Featured Musician: Carey Clayton | by Ian Morris | September 2024

Carey Clayton is a songwriter, producer, and multi instrumentalist from Los Angeles. With an eclectic musical background ranging from international touring and producing with several acclaimed acts, to composing music for film, television, advertising, and even therapeutic applications, Clayton has cultivated a wide yet singular palette and approach with which he creates both his own solo and collaborative music. 

2020 saw the release of his first solo efforts, Matinee and Blind Eye, while 2021 saw the release of gradually, suddenly, proclaimed by The Further to be “the best album of the summer”. 

His latest album, 2024’s Headless, is deemed by We Write About Music to be “a beacon in today's musical landscape, offering a rich, ever-shifting tapestry of sound that is as intellectually stimulating as it is emotionally resonant.” Born from experiences while meditating, this album marks an evolution as Clayton brings forth work with a deeper, underlying concept.  “Brimming with this warm and inviting texture from start to finish, he continues his ascent as one of the more compelling artists doing the rounds right now.” -Mystic Sons

Clayton has performed internationally including China, Lagos, Istanbul, Europe, and North America. Clayton’s collaborations and productions have garnered tens of millions of plays across streaming platforms. Clayton is a very active composer for Film and TV music, with placements on major networks TV (NBC, ABC, Amazon, Netflix), Film (Tribeca Film Festival), and Brands (Febreeze, NFL), as well as regular sample pack creator and sound designer for sample pack companies such as Splice. Clayton continues to make music for his solo project, and his art rock project, Fore Fader. 

Could you share the story of your musical journey, including any initial hesitations you had and what ultimately led you to this path?

Can you discuss any personal rituals or routines that help you prepare for creating music or performing?

Growing up as a kid I remember having a fairly casual relationship with music. I started playing piano at a young age. While I enjoyed it, it wasn’t all consuming, yet. That all changed when I was about 11 and a friend showed me the music of Jimi Hendrix for the first time. My mind completely exploded at that moment. In particular the very last 20 seconds of the song Purple Haze which had this high sparkly shimmer that felt completely otherworldly and just transported me instantly. I immediately became obsessed with learning guitar. As I grew as a guitar player and musician and moved into songwriting and production, I realized the essence of that inspiration wasn’t just the incredible guitar playing, but rather the undeniable energy that sound could produce. While I make very different music at this point, it’s still that fundamental source of energy that I draw from in my music. By the time I was a teenager I knew I wanted to be a musician, the difficult part was how to make a living supporting myself as one. There’s no clear roadmap and truly everyone’s path is different. Being a musician today is very much like being an entrepreneur in many senses. I’ve had a very fortunate path albeit with lots of moments of doubt and insecurity. I initially studied jazz guitar at the University Miami which led me to move to NYC, where I really got a wide education in playing in eclectic circumstances, playing in countless indie bands, churches, touring internationally (including China, Nigeria, and Istanbul), and even Klezmer music. During this time I began producing songs and albums for other artists. It wasn’t until about 4 years ago when I moved back to my hometown of Los Angeles, that I began working on a solo project of my own. 

While I don’t have any set routines immediately before creating or performing. My (mostly) daily habit of meditating is usually all I need to be in the right state of mind. It really is the single biggest thing I do that has the highest impact on the quality of my day, and also my creative endeavors. 

Can you share some behind-the-scenes insights into the making of your latest album Headless?

