Musician tells stories
Zeke Anderson enjoys telling stories with his music. Photos submitted
By Tom Victoria
Zeke Anderson is a storyteller, singing about the emotions and mysteries in life.
“I am very heavily inspired by experience and going places,” he said. “Ranging from going to the grocery store, to going to the beach and walking around the boardwalk, to camping, vacations and waterparks. Experience is such an important thing in human life, and I have had many experiences. Some were super traumatic, others were amazing and thrilling.”
Zeke, 18, of Washington State described his style.
“I don't even know what genre I fully am,” he said. “I have a keyboard. I just use that. I tried getting into guitar and I got burnout, but I have a keyboard. It's not like traditional pop. It's not very traditional music. It's very nonconforming is the word I like to use. It's very independent. It's unique to me. I'm yet to figure out what it is, but we will get there.”
Zeke will release new music this fall.
“I have one EP and before that, I released two singles,” he said. “I'm releasing an album in November. My first one is being released in November. All of our energy for music needs to go to this, but it'll be very fun.”
Zeke explained the album’s name.
“Polar Bear Sky got its name because I wanted my first album to have a name that would strike as unique,” he said. “This is also the first official track in the album. It’s about the feeling of being alone and finding my own peace during rough times whether it was a bad day at school or a bad day at home or at work or at a family’s house or anywhere. There isn’t a specific person that the lyrics are referring to. That person I want the listener to define for themselves.”
Zach sings in a reel.
Zeke is producing nine songs for the album.
“Each song has its own little personality in the album, and it's all combined into this one piece,” he said. “I don't want to spoil too much of it before it comes out.”
Zeke said music is a way to express himself unlike any other.
“There's a lot you can do with music,” he said. “When I make music, I can convey my emotions and convey hidden meanings in my mind in a way that I can't do any other way. I can write it down, but I need to give it something to give it that meaning. I gotta add music to it.”
Zeke prefers producing the music he’s inspired to do.
“I have written two songs that I'm absolutely not attached to,” he said. “I did that because I was trying to make something just to make something. I was like, I need to keep making content and not leave my followers just hanging there with nothing. I need to keep doing stuff. I was still in high school when I released my first project. I was so busy and I work. I was forcing myself to come up with these ideas quickly and try to cram everything in.”
Zeke said pieces like those don’t work as well.
“You really need to make the stuff that you feel attached to,” he said. “You need to give yourself the amount of time you need. If you do that, it'll come out better and you'll feel attached to it. I feel like what makes music better is when the artist is really attached to it. That makes a big difference.”
Zeke doesn’t wait for inspiration to hit randomly.
“I try to find it,” he said. “I don't really wait for it to happen. I go out and find it. The best way for me is to get out of the house. When you're in the house, you just see walls. Sometimes, that can be an inspiration itself, depending on what you're writing. But I usually just try to find it. If I can't think of something one day, I'm like, well, our day off is Tuesday. Let's go out on Tuesday and maybe go to a park, go to a lake, go hiking, go to the mall, go do something. Get out of the house and have experiences traveling. That helps my inspiration the most.”
Zeke may think of a melody or lyrics first.
“Sometimes it's a melody and sometimes it's a lyric,” he said. “I released a song called The Change. I made that melody when I was 14. I didn't really know how to put lyrics into songs yet, so I just kept the melody. And then I had a dream one night. I had a dream where that melody was playing in a dream. It was the chords that were in the dream. Then the melody, that was in the dream. I don't know where it came from. All of the melodies, the chorus, not the lyrics of the chorus, but the sound of the chorus, all of that was in that dream. I don't know what happened, but I used it because I was like, that's going to be a very interesting story one day.”
Zeke released The Change on July 25.
“Those lyrics came out of my mind and they made sense to me,” he said. “I would say The Change is accepting that everything life has to throw at you, even the bad, the bad, the good, everything. Maybe you lost a family member or you lost a job or maybe you got a dog, something good happened or something bad happened. It's learning to take in life. That is what it ended up meaning to me, and I wanted to bring that out there.”
Zeke said it’s easier to devise a melancholy song than a happy one.
“It's very strange,” he said. “I'm not a very melancholy person. If you get to know me, I'm very bubbly and I'm very fun. But I'm not fully extroverted. I'm kind of amberverted. I have a social battery. Even though I may not act like I have one, I do. It's so interesting how artists make stuff, but it's so different than what they actually are. But that is their style. That conveys what they really feel the most was their art. That's very interesting, honestly.”
Zeke won’t perform live regularly until it’s the right time.
“I do voice lessons, so I've done these performances that you can do if you want,” he said. “I've done one of those. I might do one this November. I would want to do it at some point in my life, but I'd like more material first. I don't want to have such little to show. I have a lot of room for growth. I want to wait for that. I want to make sure I have a following who actually would want to — they don't just follow me because it's a small artist who's trying to get there. I'm not saying that people who follow me think that way, but I want to make sure that I am very ready before I do it.”
Music always was part of Zeke’s life.
“I grew up in church, so there was music,” he said.
Zeke recalled the first artist to impact him as a youth.
“I would say Owl City,” he said. “I grew up listening to Owl City all the time. I liked his quirky names for his songs. There was Alligator Sky, there was Fireflies, and then there was Hospital Flowers. I was like, this is very interesting. I think he made his music on keyboard, not 100 percent sure, but there's a lot of musicians that do that. I liked a lot of his songs. I liked how they incorporated him in a lot of movies I grew up watching, too. I would say he was probably the first artist that really influenced me.”
