Meet Ethan Drone

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ethan Drone. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ethan below.

Hi Ethan, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

In the context of songwriting and song production, my resilience comes from the desire to explore creativity through the medium of sound. I tend to think of resilience as an integral part of the process rather than some separate entity. A short explanation of my journey might help explain why.

Putting aside preconceptions of what skills a composer should possess, I consider resilience as a beneficial “trait”, especially when factoring in creativity as another likely requisite component to good songwriting. It’s probably not surprising that my songwriting style and approach have changed over several decades, and I would also hope that my continued pursuit of creativity and evolving musicianship have advanced my songwriting skills to a similar degree. But when I look back, it is resilience that has played a pivotal role in keeping me honed to the songwriting craft, while also affording me the opportunity to further explore creativity.

I began writing music at a young age, but my early musical ideas would not qualify as real songs, and they certainly weren’t always cultivated in a way that could be easily presented to others. Instead, I would need to develop the skills necessary to construct completed songs, and once I had, I would learn that there was no guarantee that they would be interesting enough to get anyone to stop and listen to them. Eventually, I would learn to develop my ideas as completed musical snippets that I could incorporate as central “moments” or themes within a song, akin to a plug-and-play approach to songwriting. I came to appreciate that successful songs typically had key components that needed to be fully developed (a catchy riff, a flushed-out chorus, etc.) to make them successful. Other critical components that I now appreciate and spend time cultivating in my music include sound design and performance, arrangement, production, and mixing and mastering.

The above observations and elements do not necessarily comprise a novel approach to songwriting, but the evolution of songwriting for any given individual might include developing such a set of skills and a similar appreciation for the process. For me, the incorporation of these skills has been critical to my personal concept of success, and resilience has played a key role in helping me stay focused in that process. Resilience has helped me evolve as a songwriter and has allowed me to explore creativity in a way that translates to music that I am proud to write and release.

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

I first began writing music on my recorder (a woodwind instrument) in the 4th grade. As a young teen, I was gifted a bass guitar and 12-string acoustic guitar by my father. Shortly thereafter, my brother and I co-founded our first band, Onyxial Spirit, with one of my best friends. These events would give rise to a life filled with musical exploration, that would culminate in my current musical project, Glorybots.

Glorybots began as a side project, to provide an avenue for me to write music on my own trajectory; I envisioned it would blend edgy, digitized elements with occasional classic analog rock sounds for a modern palate. Like William Gibson’s The Difference Engine, I wondered what would have happened if early Cure had taken a different direction and had continued to make music along the vein of Japanese Whispers, while incorporating other-worldly elements explored by lesser known goth bands such as Tones on Tail. Inchoate attempts at this amalgam, echoed on Glorybots’ first album titled Dark Alien Pop, were met with enthusiasm (including The Ark of Music’s top 10 albums of 2018). While a lot has happened since that first album, Glorybots’ upcoming 4th LP, mad.end, takes the listener further along that journey, presenting artistically framed songs infused with a greater sense of mystery, depth, and intention, and a more deliberate focus on ambience and resonance. Even the song structures deviate from more traditional arrangements, yet still allow the blend of digitized elements and analog instrumentation to shine through. We believe the results are spellbinding! Pain Rain, the first single from this album, has been released and is currently available on all streaming platforms.

The full LP, mad.end, will be released in Spring 2025 on all streaming platforms. We hope to tour the west coast in the summer and are open to invitations to perform.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Patience: I believe that personal learning, development and achievement should be allowed grow at their own rates. I used to be so impatient about achieving relatively arbitrary goals, often without acknowledging the amount of work and energy it would take to achieve them. Now I am more interested in finding the most desirable parts of the process and allow myself to focus on how I can make the journey more rewarding. I might still have specific goals in sight, but they are no longer a principal focus. Instead, it’s far more interesting to remain in the moment, especially when dealing with flow states. My most creative moments are those in which I can remain almost oblivious to achieving specific goals (at least when creating interesting music). It doesn’t necessarily help pay the bills, but it makes the process much more fun!

Listening: I think it’s important to listen to what is around us, whether that be the voices of individuals, society at large, or even larger scale elements. I believe there’s a natural cadence to what surrounds us. Tuning in to that regularly can help with finding individual purpose and can act as a source of creative inspiration.

Personal care: I have found it more and more important to spend time and energy cultivating my own well-being, including my mental and physical health. Doing so not only helps me feel good in my body – it also helps me stay focused at times when I need to work passionately over long hours. I find some form of meditation and physical exercise really benefits my happiness, and the regular practice of meditation seems to help me more easily remain within a creative flow state.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

Two things come to mind:
1. My parents taught me that anything was achievable.
2. My parents provided a foundation to develop self-love.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Carlos Cruz (stills)
Allycea Weil (live shots)

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