BIO

A lot of my music is acoustic and sort of intimate…so I’m going to go ahead and write this as if we were sitting in a coffee shop together. Maybe you should go get yourself a cup and relax because this might get a little long winded.

If you’re the kind of person who can listen to music and read then push play…
The Killing Kind (feat Anna Johnson) by timpepper

Beginnings:

I started playing the guitar during my first year of college. It was 1996 and I was 19. I’d been singing in church choirs and in the shower and pretty much all over the place all of the time since I was a kid. I don’t remember it but my mom tells me I used to get in trouble at day care because I would sing during nap time. I never really thought about making a career of it or anything…it was just something I did without thinking about it.

But then in college I finally picked up my dad’s old guitar and started playing. I didn’t even do it to try and meet girls. I was shy and didn’t really talk to girls and a guitar wasn’t going to help that. But anyway I started playing and I wrote my first song a few weeks later. After that I’d play guitar when t.v. was crap and then I moved on to playing even when t.v. was good. I just played all the time and wrote all time.

Writing songs felt good. I wasn’t much of a talker in those days. I wrote in journals. I was the quiet guy who seemed pretty calm and collected on the outside but my journals gave me away. I was pissed off and lovestruck and God-struck and emotional. I was all angsty and bitter and I grew up Christian so the only place I could curse and be truly honest was in my journals. But then songwriting gave me another way to express myself. I could say things in songs that I couldn’t say face to face. I was timid in the flesh but brave when I was writing a song. I got a little high from songwriting and it seemed like I was pretty good at it. It just made sense. It felt like I was discovering a new me; maybe the real me.

All I really knew was that I had to keep writing. I had to keep playing. I was driven by some need deep within me to get better. If I went a day without playing the guitar my fingers would get cravings. So on both a mental and physical level I was drawn deeper and deeper in the world of music and I was gradually becoming more skillful at expressing myself through my instrument, my lyrics and my voice. I’d found myself and I didn’t know it then but I’d also discovered the one and only thing I would ever truly want to do.

The Influences:

My parents are missionaries, the churchy kind. So I grew up listening to southern gospel choirs, old hymns of the faith and later on a lot of ‘christian’ rock bands. My dad was a drummer in a rock band in his teens and twenties so he had a few cassettes of the Beatles and Dylan lying around. I loved singing in church when the whole congregation knew the song really well and you could hear the old fashioned men and women breaking out into their parts. We didn’t really have a lot of music in the house but I always had my ears open when we were out shopping or at the gym. I listened to everything and melodies would find there way into my brain long before the lyrics did. I’ve discovered several times in my life that I’ve been singing the wrong lyrics to songs for years.

The first album that I fell in love with was “The Joshua Tree” by U2. I must have listened to it a thousand times in a few weeks. When I hear any of those songs on the radio they still get me. Then I discovered Nirvana and “Nevermind” and that completely changed my life for the next few years. Nothing I heard came close to that. The funny thing is that I was listening to Garth Brooks’ ‘No Fences’ right around the same time and had his whole album memorized at one point. The only Christian song I really liked in those years was “Jesus Freak” by DC Talk. I mostly hated everything else they produced but that song was great. Later I discovered Audioadrenaline and Switchfoot and I still am a huge fan of the latter.

Right about the time I started college and started playing guitar I got into Creedence Clearwater Revival in a big way. I’d listen to their greatest hits right before going in to write exams. I was listening to a lot of Jars of Clay and Third Eye Blind. I was blown away by Shawn Mullins the first time I heard him. I got into the Beatles again and went through an Elvis phase. I loved ‘mmmbop’ when it came out. I don’t care what you say…it’s a great song.

So all of that is to say that it’s difficult for me to pinpoint who my influences were exactly. But I remember listening to some blues music late at night when I was about 15 years old or so. It was some sort of Muddy Waters type thing and it was so different and so raw that I still remember it today. I think that raw quality has been present in a lot of the music that I loved the best.

A Developing Artist:

I was part of the music team in church so of course my first performances of songs that I’d written were in church. In my mind church was a safe crowd. Nobody’s gonna tell you they didn’t like your song in church. Most of my earliest songs were all sort of on a christian theme so it was an appropriate crowd I guess. I didn’t expect anything to come of it and my dad more or less provoked me into playing in church any time he heard a new one. I was really unsure of myself in those days and deep down I was grateful for his insistence because I really did want to play but I didn’t think I was good enough yet to be playing for people. After a while though people began talking to me and telling me they liked a certain song or whatever and I got enough feedback that I decided I must be ok after all.

I was starting to feel a little bit fake in my songwriting though. I felt like I was forcing myself to write christian songs and really I just wanted to write great songs that anyone could listen to. I also wanted to play for a ‘real’ crowd. I felt like I needed to test myself in front of people who didn’t know me. I wanted to see if I might really be good enough to start taking music seriously. I’d been writing and playing for a few and I knew deep down that I wanted to try to become a full time musician but I needed to test the waters first. I still had insecurities about my voice and I didn’t think I was a good enough player and was really just kicking my own ass all the time.

My first performance for a ‘real crowd’ that I remember was at an open mic at a place in Durban, South Africa called Zack’s. A friend of mine had been going and I’d decided to check it out. I was about halfway through my opening verse and I was getting some impressed looks and people were turning there heads to listen and it gave me a great boost of confidence. I went home that night feeling like maybe I could finally take myself seriously as an aspiring musician.

