Discovering Musical and Photographic Connections in Unexpected Places
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Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Hello friends, Scott Wyden Kivowitz here, your host of Lenses & Lyrics. This is the first ever episode of this show. This is something that I have been wanting to do for [00:01:00] years.I would even dare to say over a decade, and I don't know why I procrastinated so much, but over the years I've come to realize.
That there are so many photographers that are musicians. Some don't play anymore, some still do. Some are still actively in bands. Some just go and photograph concerts, you name it. So I had this idea of connecting photographers and having these conversations of connecting with photographers that are musicians at heart or still actively musicians and or,
just photographers who photograph bands who don't actually play themselves, or musicians that were impacted by photography. And so that's why the show exists. I've been wanting to do it, as I said, for over a decade, and now it's coming to fruition, and so I thought I would kick off episode one. With a quick story about my musical past, [00:02:00] and I have this all available at scottwyden.com/music, so you can also check it out there.
And this episode will actually be embedded there as well to listen to as you explore my musical past.
Scott's Musical Journey Begins
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Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So growing up I was forced to play music. I had no choice as many do in school. in the United States, you are, you're in music class and you're forced to choose an instrument. You don't have to stick with it forever, but you have to do it at least for I guess a year or whatever.
it is. And for some reason my parents picked clarinet for me. I don't remember having the choice. Now it turned out I was really good at playing clarinet, so I played a lot. I played, at Temple. I played all over. I played at graduation ceremonies, and you name it, I was playing everywhere.
College and Career Shifts
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Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And then when it came time to figure out college, I knew I was going into to college for music, [00:03:00] and I knew I wanted to go to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. And I knew that I could get in playing clarinet. Now, I went to a small high school. I graduated with 87 people, and my high school did not prepare me for Berklee College of Music, so I didn't last too long at the school.
However,I did get in to Berklee. I wound up playing, two songs on the recording that I did. One was a Kenny G Song. I don't remember what the other song was, off the top of my head. and I actually wanted to do music recording as my career. I wanted to own a recording studio and record bands for a living.
it's funny how things come full circle because I'm now in the photography industry, but doing podcasting and, I'm dealing with audio and video all the time, so things come full circle and things work out the way they're supposed to. But, that was a little fast forward. I'm gonna rewind again.
I'm gonna Berklee College of Music. I had a lot of great times there. I made a lot of good friends there a lot of great stories that came out of going to Berklee, but I [00:04:00] was not prepared for the intense music theory that is required to be there and the intense, skillset required beyond just playing like notation and things like that, which I never had any interest in.
I just wanted to play for fun and record bands. But even as a recording major, the amount of music theory and all that stuff that was required was over my head. I really had a bad time, at the college from the education side. So I moved back home and went to a county college that actually had a fantastic music program.
They also had a music recording program and a recording studio. And I did another year, or I believe it was another year in that degree. Until I realized I still absolutely hate this. So after talking to a lot of friends and family, I switched to photography. I've always had interest in photography, and turned out that the college I was going to also had one of the best photography programs in the entire state [00:05:00] of New Jersey.
So I wound up getting a associate's degree in photography technology, which was amazing. And, I've been doing photography ever since.
Band Experiences and Transitions
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Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right now, just again to rewind a bit, during high school I was actually in a pop punk band called 20 Minutes to Nowhere. we weren't bad, to be honest.
we were not bad, but it was very stereotypical pop punk. our singer was not a singer, but we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun doing it, and we played a lot of shows and.it was a good learning experience, especially as a first band. Okay, now the demo tape is available on my landing page for my musical past.
If you wanna listen to the demo tape, it is there for you to listen to. then after that band dismantled. I actually started a screamo band. It was a hardcore band, that,We lasted for a little bit. we rehearsed and practiced so much, and we [00:06:00] only played one show, but the one show we played was with the band Penfold, who's one of my favorite bands of all time.
And The Assistant who, one of the guys from The Assistant was actually in one of my favorite hardcore bands ever called You & I. So it was just areally good show to play. But we broke up after that show. Now the interesting thing. About these two bands, 20 Minutes to Nowhere and Sever the Stars.
Members of 20 Minutes to Nowhere went on to be in Sever the Stars and I went on after Sever the Stars to be in another band, which I'll talk about. And then one of the guitarists from 20 Minutes to Nowhere also went solo for a little bit. and I believe he even moved to Nashville, I believe. Don't quote me on that.
and he came out of a show and he became one of the most impressive songwriters I've heard in recent years.very [00:07:00] much like folk Indie. Acoustic, jam band. So, so good. His name is Sean Walsh and that is also linked, on my musical past page. and now he's playing with his band, but it's under the name, the National Reserve.