Zeke’s passion for music began with an instrument.
“I believe I may have just turned 13 years old cause this was between early December and Christmas,” he said. “There was this family's house we went to who we knew. We were in their basement playing video games. In the back corner of the room, they have a keyboard. I don't remember what the keyboard was, but it had awesome sounds on it. I was on it for hours. I couldn't get off the keyboard because I kept messing around with notes, making stuff. I'm like, it sounds cool. All these sounds sound awesome. I want to just keep making sounds. It's just great.”
Zeke got the bug to continue playing the keys.
“I didn't realize how much of an influence that would actually have on me because then I got a keyboard,” he said. “It was a small one like one of the small MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) keyboards that you only play with one hand. I ended up using one of those to create my first projects. I still have it. Music's just great. It sounds nice and I like making it.”
Having a keyboard led Zeke to becoming a musician.
“My parents gave me a keyboard because they wanted me to do it,” he said. “They wanted me to do it because they could see I can mess around with sounds and it sounded cool. I remember the day I got the keyboard. My dad took me in the car and told me that we were going to go pick something up, but he would not tell me anything no matter how many times I asked. It was a decent-sized package. I was like, I think they got me a dog. I got home and I opened it, and it was a keyboard. I immediately started using it. When I got that keyboard, that was a very influential moment.”
Zeke started singing as a teen.
“I would say 16,” he said. “I started a little late. I didn't actually know I was going to get into songwriting. I wanted to start doing it because it's like, well, I make sounds and music. Why not? I just learn this, too. What's the harm in that? There's nothing wrong with that. I should try to learn doing that. I love it, so I'm going to keep doing that.”
Zeke’s musical influences evolved over time.
“My musical influences have really changed,” he said. “I was introduced to Enya from my mom, and I really liked her music. Her music was very soothing and calming. I was so fascinated by the way they produced her vocals. I was very inspired by that. I was also very inspired by a DJ and producer called TheFatRat from Germany. He has had a lot of music on Roblox and other video games, and he makes very good music.”
Zeke also took to music following a traditional style of storytelling.
“The Wellerman sea shanty was rampant,” he said. “It was everywhere. I really liked that. That actually was a boost for me to learn to get better at songwriting. It has that repeating chorus to it and it's telling a story.”
“It’s okay to use the same chord progression, but you need to write different material and different melodies to go along with it. You need to still add your own twist to it.”
Zeke continues to be inspired by new musicians he discovers.
“Sometimes, I'll find a new musician,” he said. “I think I'm going to take some ideas from them, too. Not literally plagiarize, but listen to them. Maybe I should market my music in a similar way to this. Certain stuff in music is not owned. Chord progressions are not owned. There's only so many chords. There's many notes you can use. There's only so many, though. It's okay to use the same chord progression, but you need to write different material and different melodies to go along with it. You need to still add your own twist to it.”
For now, Zeke produces his own music.
“I make everything myself,” he said. “I would not mind working with a producer at all. I just haven't gotten to that point yet. But for now, I just do everything myself. I'm trying to learn how to volumize everything correctly. I'm trying not to have my audio clip. I'm trying to make it louder. I'm trying to learn how to master my audio files. But it's just a learning curve.”
Zeke wants a successful music career, but not international fame.
“Maybe I could just be successful locally or be successful or known in a certain region of the world,” he said. “Maybe not known throughout the entire world. I don't want to be a Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars. I don't want to be up there. I don't want that. That's pressure. It's money, lots of it, but I don't need that.”
Zeke makes an effort to take care of his voice.
“I take classical voice lessons,” he said. “I have for about two years. I'm a very fast learner. I've learned to have a much healthier singing technique because of those lessons that I take. When I was singing, I actually wouldn't warm up. Bad habit. I've learned to fix that. I will warm up. They can be as simple as humming the melody or just practicing your vowels to open up that region in there and stretching your jaw like that to kind of help relax everything and get everything ready.”
Zeke drinks no special elixir.
“It depends on the person,” he said. “Someone's voice can be very heavily affected by dairy, so they stay away from dairy completely. Sometimes, I'll just drink water. I always have a water bottle with me at all times. Just ice water, just cold water. I'll take sips in between sessions. If I have to start a recording over, I'll drink some water. Something as simple as that. But I don't really have a special drink.”
Zeke keeps himself motivated.
“That's what makes it hard is that it's just you,” he said. “There is nothing out there telling you that you need to do it today even though you really want to do it today. I've learned to teach myself: that's just tough. Sorry, you're doing it today. Come on, Zeke. It's today. You have your new album releasing November. You gotta get your stuff now. I went on a vacation to Florida for two weeks, and the first full day I had back was just hours of recording, hours of getting stuff done because I had fallen behind, because I was not motivated. When you're not motivated, you pay for it.”
Zeke dispensed advice to aspiring musicians.
“Just do it,” he said. “Don't let things stop you. Don't let anything stop you. If you have a computer, you're very blessed to have a computer. You should go buy a little keyboard and start off simple. Then work your way up slowly, but just do it. It's harder for some people because we're all different. We all have our own walks of life. So for everyone, it's gonna be a different story. But my advice would just be: what's stopping you?”
Zeke’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zekemusicofficial_/
Zeke’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ-R2oOrWEyH-hauqWoRvYQ