This Is Ken Apperson, the Many-Sided Master of the Local Hustle

Written By: Thompson Brandes

Theidentitytb.com

The sun is starting to set over the Tampa Riverwalk and Ken Apperson appears in a different change of clothes than I saw him in a half-hour ago. He’s winded. His beard is splendid. And he’s wearing the kind of sleek, round-framed sunglasses that look as if he’s just filmed an action sequence for The Matrix Revolutions. Maybe that's why he's short of breath. But I'm curious. I want to assure him he looks great. But also, what is happening?

The Ken I know is on the internet—as the host of the music variety show Coda Project, as the host of WMNF’s Live Music Showcase, as Director of Artist Relations for Five 5 Entertainment, and as an artist. He finesses them all seamlessly. A Faceless Man serving the Many-Faced God of local music. And I’m excited to watch him interview two burgeoning young songwriters under the kind of booming pink sunset normally reserved for an Instagram filter. He's about to shoot a waterfront episode of the aforementioned Coda Project, in which local artists NIGHTBREAKERS and Alianna will share stripped down songs and stories with an audience both live and online. A crowd forms as his production partner Ben Eytalis—a discreet virtuoso behind the lens—puts his finishing touches on the evening’s set.

And just like that, Ken Apperson disappears again.

“He’ll be back,” Ben assures us, not that we needed assuring. It’s a blunt curiosity at this point. I look around like a kid looking for his mom, hoping to catch a glimpse of this warlock, when I notice another live set has begun not 100 yards away at Stones Throw. Ken will certainly not be happy about a solo acoustic set interfering with his entire night’s production. Except at second glance—and at further perk of the ears—I notice it IS Ken playing a solo acoustic set. He’s been running back and forth between projects—black tee to denim work shirt and back—for the entire duration of preproduction. And he would continue this routine throughout the duration of filming for the entire night.

This is what they call, in the biz, The Hustle, in its purest and most old-fashioned sense of the word. And I’d soon learn it’s what Ken Apperson is all about—on the radio, as a musician and in life. Be honest, be kind, work hard. A story that holds, what feels like, a gazillion nuggets of wisdom for any young creative reaching for a career in entertainment.

Chandler Culotta/@cmcattampa

Thompson Brandes: Let's start from the beginning. You're originally from St. Louis. What was your path to Florida and how did it wind up in Tampa?

Ken Apperson: Well, I was in a band and we had a manager, the manager was based here. The manager said, if you're here, I can do more for you locally. I have more connections. And I had a cousin, I still have a cousin who lives here and offered to put us up for a few months while we got on our feet. I thought I had a job lined up. It turns out I didn't have a job lined up. But we moved down here in December of 2008. The band broke up in April of 2009. That band was called Everlight.

A lifetime in band years. And they all moved down here from St. Louis?

Everyone but the drummer. And yeah, the band broke up about four months after we got down here because everybody kind of had different priorities at that point. This is our first time being on our own. And that can be a very culture shocking experience, especially when you're in a band, trying to live a "rock star lifestyle." I had started collecting local bar gigs, realizing that I could potentially make a living doing that down here, which was something I'd never known. I was abandoned playing for pizza, and I was buying tickets to our own shows and giving them to our friends for free instead of paying my electric bill just to have people there [laughs].

Your friends wouldn't buy tickets?!

Not enough. A dozen friends might buy the tickets and then come for free and make us look better than we were at the time. But that's what got me down here. Most of them went back home.

What made you stay? Was it truly a career thing? Or was as there a part of Tampa that you were like, oh, this place is pretty cool, I can live here?

It was Ybor, honestly. Ybor City was my home base for years, playing at the bars on the strip in the morning—2009, 2010—it was right after the Superbowl was here. People were like Mardi Gras three days a week and nice and steady the rest of the week, as well. So there was no shortage of places to play. And at the time, they were all paying a decent rate. So I was like, oh my God, I can actually do this and pay all my bills. This is amazing. Okay. And I've done it right down to present day. 12 years.

Was your musical angle to make it as a singer-songwriter? Or as a session player in studio and on stages?

Well, I was happy to get paid to play music, but I ultimately always dreamed of being successful as a songwriter and a person who performs songs that I wrote—ticketing venues and things like that. It's actually kind of funny. One of the most formative experiences of my life happened when I worked for a year and a half on my first solo project. It's called Puzzle Pieces. It's on Spotify.

You have hair on Spotify.

