Meet the People: Toby Chishick, Social Media Director and Singer-Songwriter

Most people at J. Walter Thompson London might know Toby Chishick as the resident social media guru, but there’s more to this Social Media Director.

When he’s away from the office, Toby Chishick transforms to singer-songwriter Toby Chiz. We sat down with the rising UK star for a chat about his debut EP, his new music and social media.

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Q: Congratulations on releasing your debut EP, Fragile State of Mind. Tell us about the inspiration behind the name.
A: Many thanks! The EP name came from the title track which is about a close friend of mine who was struggling with mental health problems and alcohol addiction. It’s about making your way through a world unsympathetic to mental health issues, and how delicate and vulnerable we can all be from time to time.

Q: How long did it take for you to put this piece of work together?
A: Far too long! Ha! I started recording the music 4 years ago! It took a lot of work to organise as I was quite ambitious and recorded with a lot of musicians including a full band and string quartet and had to organise and pay for everything myself, though I had some great people help me out and support me with their time and love. There were a lot of delays and road bumps along the way and the music has often at times taken a back-seat to my career and various life-commitments from those involved delayed things, so I’m excited to have finally finished and released it!

Q: The cover art looks great, did you design it?
A: No, sadly my Photoshop skills are quite basic… but actually the artwork was created by a fellow employee of J Walter Thompson! I read an interview on this very blog with Esteban Tijerino who is a designer working over in J. Walter Thompson Costa Rica and he explained how he likes to paint/draw/create his art while listening to music, so I thought I’d get in touch and see if he would be interested in creating artwork for my EP if I sent him my music! To my delight he said yes and was very enthusiastic and created all the beautiful artwork for the project which I’m really happy with.

Q: What’s your songwriting ritual? What do you do to create a space that is conducive to great songwriting?
A: I don’t have a set ritual though will often find my best creative ideas come when I’m not trying too hard and am just relaxing with my guitar and playing around. I generally like to write alone and in an enclosed and quiet space though and find this allows me to be free to experiment, make mistakes and try weird things without fear of judgement. I find the songwriting process a bit like thinking out loud, you don’t necessarily want people to hear every thought until it’s a constructed sentence! I do also enjoy writing with other people sometimes as that helps to bounce ideas around and you can get a nice collaborative creative energy and I find it useful to learn things from others and see their process.

Q: If you could duet with any musician, living or dead, who would it be?
A: Good question, there’s a number of musicians I’d love to write and/or play with. I’ve always been into the American singer/songwriter scene and been a fan of those artists, whether mainstream or less well know (such as Howie Day, Ari Hest, Justin Nozuka, Corey Smith, Jason Mraz) but if I had to pick one I would probably say John Mayer as I love his songwriting, and his vocals and guitar skills are incredible and I imagine he would be a lot of fun to play with.

Q: Do you ever get stage fright? If so, how do you get rid of pre-performance jitters?
A: Yes, definitely – it’s something I used to struggle with a lot, but the more I play the easier I’ve found it gets. For me it’s like interviewing for a job, or speaking in public – the first couple of times you do it you’re pretty terrified and worried about what could go wrong and what other people will think of you but the more you do it the easier it gets. To stop nerves when I perform now, I make sure I’ve done all my prep and then just before going on I try to find a couple of minutes to myself and take a few breaths and do a little vocal warm-up if I can.

Q: How do your roles as a singer-songwriter and as a Social Media Director overlap? Do they ever inform each other? Have you used your social media presence to spread awareness of your music?
A: There’s creativity needed for both roles, and definitely a shared story-telling aspect. I think for both roles you need confidence and experience to hold the attention of a group and demonstrate your skill, and there’s a lot I’ve learned from working in advertising that can be applied to playing music and a lot of business skills I’ve picked up that I think are crucial for musicians or anyone who makes a living through art. I’ve definitely been trying to leverage my social media presence to promote the EP, and started to apply my skills and experience in advertising to myself as a client now I have a product out! It does feel a bit like I’m spoiling my passion by turning it into work though! Saying that my experience with things like web CMS’, email marketing, video search optimisation, content creation, analytics, copy-writing and event planning etc are definitely coming in handy. Unfortunately I often don’t have as much time as I’d like to apply my day job skills to my music, but I’m looking to try to do more and the nice thing about having myself as a client is I can take a few more risks and experiment with things more than I can with paying clients! So that’s quite fun.

Q: What’s next for Toby Chishick the singer-songwriter?
A: Well I go by Toby Chiz for my music as my last name always gets spelled wrong and also it means that I can have a bit of a dual identity! But yeah, I’m actually going to try and keep the musical ball rolling by recording my first full length album! As an independent artist (with no label to pay for anything) I’m colliding my music and social media worlds to raise the funds to make the album through a new online crowd-funding platform for musicians called Rocket Fuel, where my campaign has just launched – so if you’re reading this please do visit my page and help me out: https://rocketfuelhq.com/tobychiz.

— Connect with Toby Chiz on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his website tobychiz.com.

— Download Toby’s EP on iTunes and the Android Play Store.