Conversations with Kayla Glaze

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kayla Glaze.

Hi Kayla, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My name is Kayla Glaze, and I’m from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, but I currently live in Nashville, Tennessee. I have loved sound and instruments since I was a child. I was one of those kids who would set pots and pans up like a drum kit and play them like real drums. I always remember feeling deeply moved by music and sound, so much so that I begged my mom to put me in the orchestra in the fourth grade. She did, and the violin was the first instrument I learned to play. I played the violin for five years and then eventually became bored with it because I didn’t like having to play sheet music. I wanted to make up my own music. That was when I realized I was a big improviser. I had a knack for being able to pick up and learn new instruments quickly, as well as being able to play by ear. Because I was already familiar with a stringed instrument, I decided to quit orchestra and learn guitar. At this point, I still never thought I would write music or sing. I just loved playing instruments and loved creating sounds. From a young age, music was an escape and a safe space to express my emotions and personal processes. My parents divorced when I was about eight years old, and I didn’t know how to cope with that or process that as a child, so music became a space where I felt like I had permission to feel and heal from all of that. I was around 13 when I started learning acoustic guitar. At that time, Aerosmith was one of my favorite bands. I listened to their CD non-stop on my portable CD player. I remember listening to them and saying, “That’s what I want to do. I want to be a rockstar.” I was so determined to learn guitar that I constantly texted a friend who played guitar, asking him to teach me chords. I started out playing in the worship band at church, and my step-brother handed down an acoustic guitar to me. I remember the wood was broken around the input on the guitar, so the input would fall inside the guitar when I played live on stage. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to play.

I had a real experience with Jesus and started writing songs and singing in my bedroom around that time. After I experienced Jesus and His love, I got a huge love and passion for people and humanity. I wanted to create creative music, embody my processes, and give people something to relate to. I wanted to write songs encouraging, motivating, and inspiring people forward.

A couple of years later, I started teaching myself drums. My dad and step-mom bought a drum kit for the household, and I would put my headphones in, turn on songs, and practice playing the drums to them. I also hopped on the drums in the youth building at church when no one was there and practiced. I had no idea the bass player had heard me play until one Sunday morning, the drummer didn’t show up, and the bass player told everyone I could play. They all thought he was joking, but he was adamant about it. They asked me to hop up on the drums, and when I played all the songs during practice, they were shocked. They started scheduling me to play consistently.

Fast forward to my graduating college. I had lived in Oklahoma my whole life and felt I needed a change. There was a ministry school in California I wanted to go to. I also felt like I needed to move to a different state to make good connections in the music industry. So I packed everything up and moved to Redding, California, without knowing anyone there. That was a big deal at the time because I have a close-knit family and everyone lived in Oklahoma City except one of my step-sisters moved to California because she met her husband on a family cruise we went on and married him, and he was from there. Moving so far away from my family was scary, and it was hard at times, but I don’t regret it. All of the connections I have in the music industry right now are connections I made in California, and I met all of my closest friends and my husband in California.

Several years after I moved to California, I picked up and started learning electric guitar. That was when I started writing and creating music in the rock genre and when I did, I remember feeling, “This is the music I was born to create. This feels like me and like what I’m supposed to put out into the world.” About a year after I picked up an electric guitar and started writing and performing in the rock genre, I met a friend in Redding who produced music and asked me to come over to collaborate on a song. I sat with him, watched him produce in his in-home studio, and felt like, “I could do this. I play multiple instruments; I write music; I sing. When I write songs, I hear the full song with all the instrumentation in my head. I could produce music if I tried.” That was when I started investing in equipment. People look at the equipment I have right now and have commented things like, “You’re rich. You must come from a rich family. You’re privileged.” People don’t see when I worked hard and chose not to go out and do things other people did so that I could save my money while living paycheck to paycheck to have the equipment I have now.

I started producing music and loved it. Producing music isn’t for everyone. It’s tedious. You spend hours listening to the same things over and over and adjusting things tediously. I knew it was for me because I loved and got much satisfaction from doing that. I didn’t know at the time that only 2% of music producers in the industry were women when I started learning about the industry’s business side and found that it made me want to go even harder after producing music. I also knew that if I could produce and mix all of my music myself, it would put me in a great spot because I would be able to own all of my masters and would have the flexibility of being able to write, produce, and send things to people whenever I wanted or needed to. I wouldn’t have to wait on or go through a middle-man, and it would also save me money in the long run. When Covid hit in 2020, my job shut down, and I was at home all the time, so I decided to go all in learning to mix because I was struggling with mixing. At the time, I was in a music mentorship group called The Billboard 500 Club. I couldn’t afford to take the group production courses that cost over a thousand dollars, so I reached out to great producers in the group and asked if they’d be willing to give me an hour of a lesson on mixing over zoom for $50. They all said yes, so I took a few lessons from a few different producers in the group. I have always been determined and driven and believed that limitations don’t exist. If I can’t afford a course, I will create another option. After about eight months of learning through lessons and trial and error, things clicked. My mixes were at a level where professional sync licensing companies (that I gained connections and contracts through collaborating with people in The Billboard 500 Club) accepted and started pitching my songs for me.

