In this episode, Jared sits down with Drew Alexander Ford, also known as That Viola Kid, a violist and content creator reshaping the boundaries of classical music. Drew shares his journey from Juilliard to freelancing on major movie soundtracks like Avatar: Way of Water and recording with legends like John Legend and Hozier. Discover how he founded his hip-hop string quartet, Whole Soul, and why building a personal brand is essential for modern musicians. Drew offers actionable insights on leveraging social media, diversifying income, and creating opportunities in a competitive industry.

"If you can't bet on yourself, who can you bet on?" ...So we, our most recent podcast was about belief and believing in yourself. And I can see that you have a deep belief in yourself. And that manifests in your ability to share your own very vulnerable journey in something that the odds were very much stacked against you.

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- Breaking Into High-end Gigs Masterclass: How I Went From Broke Musician to Thriving By Breaking Into These Largely Unknown High-Paying Gigs

What's up, gigging pros? Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. I am so excited we've got yet another influential musician.

This time we have violist Drew Alexander Ford, also known as that Viola kid. You may have seen some of his amazing Instagram posts, his YouTube channel, his new newsletter, and he has been featured on so many different albums, including recording the Beatles last song. He's also recorded on so many different albums of artists, you know, like John Legend and Hoseier.

He's been featured on a bunch of movie soundtracks, including Avatar, Way of the Water, and then he's also worked as an influencer marketer for some of the top corporations that you probably know of, like Google Meta and so forth. So welcome to The Gigging Musician Podcast. Drew, how's it going?

Thanks for having me, Jared. I'm feeling good, man. Thank you so much. Awesome.

I forgot to also mention your amazing. Your amazing quartet. Sorry, you.

You run a hip hop quartet and the name is escaping me right now. Would you mind just reminding me? It's called the name Whole Soul. That's called Whole Soul.

Whole Soul. That is amazing. And so I'd love to dig into a lot of those different projects.

But first off, tell me about yourself. What's your background as a musician? How did you get into this game and why are you still in it? I. Music has always been a part of my life.

I think even from the womb. I think my dad would put my mom's stomach next to the speaker or the plant earth when it fires. So, like, I'm in the womb, jamming out with the head, gnawing, you know what I'm saying? But when I was finally born, my mom used to play Bach for me when I was a baby to put me to sleep.

A practice, a Pavlovian response that still exists to this day. Somebody puts Bach or there's Bach or Mozart in a concert. I'm out.

Five minutes, I'm out. And it's not because I'm bored, it's just because, like, Bach me in sleepy time. That's amazing.

But I pretty much like, did a course in fourth and fifth grade, and then fifth grade I also did band. I've always been interested in Music. I've always enamored, been enamored by musicians.

And I secretly held this desire to pursue this life as a musician, but I didn't know how to do it. I then was introduced to viola in sixth grade. I chose to make that my life's calling.

And then I took every step I possibly could to tried to become the best viola player I possibly could. Going to school. Robert McDuffie set it for strings as undergraduate studies.

Going to the Juilliard School for my master's. And then after leaving Juilliard, I realized, like, I did not want to be in an orchestra because it just makes me feel like I'm back in. I'm back in high school doing the same thing, you know, with the same people.

And I think that, you know, I try to live by the quotation by Rachmaninoff. Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music. And so I think that there's.

The infinite possibilities that music presents us is way more enticing than trying to supplicate to an elite, exclusive club that is wholly funded by donations and the profits of more successful businesses. Yeah, and that's interesting because I've. I've also played in a bunch of orchestras.

I've even been on the admin team for some. And it did always feel wrong that it was always funded by the haves and those businesses. Like, I just didn't feel like they were sustainable business models.

So I'm curious, backing to your story, what about the viola? Did it spoke to you in such a way that you wanted to become the best at it? I think it was just because it was so unique, it was so underestimated and it was so looked over. And my experience of it was so beautiful and I loved the sound and I loved the role. I love helping people, I love supporting people.

I love being a leader. I love stepping. But I think part of being a leader is knowing when to step back and let other people take the show.

And yeah, it's, it's less work. Like, let's be real, like, I'll get paid more per note. Yeah, that's hilarious.

