Think you could produce, mix, and master an entire song every day for 31 days? That’s exactly what WoodysProduce is doing for the entire month of August with his newest project titled “31.”
Perhaps one of the most accomplished producer/engineers you’ve never heard of, he was inspired to pursue his dream career after sending a mixtape to 50 Cent’s manager, Sha Money XL (we can only assume the mixtape was fire-as-hell). Since then, Woody’s humble upbringing has seen him work with a number of artists like Wale, Iggy Azealia, Charles Hamilton, and more.
“31” is slated to be Woody’s creative release, and also aims to prove a point that if your passion lies in something, it shouldn’t be a burden of time to humor it. Every day this month, WoodysProduce will release an original track accompanied by an original visual supplement via his YouTube channel. It’s now three days into the project, and he encourages fans to send in ideas and provide feedback to influence the direction of the project.
This past Sunday, we had the pleasure of talking with Woody about “31,” and learned so much more than expected about his passions, career, and philosophies surrounding creative endeavors. Read on to hear Woody’s thoughts, and be sure to drop him some love and tell him what you think of the project.
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So your name is Woody – it’s your produce?
“Yeah, WoodysProduce. Everybody calls me Woody, but WoodysProduce was like – something that, you know- Woody is pretty generic when it’s Googling and stuff like that, so I just wanted to make something that was cool. So WoodysProduce just kinda came up, and I like fruits and vegetables, so yeah!”
You’re quite accomplished and very talented, but it doesn’t seem that many people have heard of you. Do you do a lot of behind the scenes work that doesn’t get as much recognition?
“Yeah, I mean, I started off as an engineer. I went to engineering school, interned at a prestigious studio in LA, and ended up engineering for a lot of people, like Wale and a bunch of people. So, I kinda started in that realm of things, and then – I’ve always produced, and I don’t know if you’re familiar with Charles Hamilton, he used to be signed to Interscope, but I worked with him for a few years. And then, yeah I just kinda broke out, and like, music is my passion more so than I wanna shove it in everybody’s face, you know what I’m sayin? So that’s kinda why I just throw remixes out and do projects like this ’31’ project I’m doing right now. Just because, there’s not a lot of money in music anymore, so I focus primarily on licensing aspects, and I’m learning to DJ right now so I can play out and stuff like that and have more fun with it. But, it’s kinda just in my marrow, in my blood, that I just have to create.”
Even the money that is involved is fairly concentrated amongst the artists that you hear about all the time.
“Yeah, it’s difficult to break the wall down, and then – I’ve kinda noticed that once you get in there, it’s not really about the passion for doing it. Like I’ve been – I got placement on Iggy Azalea’s last album – or her first album. Which is big, and that was a goal that I had for myself is “I want to get on a major album,” and then you kinda get there and you realize, not that there’s anything wrong with it, that it’s just so focused! Like, “what is the mainstream gonna think of this?” and it’s more thought out than just a release for your creativity and your sanity. Even with your writing and stuff it’s like, “I have to do this stuff.” It’s my drug. It’s my way to keep my brain not crazy. So yeah, and if the world digs it and people fuck with it, then that’s an added bonus for sure!”
I was looking through your site and came across The Gooberz. Could you explain what that project’s all about?
“So, I started a production company with a few of my friends, and we do animation, we do skits, we do vlogging, and a ton of other stuff. And The Gooberz is a cartoon that we’ve been doing for about a year that’s just kinda coming into fruition right now. We just got a ton of people on board, my homie John who’s here with me in the office right now – super overly talented guy, just workin’ on the show and lovin’ it. So yeah, it’s actually about a few fictional characters that me and my friends thought of. I used to play in a bunch of bands when I was growin’ up, and me and my friends would always make up these fake rapper characters and kinda mock mainstream rap or local people that we knew who were trying to do rap and shit like that. So it started off as a joke and then we recorded a few funny tracks, and then my friend in LA that we grew up with started working at Cartoon Network. And he was like, “Oh man, you should develop those into cartoons man!” So we were like, “fuck it, Let’s do it!” My friend Collin who I work with closely, he just learned to animate, and we learned to do everything DIY, and we just have this cartoon on YouTube. And we’re starting to take meetings again and stuff – I dunno, it’s just kinda – it’s just another one of those things, man, where it’s like, “let’s do this, I love it, my hearts in it,” and it’s kinda like my lifeline in a lot of ways.”
And that’s the thing is taking it from “hey, this would be cool to do” to “we’re doing it!”
“Exactly, and a lot of people don’t realize that when you want to do something, you have to be really shitty at it first. And I get discouraged and kind of embrace that, and understand that. You look back and you’re like “Oh my god a year ago, I was doing this? I can’t believe how bad that was…” You know what I mean? With anything, with writing, photography, any aspect of art, it’s always a building block and it always chisels away at who you are and you kinda learn more about yourself in the process.”
Have you seen that quote by Ian Glass? It says much the same thing.
“No, I haven’t, but yeah for sure! It’s the road. And a lot of people say, “oh when I get there, you know, it’s cool, but I liked it when I was struggling more,” and I think that’s halfway true.”
So back to the music, with “31” what’s the concept behind it? What are you hoping to accomplish by rapidly releasing such a large body of work?
“I have this thing, right, where I did a bunch of remixes, some Biggie remixes, and a 50 Cent remix, that are pretty well known on the internet at this point, I think. And I guess Soundcloud doesn’t like it when you put up copyrighted material. So I got flagged a bunch of times on Soundcloud, and they threatened to delete my account if I had one more infringement. So I tweeted them and was like, “yo man this isn’t cool,” and they tweeted me back like, “sorry man it’s not us, it’s the copyright holder,” and all this stuff. So the way that things are changing in the industry right now, or the internet, or technology, or whatever, it’s kind of anti-copyright, which I don’t agree with. I think it should be more of an open source with the laws, and I think we need to re-visit some of the copyright law now that technology has impacted the way that we distribute our art and consume things, you know? So I wanted to come out with an all-original material project for 31 days and I just thought it would be a good thing to put out this much material: music and video. Just because, I think a lot of people get it twisted too that it’s difficult to make music or it’s difficult to create your art.
It used to be that people would take a year to make an album, because you had to go into a studio, you had to get the finances to do it, and you had to do all these things, and now you just turn on your computer and your studio’s right there. So for me it’s like, if you look at David Letterman who shows up – or showed up, every single night and did his thing, or Samuel L. Jackson who’s in 800,000 movies a year, or Steph Curry always playing basketball no matter what, even in the off season he’s doing charities, he’s doing camps, he’s doing whatever. If your passion is something and your talent is in something, it shouldn’t be that you have to take all this time in order to make something. And I kinda wanted to show that too, so you know, every day – I just wanna learn. Just come out with something. And I kinda went – the first day was yesterday, and I was like, “Oh shit I really have to do this every day…” (laughter) with the video content and stuff, but yeah, it’s pushing my limits also. It’s seeing what my threshold is of what I can accomplish.”
