Playing saxophone with Kyle O'Brien

He's in the band(s).

Thinking About Getting Into is a newsletter about cultivating interests.

Kyle O’Brien can hardly recall a time in his life when he wasn’t playing music—it’s a fundamental part of who he is as a person, which stretches back to his days drumming on his parents’ cookware as a kid. After picking up the saxophone at age nine, he quickly developed a passion for the instrument that led him, precociously, to perform professionally before he’d even reached high school. While a realization in college about the realities of being a full-time performer led him to forge a different career path in journalism, he still found ways to keep music in his life. Now, he’s both an agencies reporter and AgencySpy editor at Adweek, where he reports on creative agencies, and a professional musician who regularly performs with four different bands. There’s no need, after all, for the music to ever stop.

Kyle!

How did you get into saxophone? When did you start playing?

I started actually on drums when I was probably five years old. I couldn’t not play music. After banging around on my parents’ pots and pans, they bought me some drums and said, ‘Okay, stop ruining our stuff.’ And so I was a drummer for a while.

Then, when I was nine years old, I wanted to play everything, but I was like, ‘Well, saxophone looks the coolest, so I'm gonna try that.’ And so I switched over and never looked back. It was very, very prominent in not only my early years but all the way up to now.

We had a really good bunch of musicians that I grew up with, and so in about fifth grade, we were all in the regular school band, but we also decided to form a youth Dixieland jazz band. We were pretty good, and we played the Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Festival, which, at that time, was gigantic—thousands of people in Sacramento, California. We were good enough that we started becoming professional musicians at 12 years old. It’s been a part of my existence for a very long time.

Once you started learning sax, what was it about the instrument that you loved so much?

First of all, it’s a cool-looking horn. I loved the sound of it. I’d already been listening to jazz—Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, people like that. It was the instrument that sounded most like the human voice, so you could almost mimic vocals—I just thought it was the most versatile of all [instruments]. I mean, I was nine years old. What I thought was that it looked cool and sounded cool.

I slowly moved away from the drums, and then just saxophone was my thing from then on. I played in a high school jazz band in Sacramento that was one of the top in the state of California. I was very lucky. I grew up with a bunch of great musicians and it made all of us better. We managed to get into state competitions and competed well, so that helped pay for college. When you have all those people making you sound better, it’s easier to get a scholarship. I certainly wasn’t getting it for sports.

I’m curious to hear a little bit more about how you kept this part of your life going into adulthood and maintained a music career while also building a career as a journalist.

It certainly hasn’t been easy over the years. I mean, I tried to do it for a living. I wanted to do it for a living. I went to music school, but about halfway through college, I was like, ‘I don't know if I want to do this.’ I’m already performing, and I’ve been performing for a really long time. Is a performance degree going to make me a better performer than just being out there and performing? I ended up at the University of Nevada, Reno, and I played in orchestra pits and was chosen to play with fairly big-name acts, including The Manhattan Transfer and a few other groups. So it was like, ‘Alright, I’m kind of doing this for a living anyway.’ It was always my job through high school and in college, so I thought, ‘Okay, well, it’s just a natural extension.’ But I started to do it for a few months and realized, ‘God I’m not making any money.’ I mean, I’m playing seven nights a week, and getting $50 to $75 a pop, and it was just just exhausting. So I thought, ‘Okay, well, I don’t really want to be poor the rest of my life.’ So I went into the really high-paying career of journalism.

Hah, I had the same thought with dance.

Did you try to do it?

I realized in high school that there were certain sacrifices I wasn’t willing to make. I was doing classical ballet, so you have to make those decisions really early.

Do you still dance?

I do. I took about a 10-year break, and I studied it academically in college. I got a dance minor, but was feeling disillusioned about dancing myself. Then, right before the pandemic, I went back to one of the ballet schools in the city where I had studied as a teenager. So I’ve been doing it a bit the past few years. I don’t have any aspirations with it, so I’m able to just purely enjoy it, so that’s been really helpful for me.

I think you said something key there—when you’re doing it for a living, it’s hard to enjoy it all the time. Doing it now, I find that I usually just take gigs I want to take.