So I'm also a viola doubler. I play violin and viola. And yeah, it is less.

Fewer notes. Take my job. No, now I'll stay here in Denver.

Well, that is awesome. So you, you went to school for it, you got your master's at Juilliard, and then you realize that the traditional orchestra path was not for you. So how did you, how did you make that decision? And what Steps did you take afterwards realizing, hey, I don't want to take auditions? I mean, I took auditions, Sure, I took auditions.

And you know, I experienced it because part of it is like, it is a calculus of like, okay, do I love music enough to suffer? Right? Do I love music enough to really, you know, to be real?

Like, go on dates with attractive women and see the disappointment in their face when I tell them that I make a living playing the viola? And then the lack of confidence, like, just etched across their face.

Like, these are all things that you really have to contend with if you decide to be a musician. Like, it's like, how can you support a family?

Like, how can you, in the face of, you know, a crippling Social Security, you know, account by the federal government? Like, how are you going to sustain yourself when you are too old and too sick to work? Right? Like, so I'm also trying to play a 30 game, a 30 year game here.

And so I kind of was like, man, okay, so if I really map out the next 30 years of my life, probably the first 10 of those 30 are going to be me trying to either win my first orchestral job or me trying to increase my income by auditioning for other orchestra jobs that probably present a better opportunity than my first job, right?

And I recently had a conversation with my friend Nathan Chan in writing a new newsletter that'll be coming out in the next couple of weeks. And he said something so succinctly that was beautiful. He was like, you know, I think that trying out of any.

We're not even going to talk about other sectors, you know, because other sectors, if you want to increase your income, if you're an employee, all you got to do is just go apply for another job, take the experience that you had from that previous job, lobby and negotiate for a higher pay for a pay raise, and then go join that other job.

If you get hired. In the musician case, you have to first win the job to show that you're a winnable candidate.

And then you have to go through the process again at a different orchestra, probably one that's even more competitive, and then you have to win that job.

And then you have to just hope that they're willing to pay you more. Because oftentimes these salaries, first of all, they don't start out tenured so you can be fired, but then, like, you start and then your salary is capped.

There's no way for a raise, there's no way for promotion. You're just stuck there. So if you, if you sit at 80.

$80,000 a year starting. And you cannot win another job that gets you more. You're now exposing yourself to inflation risk.

You're exposing yourself to all sorts of other externalities that you have no control over. And for me, I like freedom. I like control.

And so I realized if I go the entrepreneurial path, at least my income won't be capped. And if I fail, it will have been my fault. And I'm willing to.

I'm willing to sit with that. But I'm unwilling to have a future where I'm unsuccessful or I'm broke or destitute. And it was no fault of my own.

Yeah, I just can't accept that. That's awesome. I feel like I share a lot of those similar philosophies.

Like, I don't want to be living under the influence of these certain structures that are in place. Like, I'm the kind of person who likes to make my own opportunities. And one thing that resonated with me was if I fail, it's my own fault.

That reminds me of a book, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. Have you ever read that book? I love Jocko. Discipline equals freedom.

I never read the book, though. Yeah, it's good. It's a quick read on Audible.

Sweet. Okay, I'll have to check it out. Oh, sorry.

Are we. I talked. Yeah, let's keep it clean.

But I talked at the same time as you, so people probably won't hear that anyway. Oh, man, that's hilarious. All right, cool.

So tell me about. Then. You.

You made all these big realizations, which I think a lot of musicians still need to make, but you made them for yourself. What did you decide to do about them? Well, it. It's kind of.

I've been doing this for. So I. I pretty much started building my personal brand September 29, 2013, when I downloaded Instagram for the first time and took my first photo.

And I was always on a quest to finding an alternative route to the prescribed orchestral route, because, I mean, I kind of knew going into undergrad that, like, I wanted to have a portfolio career. Chamber of music is my deepest love. That is my deepest passion.

So that doesn't fit into the orchestral model at all. So I was already kind of looking. I wanted to learn about business.