The title and inspiration of the album comes from a concept posited by the philosopher Douglass Harding “On Having No Head”. In essence, it is getting in touch with your immediate first-person experience in which you never see your own head, but the space in which you imagine your head to be is really a space for the world to exist in. I’ve been a meditator on and off for nearly 15 years, mostly basic mindfulness as well non dual awareness practice. There was something about being headless that immediately clicked for me. It was one of those insights that was a total ah ha! moment. I began making music and writing songs inspired by those experiences I was having during formal meditation and then carrying it out into daily life. I didn’t set out to make an album based around this exactly, but when I zoomed out and saw them all together, it became clear there was a common inspiration and vision within them, one that I began to cultivate more thoroughly as I started shaping them up as a collection. A Lot of the songs were written over the course of a few years, while a couple were written a few months before the album was released. It was interesting to see the themes I continually returned to, even songs written years apart. Seeing that thread was really when I knew I had a collection of songs that added up to a sum greater than their parts. One interesting balance I felt I had to strike was talking about these concepts (ego death, loss of self, headlessness) without belaboring the point and as a result diluting or nullifying them. I wanted the music to really be more of the experiential catalyst with the lyrics more as a subtle, personal, framing of the experience. 

Who are some of your biggest musical influences, and how have they shaped your sound and style?

 At this point in my growth as a musician, I have a very eclectic and wide inspiration I draw from. While there are certain north stars (musically as well as artistically) namely, Radiohead, Thom Yorke, Bon Iver, Bjork, I pull from lots of sources. I’m a huge fan of Brazilian Tropicália music, electronic music like Floating Points, Boards of Canada, and Four Tet, lots of folk music from around the world- in particular something about Bulgarian Choirs has stuck with me for a long time. Also west African highlife music captivates me, the way 2 or 3 guitars interweave so seamlessly. Groups like Blonde Redhead, Grizzly Bear, and Air have incredible arrangements, full of melancholy but also sublime beauty.  Singer-songwriters like Jose Gonzalez and Ben Howard have always been an inspiration on the more folky/ lyrical end. In my music, juxtaposition is really important to me, having seemingly disparate elements play against each other to create something novel and deceptively harmonious. I pair my proficiency in playing many instruments with my computer production skill to weave together these wide ranging influences. Spinning the acoustic into artificial contexts, and guiding the electronic sounds into more organic ones. Maybe as a result of all these differing influences, I often feel the need to offset elements in my music. For instance at the close of Headless the song “Point of View” is essentially an indie folk song. But I wanted it to have this ethereal feeling like two people were dissolving into constellations in space, that’s where the more electronically manipulated sound design came in to help paint that picture for me.

How has your music evolved over the years, and what factors have influenced this evolution?

When I first started out, I was very interested in jazz and other instrumental music. Music that had some immediate complexity such as odd time signatures or upper scripture harmony. I really enjoyed pushing the limits of what I could achieve as a musician and as a player. Then I began playing and touring with more commercial/ popular bands which put me in a completely different role, playing sometimes very simple parts very consistently but making them feel really good, and supporting the song as a whole. At some point these two approaches began to congeal, resulting in a direction of always serving the music, at times with a simplistic clarity and at others an expounding complexity. I like the music that I create to have a lot of depth to it. Music you can return to time and time again and notice something new, but also be moved by it the first time you listen. For me that complexity and nuance shifts around depending on the energy or message of the song. Sometimes the complexity lies in the rhythm, but the chords are simple. Or maybe the main melody is very straightforward and obvious, but it’s the counter melodies that add various shades and hues to the picture. I often find myself in the process of setting out to create something minimal, recording way too many ideas, then pairing back most of it and seeing what I’m left with. It seems most of the time the song really reveals itself after I’ve exhausted lots of possible arrangements. As I’ve continued to create music for nearly two decades now, I’ve become more and more comfortable embracing idiosyncratic things I once saw as weaknesses or insecurities to be a large part of what makes me and my music special. 

What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced in the music industry, and how have you overcome them?

One of the trickiest aspects of this business is consistency. For a while when I was starting out, the ebbs and flows of when work or attention used to bother me alot. It would be scary when there wasn’t much happening at the moment or on the horizon, but then it could be chaotic or stressful when lots was going on. It can be very boom and bust starting out, and learning to ride out those extremes and trust that it will balance out has been a very healthy skill to acquire. 

