Teachable Musician Mini-Series: Marketing Operations Manager — Jon Uland
Welcome back to another week of the Musician Mini-Series!
For this week we’re going to be learning about one of Teachable’s most beloved guitarists, Jon Uland. On top of being well known throughout the company as the man that can answer any question regarding e-mails, Jon is also a seasoned musician who writes his own songs!
Without further ado, here’s how my interview with him went.
When did you first start playing a musical instrument?
I started playing guitar when I was seven years old.
And how old are you now?
Almost 28. So I’ve been playing about 21 years. Wow, that’s crazy to think about.
Throughout all those years have there been periods of time where you stopped playing, and then started it up again?
So, I took a two year mission trip when I was in college and I lasted about six months without my guitar before I had it shipped to me. Then I gave it away when I left. That’s the longest amount of time that I can think of where I was without a guitar. Otherwise I’ve played non-stop for over twenty years, entirely self-taught except for maybe a total of 10 lessons throughout all that time.
Do you play any other instruments?
I started out on an acoustic guitar, then I started playing electric guitar. I started electric almost immediately after my uncle got me this guitar called an “elephant guitar” because it literally looks like an elephant. It’s a portable electric guitar, it’s yellow, and where the elephant’s ear would be is a speaker. It’s pretty cool, and weird!
That was the first guitar I really owned and played. Although I started off with acoustic, it was on a 12 string guitar that my dad owned. The electric elephant guitar was actually my own. I played that all through middle school in a band called “The Main Ingredient”. We had one song, three chords, and we would just jam on it! No singing, no anything, and I would solo over it.
Then also in middle school I started playing in the orchestra band with the oboe. Double reeds! I didn’t think that was cool enough, though, so in high-school I switched to the bassoon. Which, on the scale of coolness both were probably not good choices, haha!! But they were fun and they allowed me to play in the jazz band since school rules stated that you had to be in the regular band to play in the Jazz band.
I also learned how to play the steel drums! I played it in a steel drum band and it was way fun. Specifically I played the cello steel drum, since few people know that there are actually different types of steel drum.
Then in college I got married and my wife got into a performing group called The Young Ambassadors. I was really cheeky and decided to audition for the group, too, just to support her. And I made it through all of the callbacks of the dancing and singing and stuff like that, and in my audition I played the guitar. Long story short I didn’t get the performing role, but the band director was at the audition and they liked my rhythm so much, so they offered me a different position in the band with an instrument called the Handsonic.
They’re basically electric bongos. Think like a “bop-it!” toy, but extreme. So I learned how to play that and we went on-tour in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and then several places in Thailand and Vietnam.
So those are the instruments I play. I can kind of play the bass and the piano, too, but my main instrument is the guitar.
Was there a moment where you had the thought of like, “I want to continue doing this for as long as I can?”
Oh yes. My first year in college I wanted to study Jazz composition so I had been writing songs all throughout high-school. I actually wrote a full jazz piece in the jazz band, took it to a college and even got a scholarship from it! From then on I knew that I wanted to perform music and have it as a career, but I didn’t really know what that looked like. I just knew I wanted to do it.
My parents didn’t like that idea, but like any angsty teenager I didn’t listen to them, haha. So I went to school and then I spent the scholarship I got on lessons from the university. Those were the only real times I had formal lessons on the guitar. I learned a ton from that and went on to teach myself music theory and the rest. And so I still play to this day!
My ideal is to have a cabin in the woods that works as a recording studio where I can go out into nature and be at peace, or jam out and make music.
What’s one thing about music, or music playing, or singing, that you love?
Here’s the thing that I love. When you play in a group and you’ve got an audience. My favorite time to play music is when I can collaborate with other people at a campfire setting. Everyone’s around wanting to have a good time and no one’s showing off, it’s just about the music of the moment and everyone connects on it.
I just love the feeling where everyone is experiencing the same unique sensation of the music being played. And that feeling might mean something different to each person, but you’re all experiencing it together at the same time. It’s so euphoric. It has such a sense of camaraderie and togetherness that I think the world can use more of.
