Meet NIls JIpnter | recording artist / music producer

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

Hi NIls, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
As a recording artist , I realized at one point that it is important to approach my career as a business. In the beginning I was hoping on things to happen for me, but after a while I switched my attitude and started working on making things happen for myself. I started by asking myself critical questions:
what do I have to offer or what is my value to my audience? who is my audience? how can I increase my audience and my value to them?
I started tackling these questions by paying attention to time management, dividing my time in working on my craft, like practicing my instrument , building up my brand (social media), reaching out to create a support team (starting with to friends and piers and then also to competent professionals in my field).
Approaching my career as a business also included financial decisions, like investing in recording equipment. I did not want to run a commercial studio, but I wanted the ability to record my music when the inspiration strikes.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am an artist in the contemporary jazz field. I play guitar and you can find me at nilsmusic.com, Youtube.com/nilsguitar and facebook.com/nilsguitar. I just finished my 13th album and my most cherished accomplishment is having the most played song in the genre since the year 2000 ( Pacific Coast Highway).
It certainly wasn’t easy. I arrived in LA from Munich, Germany in the late 80s to study guitar and composition. I struggled to survive by playing little club gigs, giving lessons and working as an engineer in studios.
Things changed when I met Gerald McCauley he agreed to produce my first album and guided me in a more commercial direction than where I was at the time. He also introduced to me a whole other class of musicians and artists, like George Benson, Siedah Garreth, Chante Moore, Carl Anderson etc. The whole project was incredibly risky bordering on reckless in how he conducted it. As an example, I remember when we went to Westlake Audio to mix one song for the album. The fee for the studio and engineer was $2000 for the day. We went there not having any money. So while the engineer was working on the song, we got on the phone and begged and borrowed money from friends. We tried to find investors on the project to raise the 2 grand by the end of the day, so we could take the tapes home afterwards. And we did!
I did get signed to a small record label, and when the CD came out we looked at a theatre in Oxnard. Before I knew it , he ( Gerald) committed that we would pay the $5,000 by the end of the week to reserve the room for an All-Star Band concert. I did not have a band, or charts, or promoter nor the money . The stress level was way out of my comfort zone. I don’t even remember how we pulled this off. We did 3 shows as “Nils and the West Coast AllStars” , the record label did not provide any support and filed bankruptcy during our promotional campaign, so that I ended up having to buy 20 of my own CDs at Towner Records to give away on radio, because the label never send them the promos. We lost tons of money and after the 3rd show the stress level just got too big and our relationship ruptured.
I was back on my own, teaching, doing little production work and it took me 6 years to finish my next album. I did not have high expectations for that CD due to my past experiences, but I thought it would make a good business card to get other work. That album was Pacific Coast Hwy, and the title song became a huge hit. It stayed #1 on Billboard for 7 weeks. It certainly changed the direction of my life. All of a sudden I was performing at festivals in front of thousands of people. I was flying all over the country and I got an agent and a record label that actually supported me.. My dream had come true, I made real money, my life was happening.
Then in 2011 the mortgage crisis hit and at the same time many radio stations went out of business or changed format away from Contemporary Jazz. I lost my agent and could not get any gigs. I was broke again and realized that I needed another leg to stand on. That’s when I started writing and producing music for other artists. The smart thing I had done with the money from my successful first albums, was to invest in recording equipment, so I could record at home. Having worked in studios I had the knowledge , and now I also had the equipment to do so. I took me several years, several albums , being dropped and resigned by the same label, to emerge from my slump with another successful album, just in time for Covid to hit. No gigs again, but I had royalties coming in from radio play and I was producing music for other artists. So I managed.
I also took the restrictions of that period to lear about streaming and started to do a weekly show “Nils Live From Home” , which I continue to this day on facebook and YouTube. This really enlarged my social media presence and improved my brand name, allowing me to pursue my career from a much stronger position than before.
And the story continues……

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’d take him to Neptunes’s Net out on PCH at the LA/ Ventura county line. It’s a crab and fish place on the beach like you might have seen in old surfer movies. , Self serve, wood benches, but incredible fresh food. Then I would head back and stop at Matador Beach , north of Malibu. To hang out and enjoy the Sunset .Depending on who is playing , I might take him to a club in Hollywood or somewhere in LA. Then I would take him up the coast to Santa Barbara and Pismo Beach.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
A book I can recommend is ” DO IT, let’s get of our but’s ” by Peter McWilliams. It’s a kind of self-help book that taught me how to overcome the limitations I set on my own expectations for what I can achieve in life.
Then there was the late Gerald McCauley, a man who produced my first album. Even though our relation ship is a difficult one and ended on bad terms. Besides all the bad things that happened, I must credit , that he is responsible for lifting me from the vast pool of wannabe musicians in Los Angeles, to someone who stands on the stage and records with some of the biggest name in the business.
Finally there is my wife, whose understanding and support is priceless. When I work on a project, I am getting very self-absorbed and obsessed. I spend endless hours in my studio and have no patience for anything else. Not many women would put up with this, but she is my rock of support and I love her for that.

Website: https://nilsmusic.com

Instagram: nilsmusic

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

Twitter: stopped using it

Facebook: https://facebook.com/nilsguitar

Youtube: https://YouTube.com/nilsguitar

Image Credits
Personal Photo by Jurgen Reisch