Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Fleming.
Hi Jacob, 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?
Growing up in Tampa, Florida, I picked up the guitar somewhere around age 10. Open mics / writers nights gave me my first chance to play for an audience. Songwriting became a favorite activity soon afterwards and by 16 I had started a band with some friends from high school. We gigged around the area for the next three years, with some definite high and low points, and played our last show New Year’s Eve, 2019. The year before our final gig I had moved to Nashville for college and to further my goals as a musician. I began releasing solo projects around this time starting with an EP, It Became Often. Back home in Tampa for the holidays, an older friend of mine offered to help me record the project in his upstairs spare bedroom/makeshift studio. We recorded the project in two nights and released it un-mastered. (I wasn’t all that sure what a mastered song was). Listening back, I’d change a few things but Genuine and Care are still two of my favorite songs I’ve written. Gigging up until the pandemic, I found the Nashville scene very different from the one I’d grown up in in Tampa. Even the house shows were better engineered. But it was also a harder ask to draw an audience. Post the worst of the pandemic, I collaborated with several producers, leaning into a poppier sound with Straight Line Drive and later Know Me. The ladder became the best received song I’d released thus far but I stepped away from releasing music for more than a year after a death in the family. Since, I’ve been exploring a more organic, folkier, indie rock sound that I’ve really enjoyed. I have been teaching guitar and bass (and occasionally beginner piano) at a studio here in Nashville for the past year and a half while releasing music and gigging as often as I can. My next release, Moment, comes out in three days at the time of writing and I’m excited to share a true folk-pop song. While I’m always looking for the next gig, song idea, or way to share my music to a wider audience, I’ve started really enjoying playing writers nights again, just like I did more than 10 years ago.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has been a bumpy road. Nashville is home to an amazing amount of some of the best musicians in the world. This is a double edged sword. While I’ve had the opportunity to write and collaborate with fantastic artists, it also becomes a loftier goal to be heard. Something I was late to the game on was the use of social media for promotion. While I love the creative process and everything that comes with crafting and recording a song, there is something that feels inauthentic about the more popular methods of promotion and music advertising. This is purely a personal problem, though, and one I’ve tried to be more diligent about overcoming.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My work so far, from teens through mid twenties, has lacked singular creative direction. I don’t see that as a bad thing. I’ve really enjoyed exploring different sounds throughout my music, from lo-fi acoustic ballads to highly polished pop. If there’s anything I’m most proud of so far, it’s the next few releases I have coming down the line. Something tells me that’s how it may always be. If there’s something that sets me apart from others, I’ve been told I have a unique singing style. In mimicking my favorite vocalists, my tone became a sort of amalgamation of all of them, for better or worse. My guitar playing leans more towards rhythmic than lead. As much as I love to throw a solo in, I enjoy fleshing out what’s best for the whole of the song rather than giving one part its moment to shine.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
My musical mentors have typically been artists that have followed a career path of releasing several well received projects, and then spending the rest of their careers following all sorts of musical directions they wanted to seek out with the freedom their first few releases gave them. In terms of networking, a wide friend group always helps. In Nashville, everyone’s friends with an artist or two looking to collaborate. Whether they’re a producer, songwriter, or instrumentalist, there’s always room for collaboration.
Contact Info:
- Website: Jacob Fleming on Spotify and Apple Music
- Instagram: @scarletguitar
- Other: TikTok: jacobfleming42 and jacobfleming25
