Percussionist-vocalist Melissa Weishaar-Jennings runs the show at Wise Farm Productions. Her husband Jeff Jennings handles songwriting, guitars and other duties. Melissa spoke for the musical duo.
How has the lockdown affected your creativity?
When everything went down in the spring, like most artists, we panicked. We had a full summer of shows booked and that was all taken away suddenly. We didn't know what to do with ourselves at first. That first month we were really grasping at anything that felt like it was keeping us normal and visible.
We learned how to produce quality livestreams and improved our equipment to support that. We participated in online festivals, streaming events and cover challenges—and we hated every second of it! We didn't realize how much we depended on live performances to validate what we were doing. It’s what we live for and to suddenly be in a position in which we couldn’t see our fans and couldn't foster the relationships we'd built with other musicians and venues over the years was devastating. It was truly a loss of identity.
After a couple of months, we eased into it and started to adapt. We finished recording our new album and even added six new songs to the album that originally was intended to a seven song EP. It’s now a 13 song album that we plan to release in two parts in early 2020. We wrote and wrote and wrote some more. In fact, we have so many new songs in the works that we have our next album already written and then some.
From a creativity standpoint, the songs we have been writing have taken on a different vibe for the most part. Many of the new songs are much more reflective of feelings and the state-of-affairs in our nation. We joke that we all of a sudden got sappy around April. We’re slowing working our way out of that mood! To help, we have started to host live stream concerts from our studio.
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Every week we host a musician friend/band and stream them live onto our Wise Farm Productions Facebook page. It’s been a great way for us to stay connected to our music community while at the same time providing entertainment to the masses on a virtual basis. This has been a ton of fun and we plan to continue doing this throughout the winter months. For most of these we work with Kevin Schwartz from Instrumental Motion to produce the highest quality streaming experience for the viewers.
Do you have a routine or schedule for staying in practice or working on new material?
To help us stay creative we really dove deep into video production. Adobe Premier Pro has quickly become one of our favorite tools and we have been putting out video content like crazy. One of our goals at the beginning of 2020 was to improve on our video content.
The lockdown has really helped us in this regard since we have all kinds of time to mess around with cameras and equipment. This fall we began releasing videos every Monday to our fans. The content varies from old songs to new songs to bigger productions, like our video for our newest single, “The Clod.” We take a lot of time to try to create something every week that our fans will enjoy and it keeps us accountable. It’s something that we have committed to do so we have to do it!
I'll be honest, we certainly don't practice as much as we used to. Frankly, there are days when we just don’t have the heart to do it. We’re still struggling with missing our friends and missing live performances. The new material we have written is really helpful and makes us want to learn it for the day when we actually do get to go out and perform live again!
Are you making plans for when you can resume playing in front of people?
Ahh, this is a tough one. We actually do have a small show coming up for a friend’s birthday. We are really nervous to perform indoors and certainly won’t be doing it again this winter but this one is a special occasion.
We likely won't be performing live until the weather turns nicer and we can do outdoor performances again. This past Summer and Fall we actually had a fair amount of outdoor shows that we played. We were totally comfortable with that and will do it again as soon as we can. We really hope that there will be venues and festivals to play in 2021.
Every day we hear of another venue closing and it’s breaking our hearts. To be honest, I’m a little skeptical about 2021 too. My feeling is that many of the standard events and festivals will still not be able to take place. Usually during this time of year, we are knocking on doors, so to speak, to play for big summer events. None of that is happening and it’s a little disheartening but understandable. As a matter of fact, I am usually starting to plan our own annual festival, Wise Fest, but that's on hold for now too.
It’s going to be a wait and see sort of Winter. This past summer we got creative and began hosting private, outdoor concert events on our own property. Those were a real life saver for people. The events were invite-only and we hosted as many as six bands/event at those shows, usually once per month. We’ll definitely be doing that again in 2021!
You can learn more about Wise Jennings by visiting their website.