And so one thing led to another, and I was at a conference in Columbus, Ohio, and the keynote speaker of this conference was a guy named Gary Vaynerchuk. You familiar with him? Gary V. Gary V


Gary V. So this was 2013, probably November, October 2013. And he was at that time pitching his, his most recent book.

Jab, jab, jab, right hook. Well, the things he was saying from the stage, like, believe it or not, today, if you post a status on Facebook, you are a media company. And I was like, what? I'm just like a 21 year old kid from Peachtree City, Georgia who plays the viola.

What do you mean? I'm a media company? But it was that, like that shift in mindset that was like, oh, wow. So if I'm a media company, that means I can then build an audience, which means I can then. So what do I need to do to build an audience? I need to make content that people care about.

Okay, what do people like? People like stories. And so I started making, I started this whole series called Journey to Juilliard where I would chronicle rehearsals, my auditions, the flights, just every aspect it took for me to get from being in Macon, Georgia to going to the Juilliard School and auditioning to be in the master's program. I got, I did it all publicly, including like posting like the warm up before my actual audition.

And then I just like let it sit. But this allowed me to build like my first thousand followers because they were like, wow, what's going to happen? Is this guy going to get in? Right?

Like, who would, who would, who would do this? Who would publicly say that they're going to audition for Juilliard with the risk of not getting in? Because at the time, I think the year I got in, it was a 7% acceptance rate. So it's, it's, it was audacious.

But I think that that, like, that, that, that first taste of like, success is what really like, flipped the switch in my brain that building a personal brand is the only way to differentiate yourself in a commodified, commoditized market. So. Yeah, no, that makes total sense.

You. We were actually talking before the podcast about your new newsletter and how, you know, you don't want to rely on the algorithms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. They all can say, oh, we don't like this guy anymore.

And all of a sudden your audience is gone. So now you've decided to diversify and rely on yourself once again with, with your newsletter. Yeah, always bet on yourself.

No, that's amazing. If you can't bet on yourself, who can you bet on? That's so true. And that's a great message for our listeners too.

So we, our most recent podcast was about belief and believing in yourself. And I can see that you have a deep belief in yourself. And that manifests in your ability to share your own very vulnerable journey in something that the odds were very much stacked against you.

You had a 93 chance of failure, yet I feel like you believed in yourself. You weren't necessarily. You know, I get the sense that regardless of what the outcome would have been, you still would have been successful.

Oh, yeah. No, that was the. That was the game.

Now you got it. I was like. I saw it as like, if I lose, this is gonna be the greatest underdog story of all time.

I was, like, thinking Mighty Ducks. I was like, okay. So I had.

I had the contingency plan. If I don't get in, then I'm going to prove to the world that you can be a successful musician without going to Juilliard. Yeah, but I got in.

So I was like, well, I don't know. Maybe like, I owe all of my success to this one school, I guess, right? Bummer. You got into Juilliard.

Oh, darn it. Yeah. All right.

So cool. Getting back to the other story, when you mentioned, you know, you started whole soul as a reaction to not necessarily wanting to be in a traditional orchestra, what was the. The impetus for starting a hip hop quartet? Because that is very unheard of.

There aren't that many modern string quartets that go beyond just classical. Like, of course there are a couple. And, you know, I both know Tracy Silverman, who is.

Was in one of those. The Turtle Island String Quartet. But what made you start your own? The same thing that made me gravitate to the viola.

It's because nobody's doing it. Like, I don't want to do things that people are doing. That's not interesting.

Like, if you learn, if you look at any ecosystem, like, in nature, if there is a finite amount of grass and every organism in that ecosystem tries to eat grass, there are going to people, there are going to be organisms that go hungry and die.

So I look for pastures that are, like, not really grazed upon. And I ask myself, why are they not grazed upon? And my conclusion for the hip hop string quartet was that it's because most people who do what I do think that hip hop music is not a valid music genre.

They're like, ugh, I don't get it. It doesn't make sense to me. But instead of thinking that way, I decided to seek to understand.

And so, like, back in 2018, I went. I did my homework with hip hop. I went all the way back to the 70s with the.

With African Bambaata and Grandmaster Flash. And like, the Origins of hip hop. And then I went all the way.

