Here's my interview with Devin Kessler of Ivory Blue
How'd you get started in music?
I've always created music. At a very young age I would make up songs to pass by the time. I could've sang other people's songs but I was limited in what I could listen to (my parents were pretty strict) so I just made up my own.
I played in my church at a very young age as well which gave me confidence to perform in front of people later on in life. People always said they saw me pursuing music so I had a good support system at a very early age which was good for my well-being.
Who are your inspirations or influences?
When I was growing up my parents would listen to the oldie’s station. I’m 36 so oldie’s was like “The Beatles, Rolling Stones, CCR, Fleetwood Mac…” to name a few. I would listen to those bands a lot especially when we were in the car going places.
However when I was in my 20s there was an artist named ‘Bleu’. He had a few songs that made it big and was really successful and I saw him live when I opened for him. He really inspired me cause he would loop over his own sounds to create an array of sounds that really made the song bigger than it would’ve been had he just played them acoustic. It was really cool and I definitely was inspired by him to do my own looping shows in the future.
What advice would you offer aspiring performers?
Write what you know. It’s the best advice I can give cause writing what you know makes your music authentic and true to who you are. It’s a good exercise to create a story in your song that didn’t happen but base it off of things that really happened in your life.
Like my song ‘Starlit Love Child’ was loosely based on a friend of mine that used crystals and tarot cards to find a meaning in the life he was living. I wrote that in there but I also changed it to match what I felt life offered and how we could lose ourselves in it. I had the character be a woman cause I’m trans and felt the song should represent my life as well.
How do you set yourselves apart from other bands or singers?
I am a multi genre artist… kinda like Beck. We both like to create music that has it’s own sound so it doesn’t really fit into a single box but we label it with a ‘pop’ label or ‘rock’ label so people can tell what we’re going for.
Any new gigs or albums in the future?
I’m focusing on releasing a couple of albums so it kind of takes away the ability to play out as much. My plan is to release as many singles as I can then put them all on an album for each year I release music. I want to be as consistent as possible. In 2022 I released an entire album (my debut album ‘Compound Love’) and it had ten songs on it. I then in the same year released two more singles ‘Red Light and Starlit Love Child’ from my album ‘Red Light’ set to be released in 2023 which is this year.
That's it! I look forward to seeing this on your website and will share it as soon as it's up! Thanks again for taking an interest in me and talk soon!
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