Meet Jerome Forde

We recently connected with Jerome Forde and have shared our conversation below.

Jerome, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

If a “purpose” is something you feel is worth doing, just for its own sake and nothing else, then music has definitely been one for me. Since I can first remember hearing it, music has affected me in a really strong way. Music is like a language. It speaks to you. But on a deeper level than ordinary ways of speaking can handle. Music has never been something I had to try and be interested in. Never even had to think about it. It just came naturally, like an instinctive reflex or something.

When it comes to finding a purpose in life, I’ve always found the following words helpful. They’re from the writer Charles Bukowski. His advice was simple: “Don’t try.” Now at first that might sound like a cynical statement. It might sound defeatist or even to be flirting with nihilism. But I don’t hear them that way at all. I don’t hear them as denying life or purpose, but as affirming them to the fullest. Because if you think about it, the only things really worth doing in life are the things you don’t have to “try” at.

Take a relationship. Obviously there’s a ton of effort involved in loving another person. But you never need to “try” to love that person. You just do. You just love them. And it’s because you love them that no effort is too much to ask. Things like this–like loving another person–aren’t things we carefully plan for either. They just happen to us. Nobody’s ever “climbed” to love. We say we “fall” into it for a reason. That’s been true with music for me. I fell in love with it, head over heels. I never had to try. But I’ve also never poured as much time and effort into something either. I guess that’s the paradox of any real purpose you’re lucky enough to find: it’ll be the easiest and the hardest thing you’ll ever do. I think that’s maybe what Bukowski meant when he said, “Find what you love and let it kill you.”

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

My name’s Jerome Forde and I “do” music–by which I mean I write songs and record songs and also play them for live audiences. You can find me playing at bars, distilleries, breweries, and vineyards throughout the northern Michigan area (where my family and I live).

For me, the most exciting thing about “doing” music is simply being creative, making something that sounds good to me and hopefully to other people. For me, writing a song is less like following a step-by-step process until you’ve reached a predetermined result, and more like swimming (drowning?) in a chaotic soup of sounds until one of them pulls you by the ear and brings you back to the surface. I find the whole experience mysterious and exhilarating. It’s a rush. I’ve never tired of it and I don’t think I ever will.

As for my “brand,” I guess that would be something like the “genre” of music I write and play. My music typically goes under the name “Americana,” which is a combination of three subtypes: pop, folk, and country. Americana music is really diverse that way, because every songwriter effectively creates their own unique style by combining those three subtypes into something new. It’s about emphasis. Some Americana songwriters have more of a country feel to their music. Others are more folk. If I had to give a ranking, I guess I’d probably place my own music more in the pop category first, followed by folk and then country. But that can vary song by song–a freedom I like having.

Some events I’m excited about are the shows I’ve been playing and the albums I’ve released. I play between 40-50 shows a year and I look forward to each one. My wife and I travel together and it’s always a fun time. I’m also excited about having put out my second album earlier this year. It’s called “Wintertide Blues” and was released (like my first self-titled album from 2023) by the Toronto-based indie label (weewerk). But maybe I’m most excited about starting to record my third album, which I hope to have done before the year’s up.

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?

Whoa. That’s a great (and very big) question. I’ll try to answer it by picking one from each area. But just to be clear: I’m not saying I have any of these qualities or skills. I’m not preaching. Not from any mountaintop, or even from a modestly-sized soapbox. However far I’ve come since returning to music a few years ago, I still have much (much, much, much) further to go. So what I’m about to say is more like the kind of thing I’d like to hear myself.

For a skill, I think endurance is key. It helps to keep your focus direct and simple: keep writing, keep recording, keep playing live. Don’t stop. If something good comes out of it all, so be it. I’ll receive it with very open and very grateful hands. Who doesn’t like it when their hard-fought efforts pay off? But the real question I think is: even if nothing comes of it, and all my songs are eventually either ignored or forgotten, would it still be worth doing? For me, without hesitation, the answer’s got to be yes.

A related quality is patience. The ability to resist forcing things and just let them happen on their own is a surprisingly hard thing to do. We don’t like it. We want control. There’s so much hand-wringing today over satisfying algorithms, or the number of followers you have on instagram, or the amount of monthly listeners you’ve gained (or lost) on streaming services that the real point of songwriting gets lost: writing songs. I guess I’m probably the last person who should be giving advice on this topic since I could lose a hand and still be able to count my monthly listeners with the fingers I had left, but I think it’s important to remember why we write songs in the first place. I get it. People have to make a living. I’d like to make a living playing music one day too. A comfortable living would be even better. But sometimes the whole sordid game of music-marketing can strangle the real purpose of songwriting to death. And when anxiety over numbers and “results” becomes a disease that kills the simple joy of writing a song, I think patience is probably the most effective remedy out there.

As for an area of knowledge, understanding just how unpredictable life is seems like a good place to start. Put another way: expect the unexpected. Just three years ago my life had a completely different trajectory–a trajectory it took nearly 15 years of very hard work to establish. According to the person I was then, I shouldn’t be here right now, doing what I’m doing. I had plans, after all. And yet, despite all those carefully laid out plans, here I am. You never know what changes time will bring. Life is funny that way. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean to just sit around and wait for unpredictable things to happen to you. Don’t wait. Make your plans. Set your goals. Just realize they’re not divine decrees sent from heaven, just your own very human (and for that reason very fragile) expectations. They can be useful. But they’re not infallible. And that’s fine.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

This one’s easy: my wife and kids. Without them, I wouldn’t just lack a few essential skills or qualities. I’d be nothing. My wife is the absolute love of my life. It’s hard to believe we’ve known each other over 20 years now, because when I’m with her I feel as young as when we met. And the people and lives our love’s created are just as special to me: my kids. As much as I love music, they’re my real world. Knowing I have them to come home to every day is what keeps me going, more than anything else. Truth be told, I’m not the easiest person to live with. But my wife and kids have never held it against me. They accept me the way I am, warts and all. And I do the same for them–but, of course, my job’s easier (less warts!). Maybe it’s in part because of all the moving and relocating we did for all those years when I doing academic stuff. It made us very close. Through each of the many the changes we went through together, we gave each other a much needed point of stability (and sanity), something to lean on and rest in. They’re love and support means everything to me.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

All photos and cover art for Wintertide Blues album by Falia Forde.

Cover art for self-titled Jerome Forde album by River Forde.

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