I have hair on Spotify. That's right. That's why it's old. I totally torpedoed the project by being wildly insecure about how it sounded and not having a clear vision, not believing in my own ability to live up to what it needed to be. And I think that's probably something that a lot of musicians can relate to. I worked so long on it that I couldn't ever possibly live up to the expectations I set for myself with that project. So at a certain point, I was like, okay, it's done. It's done. And I thought it was really good. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever made. Put it out there. Not understanding anything about marketing, not understanding anything about promoting an album, just thinking, oh, put it out there and people will hear it.

I think every creative goes through that. "I'll just put it out there and let it do its thing." And then there's the other side, where there's a giant pushback on being really, really transparent and honest with your art. I think that's hard for a lot of people.

I couldn't agree more. I had to set up a system of rules and guidelines for myself and stick to them. I have a collection of essential philosophies that I had to define for myself: What is an artist? Am I that guy? Do I want to be that guy? And I went through many years, too many years, trying to figure this out. It's the reason why I haven't released anything else since that first album, because I went through so much time trying to figure out what my sound would actually sound like, what I needed it to be. And then whether or not those two ideas got along. I finally got to a place where I found that. Which is why I'm planning to release an EP in the next few months.

Have you enjoyed that creative process again?

Yeah, I did. I did some recording with local indie legend, Sean Kyle. We actually started the project three years ago and it got put on hold because I had some personal things going on with a significant other. The issue needed full attention. So at that point I kind of decided to hang up the saddle for a while until I started back up.

It's not a good project unless it gets tabled for like a year, at least.

Yeah. Just ask Guns and Roses about Chinese Democracy. Took them 10 years to finish that album. And then everyone went. "Yeah." Because 10 years of anticipation you can never live up to.

Chandler Culotta/@cmcattampa

What was the spark that made you want to try flipping to the other side of the mic and talking to people like yourself?

Well, with Coda Project, it started with livestreaming. I got a little bit of press helping out another livestream and I saw a lot of potential. And then I noticed that like, there really isn't any talk show music face in the area. Maybe I can try that. And on the Coda Project, you look back to the very first videos, they're just me in my living room on one camera with a microphone and a musician. I talked for like the first half an hour of playing music. And I think I did segments like "Florida Man of the Week."

There's always one Florida Man a week where it's like, I can't believe this is actually a thing.

Always. Anyway, that's where it started. And then I realized immediately that I don't have what it takes to be alone on camera for an hour cultivating a show alone. I'm not that guy. So I thought, well, I know tons of musicians who are crazy talented. Let's have them come over. Everybody's doing nothing right now [during the pandemic]. And then I thought, okay, for me to be competitive with these other streams that are already established, how can I do that? I can't get a celebrity, I'm not on that level. So maybe I can make the product better. And that's when I got in touch with Ben Eytalis from LunarView. And I sent him a Facebook message. Shot in the dark. "How much is your hourly rate?” He told me and I was like, "Oh! Okay, well maybe I'll get in touch with you in six months when I hopefully have some sponsors."

And he says, now hang on. “What are you doing?” So I met up for lunch, told him the idea. And now it's truly a talk show that's music-centric and we get the best-of-the-best live musicians to come on and perform. And they get the benefit of being in a high-quality, professional environment because of Ben. We get the benefit of them performing on our stream. And it did really well for the short amount of time that we did those livestreams.

And your partner Ben is, from what I observed, the secret sauce of all of this. He does a great job capturing everything you do. And then in post, putting it all together so that the story is cohesive. At what point were you like, "Okay, I just stumbled into something pretty awesome."

Oh man. When we had Doechii on the show. Which was a connection that was made for us through Five 5 Studios. It was a perfect example of how technology sometimes doesn't want to live up to your expectations. I'm being perfectly honest. That episode was a total train wreck.

How so?

It was our first on-location live show at Green Bench Brewery, with a really high-profile guest, who was great by the way, Doechii is great. She was on time, she was professional and courteous. She was amazing. I'd work with her again in a heartbeat if she'd ever actually do that. So, we tried using the venue's internet and it tested it all up until the show and it went great. And then for whatever reason, when we went live, we ended up just completely losing the stream. So instead, we recorded the episode as though it was live and repost it the next day. And frankly, when I saw the reaction of the crowd that was there that night, it was such a funny thing because once Ben got the cameras and everything set up, everyone was like, "Oh, this is legit." And I was just flabbergasted by the effect cameras have. And the other thing that started happening is that it didn't matter if it was successful or not, they thought it looked cool. And people wanted to be a part of it.

My favorite rap writer, Shea Serrano, he had this great tweet this morning. That was something like, "One of my favorite things about listening to music is listening to an album, hearing a song with a feature that I love, not knowing who that person is, and then going into their music and realizing that all their music totally rules, too." And then the next line in the tweet was "Right now, that person is Doechii.”

