Meet Trevor Finlay

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

Trevor, 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?
Great question. I try to stay open and listen. Like a lot of songwriters that I’ve talked to, I get ideas during mundane activities like brushing my teeth or driving. My phone is littered with soundbytes and scraps of unfinished ideas.
I listen to podcasts and the occasional audiobook. I watch movies and tv shows. I read books and magazines. I go for coffee with friends.
Ideas and inspirations can pop out from the strangest places. A recent and very specific example of this for me was watching a scene from the TV show “Freaks and Geeks”, where the character of Lindsay is walking through the high school cafeteria with a Grateful Dead album under her arm and is stopped by a couple of Deadheads. One of them says “I wish I had never heard it so I could go back and hear it again for the first time.” That one line got me thinking about my own experiences of hearing certain artists for the first time and how mind-blowing some of them had been, like listening to Hendrix through headphones while lying on my bedroom floor. That turned into a whole song paying homage to the artists that inspired and influenced me called “For the First Time”.
Writing with other people can be a great thing as well. Not only do you have someone to bounce ideas off of, but they’re coming at a subject with different experiences and perspectives. And then sometimes, it turns into therapy – you might be writing about something that triggers a memory and in the process of mining for ideas you end up sharing something really personal with someone you just met.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Primarily, I play guitar and sing. I’ve been a full-time musician since before I was legally allowed to be in the places I was playing. I’ve released a number of albums and written countless songs, and some of those songs ended up on other artists’ records and on TV shows. I have played in bands, both my own and as a hired gun for others. I really love a band situation because to me, while it exists, it’s a gang. It’s a family. They’ve got my back and I have theirs. We’re all there to play parts to create this living and breathing thing, one song at a time.
I also do a lot of solo acoustic shows where I can pivot and weave, I can read the crowd and adjust things accordingly, from song order to the banter in between.
Really, I just want people to have a good time. I see myself as a conduit – send good energy my way and I’ll send everything I have back to you.
One of the big changes has been social media. It’s forced a lot of us to try our hand at different things from videos to podcasts to photography, all in support of our art. Personally, I dig it. I love to learn how to do something, like videos or livestreaming, and then try to figure out better ways to do it.
What’s the most exciting part of it? That’s hard to say. To be honest, there’s not a whole lot that I don’t like about the business and peripherals of music. There’s something satisfying and gratifying about all of it. It might be as simple as hearing applause to the feeling of accomplishment when finishing the writing of a song to hearing something you created from the ground up on the radio. That’s not to say it can’t be frustrating and heartbreaking because it sure as hell can be. There’s something inside of me that will always get up, dust myself off, and keep going.
I love what I do. If you see me playing somewhere, odds are I’ve got a big smile on my face because I’m just happy to be there – or in the words of Keith Richards, “I’m glad to be anywhere.”

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Just three? Ha!

1. Get out there as much as you can! Go to open stages, jam with friends, say yes to playing gigs with people you’ve never met. A lesson I learned a long time ago was to always try to play with people that are better than you because it will make you a better player. You can learn a lot from videos and books, but nothing replaces real-world experience. You’ll get your ass kicked, but you’ll be better for it. It also helps in the ‘keeping you humble’ department. I’ve found myself in plenty of situations over the years where I’ve shared the stage with incredible musicians and there was always something to take away from it – how they voiced certain chords, how they set their amp or what pedals they used, or sometimes you meet a new friend that you get to nerd out with.
2. Never stop learning. There’s always something else to know – styles of music, songs or bands you’re unfamiliar with, other facets of the business side of things… the list goes on and on. It’s good to know a little about a lot. For example, as a solo artist, my style is more Roots Rock. As a side man, I’ve done blues, country, rock, pop, and a lot of their subsets. That, and a positive attitude, makes me hire-able. Another example is if I’m releasing a song, I’ve learned how to shoot and edit my own music videos as well as learning how to make lyric videos using the style of “Kinetic Typography”. Your list might be different but the message is the same – never stop learning.
3. Don’t be a dick.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
There are a few books that have helped me. One is a book called “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. – One of the biggest obstacles that I have to deal with is writer’s block – sometimes the muse and I just aren’t communicating. This book gives you exercises to do that help get the static out of the way of the antennae and opens the lines back up. There are so many great takeaways in those pages. I refer back to it often and still do morning pages which are meant to silence your inner critic and help open the flow of creativity.
One of the messages that I’ve turned into a personal mantra is “in order to be a good artist, you have to allow yourself to be a bad one.” Not everything you write or create are going to be gems but sometimes you have to get that stuff out to make room for the good stuff.
The other book that is relatively new to me but blew my hair back is “The War Of Art” by Steven Pressfield. The book talks about the types and forms of resistance faced by artists and others, and I believe it helps to inspire you to break through the creative walls and stay driven. I’ve given that book to a few friends as gifts.

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Image Credits
Michael Jenkins, Molly Walters, Judy Mulligan

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