I want to understand my place in the evolution of hip hop so I could understand how I could serve the art form. And so I think it's not just like I wanted to do a gimmick. It's like, no, I want to add to this art form that I love and I wanted to understand it.

So I think coming from that, that place of understanding and seeing that nobody else was doing it was like the perfect little recipe to realize, like, maybe this is worth my time. Yeah, like pursue. No, that's great.

I love that you're not just trying to be a recreation of hip hop. You're trying to actually bring the art form, advance it further. There's a synergy that's possible for sure.

How do you accomplish that on traditional string instruments? Violin, viola, cello. Well, there are a couple of things that I'm discovering are necessary. And Tracy Silverman talks about groove.

It's. It's not enough to just play the music, but there's a rhythmic pocket that one has to understand to really create that boom, bap, snap with the rhythm. Oftentimes, classical musicians like to play in anticipation of the beat because they're following.

It's all about following. But I feel like grooving is about trusting the pulse and sitting in it and being late, even being a little late. It's all good.

It actually adds a little bit of, a little bit of, you know, stank to the, to the vibe. And so in understanding that, I realized, okay, that's element number one. Number two.

Hip hop is a rhythmic genre. So it's not just about playing the chords. And I think that's what dissuades a lot of string players because what we do is we're monophonic players.

We play one line and it's often melodic. So if there's no melody, it means it can't be played on our instruments. But I like want to combat that notion.

And I think that, you know, extended techniques like chopping and scraping and soft chopping can create the rhythmic textures that, you know, R and B, soul and hip hop require.

And doing it on a string instrument I think is novel enough because yes, rock and bluegrass has been done, and yes, hip hop has been done, but I haven't really seen like the real like rhythm guitar esque playing applied to hip hop before. So I think that's.

That's our thesis with wholesale. That's awesome. Very cool.

What kind of gigs have you guys played? We typically will do corporate engagements for. So we've done, we've done a couple of holiday parties for a holding company. We recently started working with a luxury event planner out of San Francisco.

And so we will fly all across the country for super high net worth individuals and we will play music for their events in that way. So that fuels our, that income fuels our ability to expand our business and to fund our more creative avant garde projects. Yeah, for sure.

Well, that's awesome. A lot of our listeners are very interested in corporate events. I also play a bunch myself on just solo electric violin with backing tracks.

There you go. I'm trying to get in that game too. I'm still, still not there yet as a soloist.

Oh, you could do it. It's a lot easier than you think. Yeah, it's got to build the infrastructure.

Right? So that's kind of, that's part of it for sure. I'll show you all my secrets after this. Woo.

Okay, I'm ready. All right, well, sweet. I'm curious though, how did you get, how did you like build up your first gigs and awareness for Whole Soul? Well, luckily I had built a personal brand before I did it, so I already had a little bit of attention.

And that, that's a, that was a, that was really instrumental, pun intended to getting the first grant. But I think that like you kind of have to be willing. I'm realizing that, yes, I've been a professional violist.

I've been gigging since I was 16. I've been doing for 16 years. Right.

But wholesale is like barely a year old. And when you're starting a new brand, it has no history. It doesn't matter who's in, it doesn't matter how professional everybody is.

It's a new brand, it's a new entity. So you kind of have to have that beginner's mindset. And so we were playing house parties before we even even known as Whole Soul.

We were playing a lot of house parties. We then started playing a lot of these candlelight gigs, which was good because that's money in the bank for us as individuals. But it was also practice for us to play as an ensemble together.

And it's also really great lead generation because if you take the time to go and talk to your audience. I forget who told me this, but a musician friend of mine said it's securing your next gig when you go and you talk to the audience afterward. Yeah, we were asking, people were asking for business cards, people were asking for emails.

Like we were having them follow our account. Wholesale music and you know, we would get the off, we would get the odd here and there gig request. But I started it very intentionally in that like I do not want to do.

I want to, I want to, I want to do as few low budget gigs with wholesale as possible. I'm trying to build this as a luxury service. So if our brand is luxury, we should not be doing non luxury work.

Right. At least in the specific vertical that we're targeting. So it's been a challenge.