How I got the connections I have right now is pretty wild. It shows where choosing to have faith can take you. A few years ago, I was collaborating on some songs with some people from Detroit that I met through a mutual friend in Redding, and they asked if I wanted to meet up with them in Los Angeles to go to the ASCAP songwriting conference with them. They said I could stay with them at the Loew’s hotel on Hollywood Boulevard and said their friend could get me into the conference with a press pass. At the time, I was honestly pretty broke and lived paycheck to paycheck. I remember flying to LA with less than $200 in my pocket. That was all I had to pay for my shuttle from LA to the hotel, food, and the shuttle back to LA to fly back to Redding. While at the conference, I met a cool artist named Sozie. We only talked for five minutes, but we followed each other on Instagram. We stayed in touch on Instagram after the conference for about a year, and she was the one who told me about The Billboard 500 Club. I hopped into the group and, after a few months, traveled to Costa Rica for a music retreat they held. At that retreat, I met Grammy-nominated songwriters, producers, and people in The Billboard 500 Club that were contracted with sync licensing companies. After that retreat, I started collaborating with some of those people, and that’s how I landed contracts with sync licensing companies. Through one of those companies, I got an opportunity to write and pitch a song to CBS for their music catalog and landed it.  My biggest goal is to break into the TV and film side and land placements.

It’s wild to me that I am where I am now because I chose to fly to LA with barely enough money in my pocket. When I returned to the Sacramento airport after that conference, I couldn’t even pay to get my car out of the parking lot because I had run out of money. I had to call a friend in the middle of the night and ask her to send me money to help me get my car out of the airport. I have always felt like an underdog and like I’m just running on faith. That’s a huge part of my story. I’m 90% a self-taught musician, songwriter, singer, producer, and mixer; I didn’t get an education or degree in music; I didn’t come from a music city. Some people grow up with parents that are seasoned musicians and instill that in them from a young age. I didn’t. I’m independent and have always done it all: running my social media platforms, creating my content for social media, creating and running my website, learning about the business side, learning about advertising, etc. I have never had thousands of dollars to invest in courses, a manager, etc. My story is one of my biggest motivators for continuing to grind and work hard on my music. Because I know I’m a walking example to other people that you don’t have to have the background, education, or finances to go after what you want and succeed at it. About six or seven years ago, I felt God tell me, “I’m calling you to wake up the dreamer in people. As you pursue your dreams courageously, people will see you and feel inspired to dream again. People are going to see you and go after the dreams they previously let die because they’re going to see you and feel like, “If she can do it, I can do it too.” That is one of the biggest reasons why I go so hard after my dreams with music, and it’s one of the biggest motivators that helps me to push through any obstacles I face.

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?
My journey in pursuing music has not been easy. When some of my teachers in school found out I wanted to pursue music as a career, they told me I needed to have a plan b because it was highly unlikely that I would be successful. The biggest obstacle I have probably faced throughout my journey is feeling like the odds are against me. Because I didn’t grow up in a musical city, didn’t get an education in music, didn’t grow up having connections with people in the music industry, and didn’t have thousands of dollars to invest in equipment, courses, or events where I would have networking opportunities. I knew from the beginning that if I wanted to get somewhere with music, I would have to work harder than everyone else, have a lot of faith mentally, and take big risks out of my comfort zone and finances. I am where I am right now in so many ways because of my drive, hard work, mentality, faith, and the risks I have taken. Many people I have worked with will tell you that my drive and work ethic is different than anyone else they have worked with. I have always thought that I might not be the most talented person in the room, but I will be the hardest working one in the room. I will have a professional, humble attitude, work harder than everyone else, and get things to people promptly, and that will set me apart.

Another obstacle I have faced is being a woman in the music industry and walking into rooms where men dominate. I would walk into studios and hear things in the production and mixing process that the producer wasn’t hearing. Still, I didn’t know how to communicate what I was hearing because I didn’t know the language and terminology for production and mixing. I wanted to be one of the smartest people in the room, and to be that person, I knew I had to learn the terminology and language. Through that, I realized I was a producer and mixer and needed to learn how to do it myself. I felt like I could do it at the same level or better than some of the producers I was working with and wanted to have control over being able to implement exactly what I heard in my head. I have worked hard to become the producer and mixer I am now, but it can still feel intimidating for a female to be in a role in an industry that men highly dominate. I’m passionate about making a mark in the industry as a woman and inspiring other women to become producers.

The Voice and American Idol invited me to private auditions multiple times, and I was rejected every time. I have learned to push through, overcome rejection, and continue forward despite what credible people have said to me.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music producer, and music mixer. Only 2% of music producers in the industry are women, so being a female producer sets me apart. I produce and mix all of my music myself. That is one of the things I am most proud of. I also have connections with sync licensing companies and catalog clubs and am on the verge of landing my first TV placements. My biggest goal this year is to land my first placement, and when I do, that will feel like my biggest accomplishment so far that I will be most proud of. I came from virtually no connections and had to work hard to get to where I am today with the connections I have, so that will feel like a massive accomplishment for me on a professional level.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some changes you expect to see over the next five to ten years?
The music industry has already changed so much. In many ways, live streaming has made things more difficult for artists, songwriters, and producers. People used to buy CDs if they wanted to listen to their favorite artist’s music. Now people stream music, and artists get paid nothing. That’s why people are fighting hard for rights for songwriters and have boycotted and protested Spotify. Music is also so easy for people to make from home on their own now, so a lot more music is being put out into the world. Thousands of songs are released daily, so sometimes, as an artist, it feels like you are just lost in a sea of people. As an artist, it can feel almost impossible that your music will get heard. Landing placements is not only a great way to get your name out there as an artist, songwriter, and producer, but it’s also a great way to make money and gain more of a career in the music industry. It’s also the gift that can keep giving because you can continue to land multiple placements off of one song for years if it’s a great song. That is a huge reason why I am focusing on the TV and film side.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kaylaglaze.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaylaglazemusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kaylaglazemusic
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kaylaglazemusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-718876797
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@kaylaglazemusic

Image Credits
Lauren Cannon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurencannonphotography/