Founder, Chief Creative Officer, Musician
Current City: Nashville.
Current Job and Entrepreneurial Focus: Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at RootNote, co-founder of pop/rock duo Moonlight Social.
Notable Prior Jobs: Associate Editor at Texas Music magazine and Senior Writer for various music outlets.
When I Started Performing: My youngest memories of music were from when I was 7 or 8 years old in school. I'm fortunate enough to have a mom who encouraged me to try any musical instrument I wanted, so I floated around from things like viola and trumpet until I took a serious interest in the drum line in high school and college. I started my first band as a guitar player and writer and jr high with some buddies in a basement.
Performing Arts Background: I began writing, recording, and performing as a solo musician in high school. At the University of Texas at Austin I joined the marching band and eventually ended up the section leader of the tenor section in the drum line. While in college I also met my best friend and bandmate Jennica Scott. We formed our duo Moonlight Social while we were both still in college and started touring around Texas and eventually much of the U.S. During my time at the University of Texas I studied writing and film, so I have also been closely linked to those worlds my whole life and write/direct/film our music videos as well as some short films and other projects.
How did your performing arts background supercharge your entrepreneurship? My band is and always will be my first company and foray into entrepreneurship. The moment you start ordering merch you're pretty much hooked from there. But as a performer and content creator, what I do is absolutely inseparable from my work with RootNote, which I co-founded with my brother. Our company is laser focused on helping content creators address problems and opportunities that are both specifically unique to performers and creators yet universal in concept to all businesses. So from a very literal standpoint, my performing arts background *is* my entrepreneurship. But on another level, I believe being involved in the arts helps you learn early skills that are invaluable when it comes to startup life. It helps learn how to work as a team and listen to each other. Marching band especially, where I was part of 6 people inside a drum line of 30 people inside a band of 400 people. There are direct parallels between what it takes to make something like that work and what it takes to make a startup work.
Favorite Performer: This is... probably an impossible question to answer? I love a great frontperson in a rock band, so from a stage performance perspective I've always been mesmerized by how people like Stephan Jenkins (Third Eye Blind) and Brent Smith (Shinedown) essentially hold the crowd in the palm of their hand. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd is probably my favorite guitarist. Jim Carrey is probably my favorite actor. There are so many performers who just bring something unmistakable to every performance.
Follow this Performer:
Twitter - @moonlightsocial
Instagram - @moonlightsocial
Facebook - moonlightsocialmusic
TikTok - @moonlightsocial