I've had to say no to a lot of potential money because it just did not meet our criteria. Like the client was not qualified in the way that I think that our business is looking for. So yeah, it's something's got to leave money on the table for sure.

And that could be the hardest thing is to say no. But it's absolutely essential to define your value so you can say yes to something else. Because people talk.

If you're saying, if you're saying yes to $40,000 engagements, but you're also saying yes to $5,000 engagements, what does that say about your brand? Maybe that was a particularly hard ask from the client.

And so it required that amount of capital to like put on to give that service. But more than likely, you know, people will talk and be like, well, I mean I got them for five grand, so I don't know what, I don't know what happened with you.

Right. And you just don't want people having those conversations behind your back. Yeah, for sure.

That's awesome. I also love that you're thinking about lead gen while you just finished playing a concert. That's very entrepreneurial of you and a lot of our musicians would enjoy hearing that you're always generating leads everything you do.

Because what are we doing? We're providing service. And so people see you do that and they're like, I want them to do that for me. So just make it easy for them.

For sure. I was wondering if we could pivot now briefly to some of the logos that I've seen on your website, including of course Beatles and Hozier and the movie posters. Tell me about that side of what you do.

Yeah, so it's. I am, I am just like everyone else. I'm a freelancer.

So by building my brand as a social media influencer, I've had the opportunity to work with companies like PepsiCo and Marriott and Google and Meta because my insights as an influencer are valuable. Sometimes I'll be interviewed for UI UX development. Sometimes I'll be interviewed for, for future products.

Is this something that you'd be interested in as a creator. But even then, sometimes it's like we would love for you to make an influencer ad for us so we can connect to a specific audience. And so those opportunities are few and far between.

I maybe get like one or two of those a year, but I think that's just strictly a function of how much content I create in general. But also like being a solopreneur, I just don't have the bandwidth to do all of the email negotiations for everything while also managing my freelance career while also managing my quartet. So it's, it's.

I'm doing the best I can. Yeah, you got, you got a lot of irons and a lot of fires. Yeah, man.

It's not a, this is not a one person job. Yeah. Have you ever considered hiring like a virtual assistant?

Yes, it's actually, it's actually on my, it's on my, it's on my not to do list, but it's on my like aspirational chart for this year is I'm currently developing standard operating procedures for all of my least favorite tasks, including loom videos detailing exactly how I like to have it done, a checklist, yada, yada yada, all that boring business stuff.

Because I, I've learned that that's what's required. Yeah. I've tried to hire some kids to help me out on an ad hoc basis, but they don't know what to do.

They don't know what I'm looking for. And I realized that that was my fault after reading extensively about the topic. So for sure it boils back down to extreme ownership.

Everything good and bad in my life is all my fault. Yeah. Well, I can help you out with that too.

We should definitely chat more about that. Would love to. Hell yeah.

Sweet. Well, that's great. So you freelance a lot and a lot of these opportunities just come because you are on the roster for a lot of contractors.

Is that the idea? Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so that's the influencer side.

That's, that's where all the brands come from, the Sony's and things like that. But when it comes to the movies and the television that I get to be a part of, that is very specifically still freelance, but it is, there are, there are contractors in Los Angeles that have these companies as clients and they need, they have a Rolodex of players to execute the job.

And so I started out, when I moved out here in 2018, I was playing recording sessions in people's living rooms for documentaries that were Never, never released for $100 and pizza.

Oh, wow. And just. And I was.

I was a ringer for Colburn. I was ringer for UC Fullerton Orchestra. I was a ringer for a bunch of different orchestras around town.

And then I would like, anytime there was a performance, I would just say yes. I said yes to everything. I showed up an hour early.

I made sure that I was over prepared for every job so that the easiest decision a contractor ever had was calling me again. That was the goal. And so I did that.

And then over time, I think I built a reputation as like a reliable player. And so when you build that reputation, then people who have bigger more or bigger asks that have more at stake, they then know that they can possibly take a chance on you. I had a few.

Over a course of a couple of years, I had different contractors take one chance on me. I think I did the job well. And then it slowly started to precipitate until 2022, which things just kind of kicked up a gear and now I'm in the game.

