Meet Dean Winter

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dean Winter a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Dean , thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?
Keeping creativity alive is an ongoing process and a labor of love. Recently, I was feeling so consumed by performing the art that the actual creation of art felt like it took a momentary back seat in my everyday life. How do you feel grateful for the opportunities set out in front of you while feeling limited by your capacity to create what provided the opportunities in the first place? This was something that I noticed this past spring and have set out to confront over this coming summer.

My favorite way of sparking creativity and/or keeping it alive is consuming art that is vastly different from my own. I write country music inspired by artists from the previous century so I rarely have to look very hard to find art that is different from my own. Spending time consuming and studying songs, poems, pieces of visual art and design created by people who don’t look, think, or go about their day anything like me is far and away my favorite way to break myself out of creative slumps.

For a long time I wrote songs in a vacuum, these were my stories, from my perspective, created by me, for me. Believe it or not I would be blown away or even offended when other people didn’t “get it.” It’s only been in the last five to ten years that I have allowed myself to create art from a broader perspective. Songwriting, and art in general for the most part, will always be a deeply personal experience. We often connect the most with pieces that feel like they were created for us individually, but seeing creativity through someone else’s lens allows me personally to open my mind to the vast perspectives of experience and creativity itself, and that is how I keep my own creativity alive.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am the lead singer for Dean Winter & the Heat, a country music and honky-tonk band from Jacksonville, Florida. There are plenty of places to see us perform all over the Southeast this summer from Charlotte, North Carolina to Pensacola, Florida. The comment we get most often is “I don’t like country music, but I liked y’all.” We do our best to keep the traditions of country music alive in our songs, featuring instruments like fiddle and pedal steel. This summer we are releasing our full-length album, “Wheel of Bliss,” on vinyl record. I would love to personally invite everyone to Intuition Ale Works in downtown Jacksonville on July 1st, 2023 to celebrate the release with us and some good friends at what we are calling our very first “Heat Fest.”

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
-Resilience – Music has broken my heart more than anything else in this world, but I keep coming back to it for the joy that it gives me and the fulfillment of writing a song, recording a record, or performing with my best friends.

-Find people who are willing to be your partner(s) – Dean Winter & the Heat is a band. Everyone one of the members is an integral part of the group and we couldn’t function the same without every piece. Find those people who want to take ownership with you and stand by you through the ups and downs.

-Don’t be too hard on yourself – This is something that I continue to struggle with daily, but sometimes you just have to sit back and enjoy what you already have, and hope for the future without a ton of added pressures.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
I think I speak for everyone in the Heat when I say we have all grown as musicians over the last year. When we started playing out regularly, we felt like we had something special, but recently it just feels like our skills and our show have reached another level.

Right now we are doing our best to reach other markets and fans outside of our home in Jacksonville, FL. We have been privileged to play in most of the Southeast, but we just want to take this show to as many folks as we can.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
All images credited to Jesse Brantman Photography

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