DJC Donor Rockstars 3
Today is DJC’s Donor Rockstar Day! We appreciate EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE of our donors. Not only people who give money, but also give time volunteering, and give access to their information and resources. You're all priceless. It’s an honor to highlight those who have participated in building us to this point. Thank you all! 💯
This month we’re highlighting Author/Musician Carey Wallace.
BL Shirelle, Co-Executive Director
Carey Wallace
BL: Hey Carey! First off of course I want to thank you for your unwavering support of DIe Jim Crow. We really appreciate your willingness to sacrifice for our artists.
Carey: You’re welcome, but I would never use the word sacrifice in giving to your organization. It is a wonderful pleasure and I’m sure you’re learning now that when it comes to philanthropy, people who give often get a lot more out of giving than the receiver.
BL: Yes I am learning that. In a lot of ways we have a lot in common while being from different worlds. Where are you from and why is art your love language?
Carey: Well, I’m from outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan. I come from a long line of musicians. My great great grandfather was a traveling clarinetist, his son married a traveling singer so I knew you could have a career doing art very early on, but I also knew you had to CONSTANTLY CREATE. I’ve wanted to be an author since I was a child; my mom taught me how to type at age seven because she was tired of transcribing my material. (Laughs) We didn’t have a lot of money, but we did have access to art and a safe space to develop our own talents while celebrating existing works in all their beauty.
BL: That's really cool. I’ve been more intentional about the art I choose to dedicate time to since I came to your house and I saw all the books and activities you consume just to stay creative. It’s inspiring.
Carey: I think everyone was built by God to make things, not just beautiful things but painful things. Space and time will make people make art. Old folks' homes, prisons, the way you cook for your family or sing for your children… I was lucky to have parents who fostered art in us.
BL: So you went to college, and then you became an artist. How has artist life been treating you throughout your journey because we know it can be hard and then it can be great.
Carey: It has in many ways been good to me. For the first 10 years after I got to school, it was just me in a room writing stuff that nobody ever saw. You know, so it was a long time of having a habit of working without really ever connecting with any kind of audience — and then I moved. I moved from Michigan to New York City and within about a year I published my first book. So at that point, I was able to make a living as a writer, not a very good living.
BL: Well you keep saying that, but I disagree.
Carey: Well maybe it's not a good living, but it's been a good life. So it's also the industry I'm in is publishing and I think publishing is kind of like music. Both of these industries are in a massive stage, a state of flux, you know, like the model that you and I grew up with is gone. And nobody knows how to make money doing this anymore. So that has been a real challenge at this point in time in my career, when in theory, things should have gotten easy. They got very hard.
BL: I think as far as where the industry is headed now, it's funny. I was just arguing with my producer who's a kid basically. And he was saying how streaming is better than people buying music because they continuously pay for the same song. He’s like “before they buy the song one time for $2, but now it has the potential to make a lot more if they listened a lot of times.” And I'm like so… you would rather a person have to listen to your song 2000 times to get the same $1.99 as just buying it one time?? Make it make sense. But this is how they have conditioned the new age artists. To think that their work is not their work. Like it's not a transactional thing with a price on it. So I think they're just waiting for us, the people who remember artists getting what they were worth to die out.
Carey: Same with books in terms of the model. You had to go to a special kind of store you know, and it wasn't available all the time.
BL: When I’m trying to explain to young people how much effort we put into music back in the day I start by telling them on 9/11, after they let us out of school early, I went to Tower Records to buy Jay Z’s album The Blueprint.
So we met at Yale Divinity School of Music. How did the class I’m a part of impact your life if at all?
Carey: Well, you and Simply Naomi were the best parts of my entire experience at Yale. It was a class that was meant to listen to the stories of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who in our class happen to all be women (except Carlos Roche, Attica survivor). And we were mixing their stories with lines from popular songs and also with Dante's Comedy, and to me, the most meaningful part of those classes was always what you guys had to say, and also listening to mama Naomi's singing was better than pretty much any sermon that I had ever heard. She's amazing. It also really changed my life as an artist to think about who we make art for, right, like who is our audience? Hearing your stories via art was eye opening, heartbreaking but beautiful.
BL: So can you tell the people some of the things that you have going on? You've been out here working.
Carey: Well, so I had a book come out at the end of March 2020, which was bad timing, but the book has done alright. It is a collection of stories of the saints for kids, and it's beautifully illustrated by a guy who is actually a video game designer. So if you go looking for my writing, that’s the most recent piece, and I just turned in a book of Psalms for kids that will come out in the next year or so. Also, I have a book called “The Discipline of Inspiration" that will hopefully sell in the next four weeks and come out in the next year or so. And that's about the idea that all art comes from God and that the spiritual disciplines can help us in our lives as artists.
BL: Amen.
Carey: Amen. My brother and I are also putting out something. Over half a dozen small self produced records, and we finally got good musicians so we’re putting out our greatest hits album on Valentine's Day this year. So we're working on that right now. That's freaking cool.
BL: That is so awesome. Thank you again for being a support system for us. I genuinely appreciate you and I can’t wait to see you again. Hopefully sooner than later!
Carey: I appreciate you. Likewise, likewise. I'm very, very grateful to get to be part of a moment. I mean, I think the focus is momma Naomi and her album, I think she's amazing. And I think if life were fair, she would have gotten way more support than she's had and I'm glad to be able to give her like a tiny fraction of what she deserves and of what you guys deserve.