Finding a work life balance can also be tricky. While I’m extremely fortunate to be able to make music every day and earn a living doing it, It can be easy to want to work all the time. It’s also further exacerbated because I really do love making music very frequently. For me, one of the greatest risks as a musician making songs and compositions nearly daily is getting burned out. I stay very sensitive when I feel that what I’m making is getting stale or I’m lacking some element of joy in creating it. Of course, there are times when deadlines say otherwise, but most of the time I have the luxury of pulling back a little bit, and dropping it for the day, maybe to go hiking or something. 

Making a career in this business can feel like a jigsaw puzzle, one where the pieces constantly change shape. It seems every few months, all of the different roles shift. For instance, in the last few months, I’ve written lots of music for TV, Film, Ads, Workplace apps, and even for therapeutic purposes. I’ve been on several tours playing guitar and keys. I’ve written songs for massive international acts, as well as produced songs for indie artists. I find it exciting to work in so many different areas, and it feels to me that each different situation  helps refresh another type of work I may have started to feel a bit stale doing. The difficult thing for me is to constantly remind myself why I got into music in the first place, and that was really to make the music I have vision for. 

How many instruments do you play, and which one(s) do you feel most connected to? 

Guitar has been the instrument I’m most deeply connected with. It has always felt the most intuitive for me and also the most versatile. The sounds I’m able to get pairing different guitars with different pedals fits into almost any context. It feels like an infinite well of sonic inspiration. There’s also something inherently idiosyncratic about playing guitar. There’s so many ways to play the same note or chord and all have these subtle tonal impacts on the overall sound of the music. My first instrument was piano, which I’ve found myself playing more and including in newer music. It’s been particularly exciting experimenting with prepared piano, such as taping the string with different materials to get different sounds. I have several synths that have become huge stables of my sound. Namely a Korg Ms20 largely for thick, harmonically rich synth bass, and a prophet Rev 2, for rich, modulating and quirky synth tones. A few years ago I learned to play flute, it’s made its way into lots of my music. It feels like the perfect glue between vocals and instruments. I often find myself wanting its breathy quality in much of music. 

Not traditionally viewed as an instrument, but often I count my music software, Ableton, as an instrument as its own. I’ve gotten so fluid with sound design using it that it rarely feels like a technical pursuit, but rather an intuitive flow like playing an instrument. Often I intentionally mangle recorded sounds to such a degree that they become a new thing entirely their own. Sometimes the end result I imagine in my head is the performance of any instrument manipulated by software unrecognizable as the original sound source. 

Are you involved in the mixing and mastering of your music? If so, how does this involvement influence your sound and do you feel a closer connection to the message and material through this process?

I almost always mix all my own music, while I usually hand off the mastering. By the time I’m done mixing something, I’m really in need of an outside, objective opinion to help get some distance from it. For me, there’s not a huge difference in the process between producing and mixing-I’m purposefully choosing instruments and writing parts that will serve the music and sonics all along the way.. While the song itself has been conceived in the early stages, it’s in the final stages that it really becomes the music that will be shared with everyone. It’s the time when this big 3D sphere of an idea of what the song is or could be becomes flattened into a 2D circle. It’s the time when parts or sections you love may need to be deleted. It’s a purging process. By this point, I’ve imagined so many ways, and tried so many versions of how it could go, that it’s time to step back and just pick which one best serves the message/energy/feeling of the music. Or how it fits as a part of a greater whole, (in the case of an album). Finishing a song through the mix can be a very interesting psychological process. Making songs can already be an emotional rollercoaster, and going through the process of really finalizing and tweaking, (sometimes listening hundreds of times more) can make me feel a bit weird about a song. Thoughts of doubt can creep in, and it can be exhausting in many ways. But, if at the end of all that I still love the song, and feel connected to it, I know I have something I can be proud of.

How can people connect with you?

https://www.instagram.com/careyclayton/

Mailing List

https://www.careyclayton.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@CareyClayton

https://www.tiktok.com/@careyclayton_