to grip me. I filled up my calendar with co-writes between my day job schedule and eventually felt that pursuing a solo career as a producer/writer was the next step I was being pulled towards.
However, a turning point came in March of 2020, as it did for everyone when I lost my day job. This just happened to coincide with my first cut from the previous 6ish months of writing which led to my first very small check as a pop producer/writer. That was all I needed to justify sacrificing all of my time to ride this momentum and focus on building out more of a structured business that I am lucky enough to still be running today; ten years after that first 8-song EP.
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?
I feel like anyone pursuing a creative and/or entrepreneurial path will experience countless events that would make any sane person decide to drop their pursuit and get into real estate or get a law degree. I’ve definitely had a few of these events over the last 7 years of this path but the idea of diminishing my work to a hobby never really crossed my mind. I like to attribute this to some sense of persistence, although every woman that’s ever been in my life would probably call it stubbornness.
One good example of this is the summer of 2020, right after losing my day job due to Covid, the house I was renting went up for sale with very short notice. The biggest problem being the studio I was working out of was in that house and I personally owned just about none of the equipment in it. Since this was just a month or so after that first cut as a pop producer/writer, I knew I had to pick up the pieces and keep moving quickly in order to keep momentum going with my production work.
It was about two weeks before I was supposed to move out that I finally found a place and although I was very grateful for that, it was less than ideal. I would be working out of a 6’x11′ vocal booth adjacent to a piano room where my roommate would give concerts and lessons over Zoom at all hours of the day and night. The motto for the year that I lived and worked out of that house quickly became “I can make this work.”
Since a normal studio desk wouldn’t fit in that booth, I bought a 1956 sewing table from an estate sale of an abandoned house for $20, replaced the inside with a crate that I installed temperature-sensing fans in to house my computer and hard drives, and used that instead. There would sometimes be 5 people crammed in that room to write, some having to sit on the floor while my roommate played show tunes next door at 95 decibels. But we made it work, knowing that everything is temporary.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
There’s two things I always try to aim for when approaching any production: Transparency and being emotionally cohesive with the artist.
The result of this is that when working with an artist, I don’t try to mix MY sound with theirs, I put a magnifying glass to THEIR sound. I believe that’s what sets my work apart.
Any big plans?
The plans for the next year or two are really going to consist of becoming a part of a team; whether that takes shape as a publishing deal, or signing with a manager, or something more abstract.
Over the last couple of years, the main goal has been to build systems that allow me to remain sustainable while producing music I love and improving my reliability. Now that I feel more comfortable with those goals, I want to focus on scaling by building relationships with bigger artists and with A&R and publishers who enjoy my work and could benefit from working together.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonychetta/
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0xf6uBwUrYM3odNhZZ7F6E?si=260f150d2b9147b7
Image Credits
Matt Gill Michael Dove