So he is not technically solo anymore, even though he was never really solo. He always had a backing band, but so he is playing under the National Reserve. Members of Sever the Stars, this is a really interesting thing. members of Sever the Stars went on again to the next band that I was in.
and one started a solo project called Boy Vs Ghost. and really creative, music, different experimental things, and. Also, two of the members went on to be in a band called Bed Light for Blue Eyes. That did extremely well for quite some time and then eventually they broke up as well, but their music was quite fantastic.
now then I was in a band called Fairmont, and this was the band that was probably [00:08:00] in the longest. The Wikipedia says I was only in the band for a year. I was definitely in the band for way more than a year. So I don't know the exact years that I was in it, but it was early two thousands and. The band is called Fairmont.
The lead And this main songwriter Neil was previously in two bands. He was in a punk band from New Jersey called Stick Figure Suicide. And then he was also in a band called Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep was actually on tour when Neil got into a fight with the rest of the band and he wound up leaving the band.
While on tour that band, Pencey Prep wound up rebranding themselves and restructuring the band itself. And that band actually became My Chemical Romance. So that was a really interesting connection there and backstory of how Fairmont came to be and what could have been for Fairmont.
now Fairmont started as acoustic. Solo. and then slowly built up and [00:09:00] changed over time. Went through a lot of drummers, multiple bassists. when I was in the band originally I was playing a synthesizer and then I switched to acoustic guitar, as a rhythm guitarist. it gone through a lot.
I recorded probably three albums with the band. I wrote a bunch of songs. Fairmont still plays again. They've revamped so much. I think there's only three people in the band right now, butgone through a lot of changes. Now, again, that's also linked, and embedded. You can actually listen to an album right there on my musical past landing page. On the same page.
Photography and Music Intersect
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Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I also have some of my band photography because during this whole time I was also photographing bands. I used to photograph bands on my biological father's film camera, which I still have. That camera has light leaks. Not a great camera, but, I would photograph bands on film.
Unfortunately, a lot of that is lost at some point. I don't know what happened to it, so I don't have all of it. I have some of the film. I would love to scan it. and I also then [00:10:00] as I switched to digital, which really started happening during college, digital was fairly new and data loss was easy and unfortunately I lost a lot of my band photos from even that era.
So I learned a lot of lessons over the years of good backup workflows and things like that. And I don't lose photos anymore. And if I do accidentally lose photos on one drive, I've got it redundant on many other places. I've been photographing bands for as long as I've been in bands.
I have been photographing bands, whether it started on disposable camera or was with, a different film camera and so on. So I have always loved photography, which is one of the reasons why switching to photography as my career was a good choice. And I could also continue photographing bands, which I did.
I did a bunch of media photos, and I would go to band concerts and do, concert photography and things like that. And I never really had a style of band photography, but I'm sure if I was to approach [00:11:00] it now, I would probably photograph it the similar style that I photograph Clients these days.
Current Life and Future Episodes
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Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So anyway, that is my history of music, right? That is how I went from playing in bands and photographing bands to photography. And I still, I have a guitar, one guitar at this point. I still have other instruments, but I have one acoustic electric guitar. It is a tailor brand guitar, and
that is my baby right now as far as instruments go and when I'm feeling stressed, I need some downtime. I pick it up. I play for myself. I don't perform anymore. I don't tour. I don't really record. I record just for myself, just so I can remember things, but I'm not, I'm just doing it all for myself, which.
Similar to how I do photography, I know myself too well, and I know that if I was to do photography full-time every single day for paid [00:12:00] work as a living, I would wind up hating photography. So I don't even do photography full-time. I do photography for myself. I photograph my family, I photograph other people.
I do take on client work. I photograph a lot of proposals here in New Jersey. Surprise proposals. literally somebody asking for somebody else's hand in marriage. and I do this when I want, right? My full-time job is actually with a company called Imagen, who actually makes AI software for photographers.
But I am not photographing day in, day out as my one and only source of income for our family. So,I love music. I love photography. my music collection is still very large, even though a lot of it has gone digital. and yeah, it's one thing I also learned over the years, my biological father passed when I was very young.
And one thing I learned over the years was I wound up getting really into Johnny Cash.in my, let's say my early [00:13:00] thirties. Turns out my biological father was really into Johnny Cash. So I thought that was a fun little juicy fact, that I learned about myself and him. anyway, I hope that you enjoy this.
every episode is not gonna just be me. In fact, I don't want it to just be me. it will be me having conversations with friends and other people I don't know that I'm gonna get friendly with that. Like I said, are photographers that were musicians, that are musicians or musicians that were impacted by photography.
So this is gonna be great. This is just a kick it off, to get you inspired, get you interested. Hopefully I did the job. Thank you for listening to, to Lenses & Lyrics And tune in to the next episode.