This is the song I sang that night at Zack’s…
Eagles Wings by timpepper

I kept going back to those open mics for the next couple of years. I finished up a masters degree and ended up taking a job as a high school Biology teacher. I was hating life because I knew I wanted to play music but didn’t really know how to go about getting it done. I poured myself into writing more songs and becoming a better guitarist. Whenever I had the chance I’d play music and would take my guitar to school on the last day of each term and play for my students.

I was still developing as a songwriter and musician. I’d been dreaming about putting out an album for years but had never been able to afford studio time. To be honest I probably wasn’t ready for a studio then but it was all I could think about. It took two years of teaching and another year of volunteer work before I’d finally get a chance to get make a real go at life as a musician…

In January, 2007 I’d returned home from a year of volunteer work and was at a loose end. I was picking up things where I’d left off a year before. I needed a job but I didn’t want to start teaching again so I was half heartedly getting my resume together and applying for positions related to my field of study. My dad had believed for some time that I should try to pursue music as a career. He and my mom had witnessed my misery during my years of teaching and they’d also witnessed my development and devotion to music over the years. He came to me with an offer that I really couldn’t refuse. He suggested I stay with them and play music for the church and try to start making some money from playing music.

I was 30 years old and I didn’t want to live my folks but I really did want to have a chance at making my dream a reality. I didn’t have any better offers on the table so I decided to do it. I was officially pursuing my dream. I knew then as I know now that music is where my heart is. It’s where it’s always been and I can’t see that changing at any point in the future. It took an inordinate amount of time for me to believe it but I’d finally gotten there. I knew what I wanted to do and I wasn’t going to let a little thing like living with my parents at the ripe old age of 30 stop me.

I spent the next two years learning about booking gigs, facebook, myspace, websites, recording, talking to the press, promoting shows and…oh yes..playing lots of music. I didn’t have a clue how to book gigs or promote them. I didn’t know how to get my songs on radio. I didn’t know how to get a record made or a music video or anything. I’d been dreaming about playing music for a living for ten years but it never occurred to me that I would need any skills other than songwriting and performing.

I went back to the old open mics and started meeting people. I soon had a new circle of friends and was inundated in a world that my life of academic research and teaching had not prepared me for. I talked to every musician who would put up with me and I asked them about booking shows and how they did their websites. I recorded a bunch of home demos and went around to all the coffee shops and bars and asked if they would let me play there sometime. Every morning I’d wake up, make coffee and sit at my computer for hours trying to figure out what bands were doing with their MySpace profiles and how they were getting people to come to their shows. When I wasn’t doing that I was writing a song or practicing or trying to record demos.

Once I’d gotten the rudimentary online profiles together I started e-mailing venues to try and book shows. I’d made a few contacts through playing the open mics and I was starting to get a few bookings as an opener for local bands. I’d also had some success with the various bars and coffee shops I’d visited and I was playing for money three nights a week. I still didn’t have an album but I was getting paid to play music and although I was frustrated on a daily basis I was enjoying the fact that I was doing what I wanted to do for the first time in my life.

I wrote this song not long after I quit my teaching job.
Dreamin Schemin Blues by timpepper

For the next two years I kept plugging away at the music industry. I was writing songs, playing shows, developing my online presence and what not, networking, etc. In August of 2007 I put out an EP called “Believe”. I had needed to believe in myself to get where I was and I was going to need to keep believing if I was really going to make my dreams come true. So the title of the EP was a very personal thing and didn’t really reflect any of the songs on it. I recorded most of the EP at home on a lap top and then did a couple of songs with Dave Birch at his home studio in Durban. I can hardly listen to the recordings I did at home now but they served their purpose and got me more shows and a few interviews. I managed to get one of the songs on Red Cap radio which is a chain wide radio station playing in all of the Mr Price stores around South Africa. It was a minor accomplishment but I felt like it was at least a step up on the long ladder to success.

Between the open mics and the weekly gigs at a couple of pubs I was playing 3 or 4 nights a week and I was able to book a few out of town gigs and festivals. The pub gigs required that I sing 3 or 4 sets of 45 minutes each and playing them as often as I was had the effect of molding me into a better performer and singer. I loved being on the road whenever I had an opportunity but it was expensive and I was barely making ends meet. I had almost no expenses but I still wasn’t making enough to cover them. I still wanted to make a real studio album but didn’t have the money to do it.

It was July of 2008 when my family and I decided I needed to move back to the U.S. if I was going to ever have a shot at my dream. I’d been working hard and was making progress but we all felt like I needed to gain experience in a bigger pond. I borrowed enough money from my dad to record my first studio album. I hired two local musicians to play drums and bass and we rehearsed for a couple of weeks, played one show together and then recorded the album in a week at Sesalos Studios in Durban with Brent Quinton engineering.

The album, “Beautiful Frustration” was literally being printed and duplicated while I was tying up loose ends and packing my bags to move back to the U.S. I got the CDs in the mail a couple of days before I left South Africa in September and packed as many of them as I could fit in my suitcases and had the rest shipped to me after I arrived in Nashville, Tennessee.

So that’s how I came to live in Nashville. I’ve been living and working here since October, 2008. I’m following my heart and my dream and so far it’s led me here. If you want to read about what’s happened since I moved here then you might want to visit this blog. But if you want to know more about what I’m doing now then keep looking around this sight. I update things on a regular basis so there should always be a new video or song or blog to check out. I know it sounds like a ridiculous thing but I’m on a journey and I’d love for you to share in that.

The very best way to keep in touch is to join my mailing list: For now you can send a message to tim@timpeppermusic.com. Make sure your subject reads “ADD ME TO YOUR MAILING LIST TIM PEPPER”.