A conversation with Junifer

Where can we find you right now and what are you up to?

Welp, ever since releasing my first album in March, I've been working to release a new song about every month or so. It's been a fun exercise in keeping the momentum and creativity going, especially since this isn't my day job, so I've got to find time (typically in the wee hours of the night) to make music. I've begun experimenting with adding more visual content with my music, which wasn't ever something I had experience doing before and it's been cool to develop that out a bit. 
 
How would you define success? What is your goal?

I used to think success was to get the community at large to validate your artistry or something, but now I think that's dumb, and success to me feels like allowing yourself the space to make art and share it, regardless of how many people that reaches. Especially when you can bring your buddies along to make music together, I don't think it gets much better than that. I'll always struggle with trying to reach a larger audience to allow more of my time to spend making music, but my hope is to never let that get in the way of just making things I like with folks I like.

 How did you start?

I've always been making music on my own and with friends, and though I had ambitions to make it more legitimate, It was never my primary focus. Life never really allowed space for it properly, and I didn't have a good pathway to get there either. The biggest change that allowed me to start was having my buddy Matt provide really good input and discernment on the songs I was developing, and then meeting my audio engineer Brandon Brown. That gave me a great runway to actually put out music that I thought sounded pretty solid. 

What is a typical day in your life as an artist?

As an artist? Extremely limited. I've got a family and a job, so any time spent doing artist stuff is mostly in the cracks. Primarily at night after my kids go to bed. I'm working to carve out a tiny bit of room during the day each week to spend more time on it. So for now, most of my "artist" time is either me at my little workstation chunking away at tracks in various stages of development, or spending too much time learning how to do promotion and marketing myself (which I'm bad at and don't like doing!). But the little moments when I'm working on a song and things start coming together well and it hits you in the feels...those are the moments I hold on to and get excited about sharing with others. 

If your song were to be included in a movie, which one would you choose?

Oh boy, I love movies. Right now, the best thing I've seen lately is 28 Years Later, it's incredibly moving in a semi-deceptive way and really speaks to our humanity and how careful we must be not to lose it, especially in the way we care for others. I know that wasn't the question, but the more I can promote how wonderful and contemplative that movie is I will! I think the latest song I released (Thoughts For The Night) would be swell for reflective moments in a nice little indie movie or something!

What do you think of AI in music?

AI terrifies me. It's surreal seeing how quickly the technology is changing, and the various applications that are continually released in how AI can be utilized across the board. It will be interesting to see how things develop. I know distributors and other platforms like Spotify are doing their best in protecting AI from fully disrupting the music artist space. However, you continue to hear stories of fully AI artists gaining large following and streams, and you realize it's taking attention away from talented artists who are putting in effort to create their music. There's definitely some interesting capabilities AI can have in music and creative development, but we have to be careful with how it's applied and what it may be exploiting, especially when the technology seems to be outpacing its regulations. I'm curious and nervous to see where things go, and how creative folks are able to protect their art and still make things the public want to listen to without it being overshadowed by fully developed AI music.  

Tell us about your latest or upcoming release.

My latest release "Thoughts For The Night" came out in early October, so I've been focused on promoting that. As I mentioned earlier, I'm still working to release a song about every month or so (at least till the end of the year), so I've got a few more songs I'm working on and I'll see which one shakes out the soonest to be my next release. I've also started working on alternate versions of songs I've released already which has been fun. So stay tuned for more to come...