That's amazing. That's awesome. It's pretty amazing how the camaraderie here builds too. The locals in the street, everybody has the same goal. Everybody wants to see the Tampa music scene explode.

That's the coolest part to me. Everybody of course wants to further their own career. But they love the art. They have fun doing it. And everybody wants to put Tampa on. We all realize how much fun this is together and how much we all intertwine, whether we anticipated that or not.

At the end of the day, one of the reasons why we wanted to have a host element to the show was so that there's someone there for them to interact with. So they don't feel like they're talking to cameras. And I believe that when a musician is happy and comfortable, they give their best version of their performance. So if I can create that atmosphere in a situation that's otherwise not very comfortable for them, then I've done my job.

How do you see Coda Project moving and shaping into the future?

Well, I can tell you we're working on some things. What I will say is that we very much like the super concentrated theme of the show, which is local musicians that deserve attention that they might not be getting. Or local musicians who deserve more attention. Maybe they haven't figured out the marketing end. Maybe they're new. Maybe they just haven't figured out how to audience themselves yet. They haven't found their way into the community. Bad Cameo is a great example of a band that moved here and inserted themselves into the mold that they found as quickly as possible, and then attacked it. That's kind of what you have to do. Our biggest utopian goal is to make our way to the rest of the country and show the rest of this country that the Tampa music scene is a force to be reckoned with.

You're accomplishing a little bit of that at WMNF now, as well. At what point did you make that call and how did you get linked up to local radio?

Well, I can credit David [Ranon] and Grant [Hart] there. They reached out to me on the WMNF's social media platforms. "You guys are doing cool work. Let's get it on the radio." My head exploded immediately: brand validation. So I met up with him (David). We had a powwow and we think in very similar pathways. “People like your work at the station.” All right. “What are we talking about here, on air?” Lets try it. And now the best part of what I do there is the Live Music Showcase. It's one hour a week and it's tough, but fun. Every week we have a guest and the show is entirely centered around performing live music. And we'll talk about how they got to where they are, where they want to go. And continue to reinforce the idea that Tampa is more than just a big town without an art scene.

I was in there recently to watch Grant and David do their thing. I kind of jumped in in the last hour to play some music that I've been listening to. And I was like, you've just been doing this on your own for two hours already? At 6 a.m. on a Monday morning?

Yeah, it's a wild job. And what's funny is when I took on the role, other people that are more involved with the station tried to kind of disillusion me in that like, whoa, man, you're going to need help with this. And honestly, because of COVID protocols, I had already been in the minds of a lot of people in the scene to do things like livestream a performance. So it's worked out so far.

It didn't seem as much like hard work, but you're already doing hard work.

At the end of the day, it's really not. What's funny about musicians, people think of them as kind of like herding cats and to a degree there's some of those people out there, but my experience locally, and my favorite thing about this, is how professional everybody is and how courteous everybody is. We have bands at our house—people who I'd never met before—and they show up on our doorstep with a full rig of equipment sometimes, and everybody was just great to work with. If you present yourself in a positive way, you set that expectation for them.

Throughout this journey of yours, do you still see yourself as a musician first?

Yeah. A hundred percent. For starters, it's still the only way that I actually make a living. [laughs]

By the way, you kicked ass at Stone's Throw. It was so much fun. You were playing songs that I literally had on earlier in the day, like "Rosie" by John Mayer.

Oh really?

And you killed it with the loops and solos. I was like, man, what a cool way to perform this song as a one man show.

I appreciate that. I'll use that as a testimonial in the future.

You are, in my mind, in both music and on camera, a naturally gifted storyteller. And you seem to be passionate about it.

I'm a good talker, yeah. [Laughs]

You spotlight so many people in this community, artists in this community. It's what we've been talking about this whole time at the end of the day. At the end of your career, is there a certain story you want to be told about yourself?

Um, you know, I would say the answer to that question is yes. And it's mostly in the music. I write music about my personal experiences, my emotions, my personal philosophy. I think the first step in determining good songwriting is I like an artist to be honest—vulnerable, relaying personal messages, politics. Anything they're saying, it needs to be genuine. And you have to present that message in a way that people actually hear it and it resonates.

And I think that if you're a musician, if you're just out here saying anything, it sounds a little corny. But in my opinion, the last real form of magic is music. Because it's literally crafting with emotion. In music theory classes in college, they teach you to equate scales with emotions. They teach you to equate certain chord progressions with emotions. And it's so much like alchemy in a sense that, you know, I'm not an alchemist or whatever, but if our job is to use the last real form of magic and we have a responsibility to use it here, then we can do that by sharing our own personal experiences and stories. And people will relate to those more and they'll resonate with them.

Chandler Culotta/@cmcattampa

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.