Meet Aaron English | Singer-songwriter & Arts Charity Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Aaron English and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Aaron, what habits do you feel helped you succeed?
The habit of consistency has certainly been a key to my success: to some extent, success is as simple as sticking around long enough to develop a brand and following. And being consistent enough in your brand means that your success becomes self-perpetuating, because eventually you’ve created enough awareness and expectation of your brand amongst a community of fans that you just have to keep doing that thing that only you can do.

The habit of a controlled creative process has also been key. I’ve never experienced writer’s block. That may be because, ever since I was a kid, I’ve seen creativity as a process of forcing together seemingly irreconcilable ideas in order to create a new, unique idea. The professors at Juilliard and Curtis Institute, two renowned American music schools, used to hand their students a song “seed” – a chord, a snippet of melody, a rhythm, a word, anything – and tell them come back to the next class with a full composition. My process has always been similar: need to write a song? Pick a random lyric idea from your notebook, then pick another from somewhere else in your notebook. Then pick a random musical idea from your voice memos. What connects these disparate ideas? There’s the beginning of your song. It’s a process of controlled chaos that has always worked for me to create a spark and get a song started.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m a Nashville-based singer-songwriter. I tour as a solo artist in the U.S. and Europe. I also run a music charity called the International Youth Music Project, which supports music programs for disadvantaged children throughout the world, with a focus on East Africa.

A big part of my own musical brand involves collaborating with musicians from around the world, and creating conversations between different cultures musical languages.

This past Winter I travelled to Karachi, courtesy of the U.S. State Department, to work with Pakistani hip-hop star Ali Gul Pir on a song and video, called “Sound the Alarm”, intended to raise awareness of the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan in 2022 – and climate change in general.

This past Spring I travelled to Italy and Sweden to appear in an international musical project called 101: Flame of Inspiration, a feature-length film that threads together song collaborations, all at 101 beats per minute, between artists from 50 different countries.

Also this past Spring I organized the delivery of thousands of donated musical instruments to youth music programs in East Africa through a partnership between my charity and the German government’s Goethe Institute.

It’s been a unique, and a uniquely challenging, path for both my music and my charity. I’ve bet on the uniqueness of my musical voice to help my music cut through the noise of a crowded market, where upwards of 100,000 tracks are being uploaded everyday to streaming platforms. And the challenges faced by the music charity keep me inspired, as I work to help others find and share _their_ voices with the world.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
It’s a great time to be in Nashville: it’s full of culture and art and food and, of course, emerging music.

I’d recommend going to The Bowery Vault to hear great up-and-coming songwriters. It’s my favorite venue in the world, a little hole-in-the-wall with a stage and fantastic coffee.

The Listening Room Café is another great spot to hear Nashville songwriters; there are a lot more tourists than locals in the crowd, which gives it a different vibe than The Bowery Vault. But the food is great and the Nashville writers featured are, of course, always world-class.

Nashville’s surrounded by fabulous walking parks – go walk around Radnor Lake to see tons of wildlife without having to leave the city limits…and run into a who’s-who of Nashvillains along the way.

For dining, how about legit Southern African-American meat-&-three? I’d recommend Swett’s, Wendell Smith’s or Monell’s.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Only in hindsight, as an adult, did I realize how lucky I was to have parents who encouraged me to pursue whatever I was interested in, and whatever career I desired. I get it now: that’s rare. So here’s to my parents – and to parents that encourage their kids to follow their dreams, rather than tell them what they _can’t_ do, or _should_ be doing instead.

Website: www.aaronenglish.com

Instagram: Instagram.com/aaronenglish

Linkedin: LinkedIn.com/aaronenglish

Twitter: Twitter.com/aaron_english

Facebook: Facebook.com/aaronenglishmusic

Youtube: YouTube.com/aaronenglishband

Image Credits
Photo credits: Theo Looijmans