Conversations seeking to illuminate and humanize the struggles and triumphs of musicians and other creatives.
For many creative professionals, especially those in the performing arts, this precarious and unprecedented time may feel like a never-ending bad dream. Many have previously entertained questions of “what would I do if I couldn’t make art/music anymore?” because of an injury or other insurmountable circumstance of debilitation. Likely, very few have thought about what they would do if the performing arts industry collapsed altogether. This harrowing and uncertain moment with the first collective taste of that can feel confusing, disorienting, and disheartening as financial strains increase and the promise of returning to work looms hazy and far out of reach.
Creatives are coping in all different and necessarily innovative ways with these trying circumstances. Bigger and deeper questions, beyond the most fundamental aspects of survival, are moving into the spotlight: What is important or “essential”? What is the place of art/music in society? What needs to be reimagined in the next evolution of this work, in itself, and as an industry? How can we co-create this new vision and organize ourselves to make it manifest?
NYC-based guitarist and composer Ben Tyree has been spinning out these questions in private phone calls with his wide spectrum of friends and colleagues in the music industry. Those conversations traverse personal territory of what they’re working on, how they’re dealing with the pandemic, how they’re navigating not working/performing, what they’re doing to get by, how this situation has caused them to take stock of their lives, what they wanna see moving forward, and how these circumstances have changed their orientation to life / career / family / social life / how they work. At a point, Tyree started to imagine what it would be like for people to be “a fly on the wall” during these in-depth convos - how illuminating it could be as well as how it might inspire connection and solidarity - and conceived of the long-form video interview show, The Tune-In w/ Ben Tyree.
Tyree perceives an almost dehumanizing public gaze that sees musicians / artists as living a fantastical, eccentric, or off-the-grid lifestyle and idealizes that kind of existence. He reflects, “They see us at our best. Oftentimes, I get the feeling that people are not aware of all that goes into what we do -- our emotional struggles, career struggles, how we deal with normal life, like everyone else. We are mostly acknowledged when we triumph. For every triumph, there are 10-20 struggles, failures, and meltdowns.” The Tune-In offers an opportunity for the public to see past that mystique and realize that the artists they admire may be going through the same struggles as they are. Like “breaking the fourth wall,” The Tune-In aims to advance a cultural adjustment to remove the barriers of artist exceptionalization. Tyree reminds us, “the truth is that we are all pretty alike. Shit happens to everybody. We might take leaps and risks to create art / entertainment / magic...and we get sick; we have families; we pay taxes.”
The benefits of this perspective swing both ways. Realizing that things are difficult for everybody, even revered and “anomalous” artists, may inspire a sense of solidarity and hope for many people struggling during this time. Tyree hopes the inspiration he’s found in listening to long-form interviews with people he respects will be passed along to listeners of The Tune-In. “Listening to their struggles and triumphs and how they just keep going gave me the motivation to keep trying / pushing / plugging away at it.”
The Tune-In’s first line-up of guests includes people who have been central in Tyree’s musical life, ranging from his circle of NYC-based colleagues:
…to people who laid the path for him, including early DC guitar mentor Tom Newman.
While Tyree lights up at the opportunity to put a focus on people that he personally cares about, he also hopes to expand beyond that circle to include other professional creatives.
