Hi, friend! It’s been a minute.
I’ve been gone for a minute and a lot has happened.
A new year has come and is 67% gone. I spent New Years at Trevor’s place (my podcast co-host) in Brooklyn. He and his now-wife, Amy, were back in Colorado with family. The apartment was halfway still-packed, halfway unpacked. Much of Amy and Trevor’s things hadn’t arrived yet, and the place had an air of openness to it. It was wonderful, and I’m eternally grateful.
My girlfriend and I brought in 2022 at an old friend’s party. As one of the smartest dudes I’ve ever met, Alex is the type of dude who brings interesting people together. I met actors, artists, an engineer for a hydroponic-driven urban farm—the most fascinating humans I’d been around since the start of the Panny D. I remember a conversation where Alex was gesticulating passionately, explaining his artistic process. We looked around the room at the numerous elaborate paintings lining his walls (they were painted on a roof top, during a hot summer day, and under the influence of mushrooms). Suddenly, I heard the countdown begin.
10-9-8-7-6…
I turn to my girl, give her a big New Years Day kiss, and….
11 days, 2 PCRs, and a concert later, I’m back in Los Angeles outside of Silent Zoo Studios.
I’m hyped because I get to work with Stephanie again (one of the best contractors in LA). We’re taking rapid antigen tests outside, just before the session because it was during the height of the Omicron variant surge.
While I was cracking a few jokes with friends, I hear “Drew? Drew Forde?” being called over my shoulder. “Can you come walk this way with me for a second?" I oblige. “So, you’ve come back positive. I’m going to need you to take another test…” and I didn’t need to hear the rest. I finally caught the ‘Rona.
It wasn’t ready to get this kinda news, but it was bound to happen eventually. I’m almost certain that I caught during my trip to NYC…possibly even at that party. At that point, it didn’t really matter. I quarantined, watched some YouTube, and essentially slept through it.
A few gigs came and went, but the gravity of Covid19 was largely keeping musical projects grounded. It was during this time that I began to say yes to everything that came my way. I kept telling myself “make some money while you can, Drew. You never know what the coming months will bring.” I also needed to find a way to fund my Boba addiction, but I was in denial.
Then January 21st, 2022 came, and everything changed. I didn’t know it at the time, but that is the date Whole Soul was born.
When I moved to LA, I found myself playing much less chamber music. I NEEDED to fix that.
But how the f*** was I supposed to do that? In a place like LA, you can pretty much build anything, which is cool. The part that sucks is: whatever it is you wanna build, you gotta start from the very bottom. There’s no way around it. I knew very few people in LA, and none of them were the chamber music type. With nothing left to do but to roll up my sleeves, I got to work.
Daniel and I performing for kids in Hawaii
A month after finally landing in LA, I reconnected with an old friend of mine, Daniel. A phenomenal cellist who studied at New England Conservatory and Cleveland Institute of Music, Daniel and I met back in 2010 at Bowdoin International Music Festival. Aside from a brief first meeting on the first night and a random game of soccer, we didn’t hang out that summer, which is something I regret. A year later at the Montecito Music Festival, we reconnected and hung out more the following summer. We’d play poker deep into the night and talk about our dreams of becoming professionals. Fast-forward a couple of years to 2014, Daniel let me crash at his dank apartment during a Cleveland snowstorm when I was auditioning for CIM. I didn’t get in lol. What was super cool is that he walked with me through the snow and slush—all the way to the bus stop. I never forgot that.
So, it’s circa September 2018. Daniel and I started hosting chamber music reading parties at my spot. We had two objectives. 1: We wanted to read with violinists and see if we could find people we connected with. 2. We wanted to perform for people.
At the time, this was the only way I knew how to build a quartet. Super basic, but it was a place to start. We played random house parties via Groupmuse through March 2020. This was kind of cool, because we began to build a network of clients throughout the city. We would play in Glendale, Orange County, Inglewood, and we even did a couple in some high-rise apartments in Downtown LA. During this process, Danier and I met a few players we connected with, and essentially rotated based on whom was available. Unfortunately, all of our momentum was crushed during the pandemic. On top of that, our regular violinists had largely lost interest in the endeavor as well.
Daniel and I had to go back to the drawing board.