Is there someone, a band or an album or a singer, that you would say has been the biggest influence on your sound?
When I was young I was big into Jimmy Hendrix and a lot of oldies like Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, or Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I would try to imitate them when I played.
However I would say that my sound has evolved over time. Right now it’s kind of a weird mix between Lyle Lovett who’s sort of like a jazz and country singer and songwriter, and Justin Vernon who aside from his more electronic and exploratory music and his incredible lyrics sounds very folksy with his acoustic stuff. My lyrics are not nearly as deep as Justin Vernon’s so my aspiration is to reach that level. I would categorize my songs now as one-off love songs or breakup songs, something like that with the exception of one song that’s new and different.
I also have a lot of small bands that I look up to and some you’ve never heard of like The National Parks, but one of those bands went by the name Fictionist! They used to be called Good Morning Maxfield. You’ve never heard of them, I promise, haha. They came out of Utah and they’re just so freaking good. They were so raw and talented and they got signed by Atlantic, but they ended up splitting.
Do you have an artist, album, or song you would call a “guilty pleasure”? Something you’re sort of embarrassed to admit you love listening to?
Ooh…embarrassed? Okay, I don’t know if it’s because of the fact that I’m white and love listening to Jidenna? I love his music, I love him! I don’t know if I’m embarrassed by that, or the fact that I can listen to him and John Mayer in the same sitting… Hahaha!!
I also love Tupac and his music, but John Mayer is definitely my guilty pleasure. I look up to him as a guitarist. But I’ve not good things about him personally, haha.
What was the first song you remember falling in love with so badly you needed to know how to play it?
This is an embarrassing one, actually, but it was “Pinch Me” by the Barenaked Ladies. I really loved it and also my friends really loved it. We ended up playing a cover of it at a school thing and so I absolutely needed to learn it. It sounded so cool to me!
There’s a guitar solo in it, and the effect on the guitar sounds like it’s in rewind and it fascinated me and I couldn’t figure out how the guitarist was doing it. I just didn’t understand how effects worked at the time. So it was that song.
I wish I could have had something cooler, like “Red House” by Jimi Hendrix, that was another one that I had to learn. But “Pinch Me” came before it.
If you were stranded on a desert island, what are three albums you would bring with you?
Definitely something from Bon Iver, probably his album “Bon Iver,” just because it kind of all flows so well from one song to the next and I love all the songs from that album.
I would also definitely take one of the first albums from the band Fictionist, that I said earlier was a band no one’s heard of.
And the last one would have to be “The Wall,” by Pink Floyd.
Does collaborating with others who are musical help inspire you to be more creative?
Absolutely, yes.
Here at Teachable in our Slack community we have a private Songwriter’s channel in which we share the songs and music we’ve created with each other. Even that, which isn’t even collaborating really, is so great and helpful. Just to get feedback from people in a space that’s safe where people are happy to give you positive feedback and constructive criticism creates a very supportive atmosphere. Especially when you can be your own worst critic. It’s so helpful to have other people’s thoughts on what you have posted. It gives you perspective so that you can adjust it and make it better. I did that with one of my songs, even!
What role, if any, do computers play in the music you make?
I actually record the music I make on an iPad. I then go on to post it to Soundcloud and now I want to find more ways to use technology in the music I create. For example, Kevin Foley has created songs from snippets of audio and I think that is so cool. I don’t know how to do that, but I would love to learn. The use of technology as an instrument is pretty cool to me and one that I want to do more with.
Would you be interested in having or taking part in a Teachaband?
Yeah! Why not? I love jamming with people here and that would be way fun.
How do you get over the fear of putting your art out into the world for anyone to see?
Only recently has this happened to me! I had a lot of stage fright, especially with my own music.
Like there’s a song I really love, “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” written by Ray Charles which John Meyer did an amazing cover of. I remember at my senior graduation party we had a band there and I went to play with them and we played that song. And it was just like yeah! You know that song already rocks! And so if you play that song as good as they did, or close to it, you know you’re good.
