Meet Jordan Lewis: Composer & Multi-Instrumentalist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jordan Lewis and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jordan, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Art and society have a strange relationship— we esteem the works of our greatest musicians, painters, dancers, photographers, and authors, both past and present, while simultaneously infantilizing those who aspire to carve out a living as such. The “get a real job” trope is very real. I think that most of us who have chosen to be creative professionals naturally must have either a good amount of risk tolerance baked into our personalities’ or a borderline sociopathic level of self-confidence because until career escape velocity is achieved, no matter how hard one works or how talented one is, there is always that infantilizing voice of our mother culture whispering (or screaming) in the background.

Being able to weather uncertainty and dry spells may be one’s biggest asset when managing the innate risk of working in the arts. Often there’s no regular paycheck, securing new gigs requires what tends to go well beyond a formal job interview, and when one’s livelihood, self identity, and passion all become intertwined as they do, there is potential for disaster both personally and professionally because it all becomes the same thing. It takes a strong stomach to be able to survive those hungry moments and retain a sense of sanity, purpose, and forward momentum.

My wife and I are both self-employed artists and this carries with it a certain amount of inherent financial risk. The trust we have in each other has been crucial during our 7 years in LA. During these years at least one of us has had a more ‘stable’ long-term gig at all times while the other has been in the hustle full-time. This has allowed us both to grow creatively and also attend our baseline financial obligations and even, at times, squirrel away a little bit of savings.

When I decided to move in the direction of scoring for film and television and away from touring and teaching, the idea of broadcast royalties was certainly a motivating factor and risk mitigator. During the pandemic when so much work has dried up for so many people, myself included, broadcast royalties have been a lifeline. The checks are never as big as we hope they’ll be but these days everything helps.

My longest regular gig here was four years working as an assistant, orchestrator, mixer, and additional writer for a busy TV composer. Inasmuch as I am grateful for the lessons learned and skills honed during my time there, in some ways I regret staying there for as long as I did. The security of being in a support position that long led me to complacency and a certain degree of creative stagnation. The hustle is where we grow as artists because the hunger forces us to. And while I continue to write for a handful of bigger composers whenever those opportunities arise, the majority of my time is now spent pursuing and scoring my own work, which was always the point and the dream.

Please tell us more about your art. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
I addressed a lot of these questions at length in my VoyageLA feature from 2020 so here’s a bit of philosophical waxing instead. I spend a lot of time thinking about these kinds of things, especially in the last year, as I contemplate my own life, career, creative identity, relationships, and professional goals.

The “no two roads are the same” axiom is exceptionally true for artists. Outside of a career in academia, there is no prescribed pathway or trajectory for us. If a person wants to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher, engineer, or physicist, that person knows more or less what roads they’ll need to travel and roughly how long their journey will be. Not so for artists‒ our journeys often lack a clear destination and one of a series of detours may serendipitously end up defining our careers and professional timelines in ways that we could never have anticipated. We are the sum of our life experience at any given moment and so the work we do represents a snapshot of who we are, or were, at a particular point in time.

Within my own medium, some folks are entirely self taught and can feel their way through scores in ways that remain remarkable to me. Others spend decades in touring bands, as concert musicians, or as recording artists before they score their first film. And others yet study film scoring as an undergraduate and walk the paths trod by those who came before them and find professional stability, if not success, through more ‘conventional’ channels. A composer’s first indie film may become a cultural phenomenon and catapult them to success early and meteorically, or maybe it’s their 20th film after 15 years spent in the trenches. All this is to say that there is an enormous amount of luck and chance built into all this, and yet the idea that luck is the intersection of preparedness and opportunity still rings very true to me. To continue with this road metaphor: we all need to be our own mechanics so that when we come to a promising fork in the road we’re well oiled and ready to roll. We also need to be our own barometers so that we can recognize patterns and trends before they happen, prepare accordingly, and plan an appropriate route.

This pandemic has been a huge bump in the road for so many people, especially for artists. It is my profound hope that all of us who have put in so much blood, sweat, and tears into our futures as creative professionals have found ways to cope and adapt during what is likely the most challenging moment of most of our lifetimes’ to date. As we begin to return to some degree of normalcy in the coming months and an avalanche of backlogged projects move forward, I wish everyone the best of luck in their travels. Stay hungry and curious, my friends.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Assuming my BFF is omnivorous, likes the outdoors, and we weren’t still living through a pandemic:

Friday Evening:
• LAX to Plan Check Kitchen Sawtelle for one of my favorite chicken sandwiches of all time.
• Santa Monica for a constitutional walk on the beach.
• Griffith Park Observatory before heading home.

Saturday:
• San Gabriel Mountains for a hike.
• Bone Kettle in Pasadena for lunch.
• Nap!
• The Last Bookstore DTLA.
• Seven Grand DTLA for whiskey drinks.
• Sushi in Little Tokyo.
• The Blue Whale for some live jazz.

Sunday:
• Breakfast at Fox’s in Altadena
• Disc Golf at Oak Grove in Pasadena. I love disc golf but it isn’t for everyone although this is the first permanent course in the world thus earning it its appropriate nickname: OG.
• LACMA.
• Lunch in K-Town (my wife is Korean and knows all the best spots).
• Nap!
• Dinner at Pizzeria Mozza (unless it’s a snobby east coast friend of which I have many).
• The Comedy Store for whoever is on that night. Always a winner.

Monday:
• Head up to Santa Barbara or Ojai for some combo of beach, wine, hikes, and general prettiness.
• Drive down the PCH and hit Malibu Seafood.
• Bring ’em back to LAX to head home. Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Film composer John Swihart. I participated in a SESAC Scores workshop John led in the fall of 2018. We became friends during and after the workshop and John urged me, almost aggressively, to stop worrying about the financial uncertainty of losing the security of a regular gig and to start trusting myself enough to work for myself, to be “my own composer,” first and foremost. When some exciting opportunities arose shortly thereafter, also in-part thanks to John himself, I took his advice to heart and began to make that transition. John helped give the confidence to make changes that I knew I needed to make for my own creative and professional future. Thank you, John, for your candor and support.

Website: https://jordanlewismusic.com/

Instagram: @jordanlewismusic_

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanlewismusic/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordanlewismusic

Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5129233/?ref_=pro_nm_visitcons

Image Credits
Jaewoo Kwon, JP Pacelli, Megan Kor