Meet OJR | writer, musician, etc.

We had the good fortune of connecting with OJR and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi OJR, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
(Though I’ve found success and made money throughout the years as both a model and actor, I am known primarily for my career in music. This answer will deal specifically with my journey as a professional musician).

While I’ve been playing music and performing on stage as a musician since I was a small child, I ended up going on to study something other than music as an undergrad at New York University. There, my major was Romance languages (i.e. the family of languages that descend from Latin; I studied Spanish, French, and Italian, in particular). My minor, on the other hand, was creative writing. So I was still studying and engaging plenty with art — something I’ve always adored and felt immensely passionate about — in workshops and lectures at NYU, but I was now on a path that seemed to be leading me more towards an eventual career in literature — perhaps as an author, journalist, or translator — than in music: my first real passion since childhood, and the one with which I had for so long been associated while growing up.

Despite the fact that I was not enrolled in any music program while studying at university, I remained constantly playing and working on music outside of school, always writing and recording my songs whenever I could find the time, between homework, socializing, and my campus job as an RA. My freshman year, for example, a few classmates and I organized a group in our residence hall to audition for the school-wide talent show (it was a well-known piece of trivia around campus that Lady Gaga had won this very competition, when she herself was enrolled as an undergrad at NYU, several years earlier). While our group didn’t win the final round, we competed in it — managing to best many other talented performers in the prelims and advance to the finals, where we performed on stage for nearly 1,000 attendants. The next year, as a sophomore, I competed in the same competition — this time alone, rapping on a hip-hop track I had produced myself.

So, even though I was not directly involved with a fine-arts program at school, all throughout my time at NYU I remained very much focused on fostering my identity and role as a musician and performer. Despite the heavy workload of my undergrad years, I never took any sort of break or time away from my songwriting and the music on which I worked so fervently in my spare time. I tried to juggle all my many varied interests as best as — and with as much balance as — I possibly could.

But as the school years went on, I gradually began to lose interest in my schoolwork, especially the gen.-ed. classes I was required to take but had no practical interest in at that time in my life (physics comes to mind!) All throughout my upbringing I was a keen and voraciously curious student; so it was only natural that I thoroughly enjoyed the language classes, writing workshops, and philosophy seminars I took while at NYU. But I enjoyed even more the alone-time I could carve out to sit down on my bed with a guitar and just write, write, write. Nothing ever beat that — and nothing does today either. That’s my happiest place, as an artist.

At some point during my sophomore year at school, I began to share my self-recorded songs — which were mostly acoustic, folk ballads, in the vein of artists like Elliott Smith, Iron & Wine, and Conor Oberst — to Tumblr, a popular blogging and social-networking site at that time. Soon after, I began receiving messages and replies to my posts from a mix of both strangers and friends from ‘IRL.’ To my relief, these notes were quite literally always positive — people writing to say that they had listened to one of my crudely recorded songs and really enjoyed it. Maybe they’d mention digging the sound of my voice, or a particular lyric in one of my songs they found to be deeply moving or impactful to them. Little sentiments like that. But it was always positive, and always encouraging.

As awkward as it can be to discuss this kind of thing about yourself — I never want to sound like I’m boasting, you know — it’s just the truth: I was fortunate enough to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback early on, at a pivotal juncture in my life. And it made all the difference for me, in the soul-searching I was doing as a college student at that time, knowing I possessed the skills to pursue a career in the arts, if I were willing to “take the leap” and go for it. As I’ve already mentioned, by the time I was an undergrad at NYU, I had been writing and performing original music for years. So I had, by that point, already gotten through a lot of the growing pains around learning to put myself out there as a performer, take a risk of falling flat on my face in the hopes I might succeed and connect with an audience, etc. But I was still young, of course, and still in only the early stages of making that big leap into being a *career* artist or a *professional* musician full-time. I’ve always kept an open mind, and have long demonstrated a very wide, polymathic set of skills and interests, so I was willing to consider a whole slew of different possibilities when it came to deciding on a career for myself after college. But, with the right push — like the one I had gotten from those early supporters on Tumblr and from friends alike — I was destined to choose the life of a professional artist.

By mentioning my success with finding on Tumblr a totally positive and receptive audience (however humble and small it was in those early days), that’s not to suggest that I *never* received any sort of criticism — constructive or otherwise — outside of Tumblr, because I certainly did, here and there. But I lucked out in the sense that the vast majority of feedback I was receiving about my creative efforts at that time — at a transformative crossroads in my journey, and the launch-point from early creative development (adolescence) to career artist (adulthood) — was supportive, encouraging, and soul-affirming. There’s a lovely word in the Spanish language, ‘plasmar.’ It’s a verb that means something like, ‘to (adequately) capture, convey, reflect, portray, or express (an emotion, idea, sentiment, etc.)’ What those kind words of support and positive feedback from my friends and early fans on Tumblr seemed to communicate to me was that something I was doing — in the raw, naïve art I was rather bashfully putting out into the world then — was working. ¡Había plasmado! Without even realizing it consciously, I was influenced enough by the relatively meager yet crucial bit of positive feedback and encouragement I had received, that I wanted to keep doing it, sharing my music with others. It confirmed for me, once and for all, that there *could* in fact be a market for my art, some demand for the ideas, thoughts, and feelings I express through song. That one day — if I keep going — these fifteen strangers on Tumblr, or these fifteen friends from my hometown texting me about my most recent post could suddenly be fifteen thousand. Or fifteen million! ‘Cause why not? It gave me the push I needed to stick with it and never look back.