Yeah. That's awesome. I showed my wife your website and I showed her the Hoser logo.

We went to Red Rocks last year and we camped out for like four hours before it opened because she is. She's a big fan of Hoseier, so she was excited about that. Yeah.

So nice. Yeah, that's awesome. He's a sweetie.

Cool. Great music too. He's got Bill Withers vibes.

Absolutely. We are getting close to the end of our episode here. I was wondering if you could go into our kind of like rapid fire advice for gigging musicians sessions.

What kind of advice would you give to the musicians listening to this? Hmm. Know what you want to do, what do you want to happen? I think that when I talk to a lot of, I'll get coffee with people who just moved to town or you know, people who just kind of want to meet me and they. They ask me for advice and.

And I honestly have to ask them, what do you want to happen? And oftentimes they don't know. They're just like, I just want to do a lot. And I'm like, okay, yeah.

So, you know, I try to take the Charlie Munger rest in peace, the Charlie Munger approach of contrarian thinking where, okay. Instead of thinking like, how do I get all these gigs? Like, what do I have to do to make sure I never get these gigs? Right? And then ask yourself that and work backwards.

So I moved out to Los Angeles with the expression purpose of playing on major motion picture soundtracks so that I could then begin, you know, working on my, you know, playing viola, but also building a.

The possibility to have enough income to be able to retire one day. So I was like, okay, this is probably one of the most highly leveraged actions that I can do as a viola player and as a contractor at the same time. Right.

Otherwise, the more highly leveraged stuff is owning your own business and providing value to, you know, the one solution to many. Right. Approach to business.

So I was like, okay, if I wanted. If I didn't ever want to be called for motion picture soundtracks, I would probably build a reputation of being late. I build a reputation of not necessarily hitting every queue, needing multiple takes to do simple stuff.

I would probably never talk to any contractors. I would never say thank you. I would never give them thank you notes.

I would never truly, truly try to get to know my colleagues and connect with them. Right. Just.

Just start listing out all the things that it would take to not get there and just do the opposite. And so I kind of like, mentally did that. And it took five years, took four and a half years, but it finally started to work out for me.

That's awesome. That is, like, great piece of advice. And I never really thought of it doing it that way.

So I hope our listeners got a lot out of that. Were there any questions that you wish I would have asked you? I think you did an amazing job in your research and your preparation, Jared. Like, I honestly don't have any questions that I wish you'd ask me.

I really appreciate the conversation. Yeah, my pleasure is actually really enjoyable on my side. I'm very glad that we had a chat.

Okay, cool. So I'll probably cut that out. I get a little awkward sometimes.

I'm super awkward. So the last question then is, how can our listeners learn more about you and your projects? Okay. The first line of defense is definitely my Instagram @thatviolakid.

I also have a YouTube channel that I'm currently under a revamping. I'm auditioning some different editors, so I can definitely crank that back out again. So both of those are.

That Viola kid, you can find me on Instagram, YouTube, but please subscribe to my newsletter. I'm on substack. That Viola kid there as well.

And I really want to understand how I can be of service to people who, you know, are kind of like either, you know, like junior in undergrad, not quite sure what to expect when they jump to the landscape of this broader musical industry.

And even people who are like, you know, maybe you're finishing your masters, and you're like, man, maybe I should go get a dma. Just stall for time before I have to join the real world.

Like, I'm writing this newsletter for you. I'm trying to, like, deliver value and kind of, like, you know, share some of my experience from being on the front lines for 10 years and like, maybe help you get a little closer to making a decision that's, like, really going to get you closest to the dream life that you envision for yourself. That's awesome.

And I can also attest to the value of Drew's newsletter. I'm on it. And the last two have been absolutely fire.

All right, well, Drew, AKA that Viola kid, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Gigging Musician podcast, and to our listeners, my pleasure. I hope you all got a lot out of this.

This episode was packed with some actionable insights, some great stories, and go ahead and follow Drew on all of his platforms, subscribe to his new newsletters, and remember, "Your music will not market itself!".

Bye, everybody.