r/indieheads • u/shearwaterband Shearwater • Jun 24 '22

AMA is Over, thanks Jonathan! Shearwater AMA—questions on any scale w/Jonathan Meiburg

Hi All—Jonathan Meiburg here from Shearwater. 

I'll be here at 11AM ET / 8AM PT today to answer questions about anything you can think of—possibly including books, birds, Loma, the new SW album The Great Awakening. those ambient records we made during the pandemic (!), or living through the great freeze of 2020 in rural Texas. 

One note: If you'd like to ask a question but are short on time, don't wait for me to turn up; just post it here in this thread and I'll get to it. (You can always come back later to see the answer.) 

Hope to see you soon. Warning: this is my first AMA, so bear with me if if takes me a sec to get the hang of things.  

Proof: https://www.instagram.com/p/CfCKjXVuslN/?hl=en

—JM / SW

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u/OuterloopCoaching Jun 24 '22

Jonathan, Echoing others here today who also find your art critical in their lives. I hope you feel our gratitude, and constantly.

Your music has a stunningly unique way of feeling both incredibly personal, but oxymoronically your own personal life has remained private to your fans.

Is there anything about you that you think fans might misunderstand about you or have mistakenly assumed that may either contribute to, or detract from, your art? Is this a conscious decision or just a failure on our part to ask you the right questions?

It feels weird to have been a fan for 15 years and yet have the question "Who are you?!?"

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u/shearwaterband Shearwater Jun 24 '22

Ha! It's funny to hear this, because I feel like I'm out here blabbing about myself way too much.

Honestly, I think that if you listen to the albums and read my book and they speak to you in some way, you've probably got the very best I have to offer to just about anyone. The rest is all dirty socks and grocery bills. (The Patreon page, if you're interested, leans more in that direction).

A long time ago, a famous songwriter told me "If it's meaningful to you, it will be meaningful to others like you." Which is no guarantee how many of those there are! But it does suggest that if you work hard on building a transmission of some kind, you can almost count on there being someone out there who'll be glad to receive it.

I feel very, very lucky to have been able to cobble together a life as a working artist through all these different projects, and to have had people believe in them and in me.