I didn’t return to NYU the following semester. I had taken the sweet leap.

You see, it’s often overlooked just how badly we all need reinforcement and verbal affirmation in our lives. Sometimes I’ll read posts on the internet about someone who received some seemingly small, fleeting little piece of a quick, easy compliment years ago, and yet it has stuck with them till this day. Maybe they *still* wear that one tee-shirt that got them a positive response from a crush or a coworker… eight-and-a-half years ago! I think that says it all. Everyone needs a little backup. We all have our own insecurities, and anyone can be forgiven for having them. Life is hard and can feel mighty lonely. Sometimes all it takes is a single moment or interaction of friendly encouragement and support when you weren’t expecting it, and that can put enough wind in your sails to circumnavigate the world until the end of time. Encouragement is beautiful like that. Compliments can feel divine, and not merely for vain reasons. But also because every single one of us — in the deepest recesses of our own tender humanity — longs to feel accepted. To feel good enough by others. We need that. We *all* need that. So encouragement can save lives. Positive feedback can change lives. I was fortunate enough to receive that when I needed it most: at that metamorphic time in my life when I was deciding just who exactly I was to become — not only as an artist, but as a human being — and taking those first thrilling steps into the great unknown of a boundless, new adulthood.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
The most important thing I would want the world to know about me, as an artist or any other role I’ve filled throughout my life, is that I never devoted myself to deliberately making anyone else’s time on earth harder than it already is. I never used my time to cause pain — (justified or not) — to anyone else. I never concerned myself with self-delusions of revenge, getting even, hitting back, or seeking to make someone else feel small, so that I might feel big. I never occupied myself with even a moment’s desire to destroy anyone, to hate anyone, or to wound anyone.

I’ve devoted the vast majority of my life to the private experience of being an artist and a humanist, and that’s a very peaceful existence in the way that I live it. I believe that whenever this life ends for any one of us, and our respective cards get punched at the big bright light of dawn, that the next plane is a realm in which only peace exists, and that we finally return to our natural state: a state in which we once more feel only acceptance and happiness, never rejection or hurt. As ‘hippie-dippy’ as it might sound to the less spiritually-inclined among us, that true state is Love, plain and simple. Love is what comes next. And all we can do is try to maximize our awareness of and our perceived proximity to it in the time that we’re here on earth.

I have not always been a gentleman, or nearly patient enough. I have made ugly, foolish mistakes of which I have been regretfully ashamed. But I have also acknowledged that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. I have been both a saint and a sinner in my time, and hopefully not in equal measure.

Most importantly, though, I’ve learned to confront my own mistakes, make sincere apologies to the ones I’ve wronged and heartfelt attempts to atone for my shortcomings, and to grow from them each time. I have desired to never be defined by any of my mistakes, but by the fact that I will hold myself accountable to own up to them, confront them head-on — with a difficult-but-necessary honesty — and then resolve not to make the same ones moving forward.

I do not claim to be anyone’s guru or messiah. I know that I am far from everyone’s cup of tea. And I know that not everyone can be aware of my own code I possess within, as private and impossible-to-define as it is. Who, really, can be faulted for not fully understanding me? You haven’t lived the life I’ve lived. That’s why I forgive you, just as I would want you to be willing to forgive me.

But what I can confidently claim for myself, and for the way I’ve chosen to spend my time on earth, is the undeniable truth that I have, since my very first brushes with self-awareness in early childhood, felt an immensely staggering, overwhelming amount of compassion in the face of suffering by others around me. I’ve felt, at times, that such visceral compassion might break me, should I spend too much time staring right at it. Yes, I’ve been so viciously raw and moved to tears by the despairing pain of others — the torturous cries, one time, of a little boy being hit by his father on the other side of a hotel room’s walls; or the anguished gaze of terminal pain, as I stared into the eyes of an opossum bleeding out on the side of the road — that I’ve wondered if I’m fit for this life at all. Or am I too fragile? Too vulnerable to assuming the injury of others when I’m confronted with it, or the thought of it alone. It has always been like that for me. Hell, even when someone betrays me in my darkest hour, stabs me in the back with a molten-hot knife— I end up feeling bad for them, somehow, and then I can never stay mad, and I just give up on any callous disregard I might have thought I could have in response to them.

I’ve been called a lot of things, and many of them are accurate. But anyone who has ever charged me with apathy couldn’t be further from the truth.

I am a lot of things. But I am not apathetic.

Since childhood, my problem — if you can call it that — has always been caring ‘too much.’

