Balancing Acts is Metal Insider’s new column, in which artists explain the challenges within the music industry by juggling day jobs or multiple jobs while pursuing their musical careers. Crowdkill artist Nathan James, gearing up for his new album Hollywood Mortician (out July 11th), has teamed up with Metal Insider to share his story. For over a decade, he’s been immersed in the world of creativity, running his own business. Now, he discusses how that entrepreneurial path intersects and blends with his evolving music career.
“I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur since being in college, and that has included photography, videography, and music. However, I first started with hand-painting shoes, and that’s what led me into photography and videography, which then led me into my own music career.
I have been a full-time artist for the past 11 years, and the goal for me is not to have to rely on photography financially, which has started to happen the last two years because my main focus is my music career, and that’s what I enjoy the most. I think I enjoy creating the most visual content for myself because they are my own ideas and I can execute them how I want them, versus having to shoot someone else’s vision. I’ll always be a photographer, but how active I’ll be, I hope continues to get less and less because I would love to start taking less jobs just because I need the money or it’s good pay.
I hope eventually, as my music career continues to grow, that I will no longer need to rely on any sort of photography jobs whatsoever, and I can purely just pick and choose based on the fact, do I want to do that or not.
My biggest thing is I love creating, and I love seeing the vision come to life, and I love when other people enjoy the work that I’ve done. Being a musician allows me to tackle several art mediums like the sound, visuals, storytelling, theatrics, and styling. There’s so much involved in everything behind being a musician, and I absolutely love it. I plan on doing this until literally I am dead in the ground. It is not a job to me whatsoever to do any of this. It is fun as fuck. I feel like a little kid building forts in the backyard all day long and I love it.