I ended up moving to Portland, Oregon and working for The Oregonian newspaper as a music critic. I was getting some of the fulfillment of being in the music scene, and then I started meeting people, and I started getting a few gigs. I thought, ‘Okay, well, I can just do this on the side and take the occasional gig.’ Then I started getting busier with gigs, and I was like, ‘Okay, I can’t go back to being a regular musician.’

I had to juggle a lot and was able to do it considering my day job was mostly a day job. I did have to go to concerts, and sometimes that did get in the way of me taking certain gigs, but then I got into several bands. I even went on tour a few times. But I was I was like, ‘Well, I have a real job. I can’t do this all the time.’ I did seven years at The Oregonian, and then I got I got hired by Nike. So then I was on the brand side. That was great unless I had to travel for work, which I did sometimes. But it was really easy to keep up a gig schedule.

I’ve never really stopped playing, but I have played in a lot of different weird bands because I’m a sax player. Nobody needs a sax player. They want a sax player. So I’ve played in bands ranging from pretty hardcore jazz to—I was in a band in Portland called Jesus Presley. It was a hell of a lot of fun. I always like a good challenge—I can play any type of music, just give it to me, put it in front of me, and I can get it done. So here I am, 30 years outside of college, and I’m still playing.

I moved all the way across the country, and I live in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, which is not a big town. So I thought ‘Okay, I’m never gonna find musicians here.’ But it just so happens that there was a really cool very eclectic folk band here and my girlfriend at the time, who’s now my wife, said, ‘Bring your horn over to this this campfire—they’re gonna jam.’

I didn’t know how it was going to be jamming with a bunch of people in a small town around the campfire, but I was like, ‘Oh my God, they’re really damn good.’ That night, after playing two songs, they go, ‘Hey, you want to be in the band?’ Sure. Why not?

I found that one band, and then, because of that, this guitar player who had been touring with a guy called Robert Randolph & the Family Band was finally back and [told me], ‘Hey, we’re gonna start doing gigs.’ It was just the two of us: saxophone and guitar. We did that, and that turned into a trio, and that turned into a five piece funk and soul band. And now it’s an eight piece funk and soul band. We play everywhere, from the Lehigh Valley—which is where most of our gigs are—and then we play Atlantic City, casinos, big events, and things like that. I can’t do every gig because sometimes they have a Sunday night gig and I work pretty early in the morning, but usually they don’t overlap at all. I’m still a full working musician.

How frequently would you say you’re performing each month?

As little as one or two gigs as many as four or five. I try to I try not to do any more than that.

Do you play at home just for yourself?

No, it’s always just the gigs. I have rehearsals with the band, but they’re not at my house—my English bulldog will attack me if I play saxophone at home. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work well.

What do you like to play the most?

My favorite type of music to play is jazz—more modern jazz. I do compose some. A lot of the musicians I played with aren’t jazz musicians, so I’ve lucked out and and found a few people [who are], but we can’t get together very often. I do still try to play some fusion jazz every now and then.

So technically I’m in four bands: the funk and soul band called Hunkajunk, the folk band called Free Range Folk, and Ecosphere is our fusion jazz band. Then, with two other people who front Hunkajunk, we’re a trio called Honey and Nuts.

It’s fun. I love being able to play, and I love the fact that I don’t have to do it for a living.

What does being able to play music like this add to your life? And how do you find balancing being a journalist and being a musician?

They’re complimentary. I write mostly about creative agencies, so it keeps the creative side of my brain functioning. I find that the people, especially in the creative industry, who have side hustle—they’re either creative writers, or they’re in bands, or they have visual arts outlets….it keeps them more active. You can more broadly look at things and have different perspectives, and I think that’s invaluable. I think if I was just a journalist, I would be bored. I have to be out there. I have to be performing. My brain doesn’t work if I’m not. I have to play.

What would you tell people who are interested in pursuing a path like this—maybe someone who was a musician growing up, but didn’t realize there are ways to keep performing without it being a career?

The phrase ‘follow your passion’ is so overused, but at the same time, your job may not necessarily be your passion. So find a way to keep that passion going. Because if you don’t, something inside you might die a little bit, or you might you might lose it, and I think you have to keep that around because I think it’ll make you better at your job, and I think it’ll make you a more well-rounded person. If you have something you love to do, keep doing it. Find a way to balance it. ▲

P.S. I will be back with my arts and cultural news roundups soon—and maybe even some essays. Stay tuned!