And I think that’s the reason why I was drawn to art in the first place. I intuitively understood — and continue to understand — that it offers, to anyone willing to engage with it, a sanctuary to FEEL. To live in one’s emotions, both good and bad. I’ve often said that my songs are my best friends. But I could just easily say art is my best friend.

And what I mean by that is: when life really does feel like suffering — and no one seems to want to take your call — you can turn to the art and, for that brief, sweet moment, feel acceptable again. Feel good enough again. Feel capable again.

In my view, art is another tool of compassion — though it’s not the only one. But it does tend to be my favorite, and that’s why I’ve chosen a life spent as an artist.

I am a complicatedly flawed human being, and I will continue to make mistakes until the day my flame burns out.

But all I’d want the world to know is that I truly did spend so much time, in the years that I was alive, feeling and processing, in the private confines of my own heart and soul, nothing but a bottomless love and passionate, tender care for all other life around me. I weep at the sight of a dying opossum on the side of the road, half-run-over by a two-ton car. And then I go home, and I write my song about it.

I adore life in all its forms, and the mystery of its existence. And that is why I make art. And that is all I really ever need anyone to know.

I love you.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Dinner at Lockeland Table or Folk (both on the Eastside) -> catch a show at the Ryman -> pop into Robert’s for 20-30 minutes, just long enough to give the visitor an idea of the ‘honky-tonk’ thing, and the epic amount of musical talent in Nashville on any given night of the week -> get a car from downtown to Rudy’s for some late-night jazz and a nightcap <3

When I had friends from the UK visit a few years back, they spent a day or two in Nashville, and then wanted to get out of the city to experience the gorgeous nature around Tennessee. So we piled into a car and drove down to my uncle’s cabin, deep in the Lynchburg woods, for some lake hangs on the water. Beautiful time! (And, yes, we did do dinner at Lockeland and a show at the Ryman before leaving town).

Nash is best in the summer time. Like many other cities, thing slow down here in the winter. I always recommend people visit May-September for peak hangs. It’s a very lush, green city, and that’s best experienced when the weather’s nice.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I had so many precocious friends in childhood and adolescence who, like myself, demonstrated a sincere effort to be curious, open-minded, tolerant, well-rounded, and intelligent individuals. I’d start naming them all, but there are too many to list here.

I always thought, growing up, that our bland little sports-loving suburb must be the absolute *worst* place for a self-aware, young artist like the one I was to get his start. But all these years later — having ‘been around the block’ and back again — it’s now much easier to appreciate my stiff hometown and secure upbringing, when I reflect on how fortunate I was to be surrounded by as many smart, decent, talented, ambitious, and diverse peers as I was throughout grade school. While certainly not a utopia for any one of us, the stable and well-managed environment in which we grew up offered many of us a safe and resourceful space to develop, learn, experiment, and make our typically juvenile mistakes — all from which we could grow — throughout childhood. It didn’t hurt that our area was, relative to many other places, an affluent one overall; so there was enough money invested towards the schools and various extracurricular programs available to foster a richly fertile and robust learning environment (for many — though, not all). Add to that a long list of dedicated, attentive, and compassionate teachers, coaches, and instructors I learned from and observed for years, and I happened to end up with an invaluable education and a formative childhood that was conducive to shaping and stimulating the wide range of qualities, skills, and interests I continue to demonstrate and cultivate today, as an adult.

Qualities like maturity, social awareness, emotional intelligence, and perceptiveness. Diversity of thought, and well-roundedness. Pushing back against groupthink. Asking questions. Accepting others who are different from you. Trying hard, making an effort. Going the distance. Striving for something.

I was not the only one in my peer group who was concerned with these timeless aspirations. Sure, I was born with my own unique DNA sequence that, in some measure, predisposed me to the strengths and weaknesses I possess as a person today. But it isn’t nature ‘versus’ nurture—

it’s nature AND nurture. Both make the difference together.

And for that I have my many childhood friends, hometown elders, and stable upbringing to thank for helping me, in part, to get where I am today. I imagine that we all influenced and inspired each other to try harder and do better, feeding off of each other’s appetites and filling in each other’s cracks, most of the time probably unconsciously. I learned a great deal from both my peers and my mentors alike. And I would like to think that these people know who they are, all these years later, and that they feel the same warm appreciation for our shared background as I do today. Indeed, our suburb was a terribly safe place to spend the first 18 years of life — not at all like the colorful grit of a more adventurous or glamorous setting like New York City or Los Angeles. But what it lacked in edge or excitement, it more than made up for in gentle stability, a rock-solid public-school education, and a diverse array of ambitious, open-minded, young people who were as receptive to the benevolent message of iconic leaders like MLK as I was. Was it perfect? Of course not. But something about it worked, because I wasn’t the only one who left there wanting to try hard in life, pay attention, grow as a person, and treat others with kindness and respect, in the hopes that it would all amount to a fulfilling and ‘successful’ life. In fact, I was surrounded by many others with the same values.

I think, in hindsight, the only difference might’ve been that I was probably the only one who would rather be famous than rich.

Website: https://ojrmusic.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/delta8infusedcommunionwafers/

Image Credits
Ashley Treece; Jake Giles Netter