But when it’s your own stuff, it means something to you. And so it just feels like you’re saying, “Here’s a little piece of me, I hope you like it. And if you don’t, don’t tell me,” you know?
This is the sort of thing our private, internal slack channel for songwriters has been really good for. Giving me the courage to post little pieces of me on the internet, or for the public to see. I started a Soundcloud just so I could share songs with people in the Slack channel. It was private at first, but then I decided to open it up to the public because it was just like, you know, this is a part of of who I am! This music, these lyrics. Even if they’re bad. I like to think they’re just B+ music and lyrics and honestly that’s fine with me. There are plenty of super famous people out there who write B to C+ material.
What it means to me is extracting a feeling that I’ve had and sharing that little piece of me with anyone who’s willing to listen and maybe they’ll relate to it. That’s how I’ve opened up to sharing what I write with people. It’s always hard. I always think, “Should I do this, or not?”
This is especially relevant to a song I wrote recently called “Killing Fields.” That’s a serious song. It’s not light-hearted like my other songs. It’s about a real issue and about this time I found myself literally standing on top of someone’s bones when I was in Cambodia and realizing the magnitude of something that had happened there. It’s so much emotion all at once and the song is me trying to come to terms with that. It was a shocking, overwhelming, and sad but beautiful feeling at the same time. And to package that into just a few bars and share that with someone and hope they understand it? That’s scary.
What is one of your favorite memories/moment in all your time playing music?
It’s actually a feeling. It’s the same euphoric feeling I talked about earlier.
I was in a garage band sort of thing and they would play these shows sometimes. Just a bunch of really talented musicians coming together and just jamming. Think of Phish, an amazing jam band and one whose album I would also probably take to a desert island, haha. They improvise everything.
We were no where near that good, haha, but in the jam band I was in during high school with four or five other really talented musicians, we would just get together in someone’s basement and rock out.
I remember we had this sick jam going on and it had gone on for 20 minutes and it was just solo after solo and supporting roles… It was… I mean you’d think we were high!
I remember that moment came back to me in a solo later on and I hit this threshold where it was like I could see what… I mean this is going to sound so trippy, but it was like I could see the music we were playing. I felt like I was one with it. I had closed my eyes and I remember looking up and I knew that what I was playing was exactly what I needed to play in that moment. I was enveloped in sound. It was like being in a cloud or a wave. It felt so magnificent. And there weren’t even any drugs involved! It was so cool. A trip, for sure.
What’s your greatest fear around music?
That I won’t be taken seriously because I’m self-taught. I didn’t go to school for songwriting, I didn’t take many formal lessons. I’m a good guitarist and it’s taken a long time for me to be able to say that. I’ve been playing for 20 years, but its been only within the last two years that I’ve been able to admit to myself that I am a good guitarist.
My wife is a musician and I think that’s helped me a lot, but this is still a big insecurity of mine. I’m self-taught, but I’ve been self-taught for 20 years and while there are people who can talk about modes and scales and whatnot, I fall behind in that. But I have to constantly remind myself that that lack of knowledge doesn’t mean that I can’t learn it and it doesn’t mean that I’m a bad musician. It just means that I don’t know that yet.
To hear Jon’s music, and the song Killing Fields that he mentioned earlier in the interview, visit his Soundcloud at:
https://soundcloud.com/jonstermash
And to learn more about the bands Fictionist and The National Parks, visit their websites at:
About the Writer, Roderick Sang
I am a Customer Educator at Teachable and have been for a year now. I was inspired to write this mini-series after growing closer with everyone at Teachable and realizing we have so many amazing musicians! I felt like they each deserved to be noticed by everyone, not just their fellow co-workers. As an aspiring musician myself currently learning guitar, it also provided me the great opportunity to nerd-out with everyone about music and why they play. So I hope you have as much reading the series as I do writing it!
