Today we’d like to introduce you to Dustin Ransom.
Hi Dustin, 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?
I grew up in a small town in Indiana and was a really artistic, creative kid from as early as 3 years old. I was naturally drawn to music and musicians and learned how to play a lot of instruments, as well as being super interested in drawing, art, photography, acting (especially voice acting), writing, and lots of other artistic activities.
In 2005, I moved to Nashville and went to Belmont University for music, specifically drums and percussion. I’ve spent the last 16 years in Nashville making a living in the music industry in all sorts of capacities – artist, session/live musician and vocalist, songwriter, producer, engineer, mixer, bandleader, film composer, and mentor.
I’m also a professional photographer and have shot all kinds of things – weddings, concerts, landscapes, street photography, portraits, boudoir, recording sessions, you name it.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The optimist in me wants to say “yes” but the realist in me wants to say “yes and no and everywhere in between,” which is the more accurate answer. There’s no one way to make a living as a creative person within the fields I’ve chosen, which is both exhilarating and terrifying.
The exhilaration is that there’s a freedom to choose, to create the life I want, and to make a living doing something I love. The terrifying part is that there are no guarantees regarding much of anything within it, no matter the level of talent, which brings out a level of faith and trust that’s both necessary and also difficult to keep up with sometimes. I can say unequivocally that there’s a balance between planning and letting go, and sometimes it’s hard to know where one ends and another begins.
Most of the best opportunities I’ve been afforded in my career came as surprises, where someone saw me doing what I do – and when I’m in that headspace I’m often in a very present, transcendent state, so they’re really seeing the purest version of me possible – and they want that. I realize it’s not so much that they want “me” even though there’s a part of that’s true. They really want the energy they experienced emanating from me, and I’m learning more and more that the energy I exude is everything, in all of my relationships. It may sound esoteric, but when you know, you know.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Most people know me as a musician, so I’ll start there. I play piano and keyboards, drums and percussion, acoustic and electric guitar, and electric and upright bass. I also play banjo, mandolin, harmonica, mallet percussion (like marimba and xylophone), accordion, and lots of other things. I’m also a vocalist. I write songs, both for myself for other artists. I produce, engineer, and mix records for artists, and I also release music under my own name, often wearing all the hats I just mentioned. I make a good portion of my living in music composing and recording music for film/TV libraries.
To me, all of it is “the specialty.” The music industry intrinsically requires most people to do more than one thing, and that often means “what you do” is a series of dovetails or a chain of Venn diagrams where the distinction between things like “producer,” “engineer,” and “musician” has become virtually non-existent and redundant. They all interweave between each other, and creating in that ambiguity is where I’m often most fluid and free-flowing.
The thing I’m most proud of really has nothing to do with pride at all. It’s knowing that what I’ve done has moved someone else the way I was moved by the music I loved. There’s nothing like having direct feedback, whether from an audience or an artist or another musician, where they’ve been touched by what it is they hear me doing or by a song I’ve released or been a part of. It has a lot less to do with me (Dustin Ransom), and more to do with how it impacts the listener’s life.
All I could ask for in my profession is that someone’s heart, mind, and body were positively affected by something I was a part of. That’s certainly been the case for me thousands of times in my own life, experiencing music from musicians I love firsthand. Music, in many ways, saves my life every day, sometimes multiple times a day. It reminds me of how complex and beautiful I am and life is, and yet also very simple at the same time. They all exist simultaneously.
Photography is simply another language of expressing those same emotions and stories, just through a visual medium rather than an auditory one. One of the advantages of being a musician as long as I have been is that it allows me access to people and places that some photographers may not otherwise get an opportunity to shoot. And that’s an aspect of photography I love – I want to find moments and art that I’m not looking for, per se. My favorite photos I’ve taken are ones where there was very little planning and whatever happened happened.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with more curated photographic scenarios, like portraits. I love doing that too, but it’s a different headspace. The element of surprise is different there compared to the more improvisational way of capturing moments where there’s no backdrop, the lightning is out of my control, people and things are moving about, and so on.
Again, neither is better than the other, but the jazz musician in me loves the feeling of having captured lightning in a bottle – a moment that arose in front of me and I nabbed it just in time. That’s thrilling for me.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
The one that comes to mind immediately is my dad tying up a plastic sled to the back of a four-wheeler and pulling me and my sister around our yard after a snowstorm. It was an absolute blast.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@dustinransom.com
- Website: dustinransom.com and duraphotography.com
- Instagram: dustinransommusic, duraphoto, and outsidetheskymusic
Image Credits
Terence Clark Wonder Film Co., Callie & David Photography