January 21st, 2022, Daniel and I finally caught a break.
Candlelight Concert at Chapel
We were slated to play our first Candlelight Concert down in San Diego at this place called Chapel. It was a cute little church with wooden pews and a really beautiful, natural acoustic. Our program was “Tribute to Taylor Swift,” a show with which we’d soon become very familiar. Normally, this would have been just another run-of-the-mill performance: pop music for string quartet.
However, something was different this time. Daniel and I had recently started playing with two new violinists: Michelle and Andrew. They were a few years younger than us, but BOY could they play. After playing one Groupmuse with them in late December 2021, Daniel and I silently agreed that we wanted to play more with these cats.
Michelle and Andrew proved to be an entirely different from everyone we’d played with. They didn’t really care about who played first violin, and they amicably and frictionlessly switched off playing first with each other. For those of you who may not be aware, this is rare behavior from violinists. Oftentimes, something this trivial causes quartets to implode, so Daniel and I were very impressed by their teamwork.
Furthermore, they both had unique strengths and sounds. Despite her tiny frame and calm, charming demeanor, Michelle could cut the warm textures that Andrew, Daniel, and I produce. We. Play. Loud. And although she could fight toe to toe with us boys, she also produced a sweetness in her sound that was a joy to listen to. Andrew, is an insane violinist too. Because he also plays viola, he draws the warmest, fullest violin sound of anyone I know. Not only that, his sense of rhythmic pocket and feel was uncannily similar to that of some jazz cats I’ve played with in town. I later learned that Andrew used to play electric bass for Baptists churches in Baltimore. Go. Figure. LOL
Daniel and I were officially in business.
One month of Candlelights go by, and we all feel it. We are onto something special.
It’s the end of February 2022. Our quartet just finished playing our 5th Candlelight date (10 shows total), and it feels like we’re already a well-oiled machine from the stage. We all speak to the audience. We crack jokes to the audience and we get them laughing. We have people coming up to us after shows asking “do you guys do weddings?” “Do you have a website or newsletter I can join?” “Can you give us your business card?”
We were cooking with grease, and it seemed like the market was hungry for more.
Noticing this exciting development, Michelle asked me for a meeting. I had mentioned my intention of making this quartet legit, and she wanted in. I was taken aback, but relieved that she felt the same way! Daniel and I had been playing with violinists for 4 years at the point, and not a one had expressed any interested in taking things to the next level. It seems like everyone was on the same page. We knew what we had was different.
Things Finally Got Serious
I received a random email from a person who attended a Groupmuse that Daniel and I had performed in 2019. They wanted to hire us for a corporate Gala in Downtown LA. This was our first gig outside of Candlelight Concerts, and I couldn’t be more excited! I negotiated the fee, drew up a contract, secured the deposit, and locked down the dates. It. Was. On.
Everything went relatively smoothly. We played some charming background music—Beethoven Op. 18s and assorted works of Mozart. When we spiced things up with some Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, and Bill Withers, I noticed people beginning to turn from their dinner to watch us. At background music gigs this. never. happens. I laughed to myself. Even though these arrangements were kinda doo-doo (lol), the audience particularly enjoyed the Soul and R&B music anyway. It was something novel that they hadn’t really expected. This was a huge insight that I’ll come back to in a second.
The problem surfaced when the emcee of the evening attempted to introduce us. We hadn’t come up with a name yet, so I sent them a sample name. However, either the sample brief they asked for wasn’t memorable, or they didn’t bother to read it. All the same, they ended up introducing us as “ThatVio….String Quartet” and I DIED INSIDE. Not only was that not the name I submitted, but it also wasn’t my online brand either. I realized that if we were going to be respected, we needed to build our BRAND NOW.
The only problem was—we didn’t have a name for our group. We’d been toying around with the idea of coming up with a name, but we were still in the twilight phase of uncertainty. “Are we really tryna do this? What should we name ourselves? How should we come to market? What value do can we provide to the market, and how will this group be different than the other 2,571 wedding quartets vying for market share in the greater LA area? What is our niche?”
I was so livid and embarrassed by that experience, I spent every waking moment thinking about names from that moment forward. I asked for input from everyone else, but none of them could come up with anything. It was at this moment that I realized that I needed to take charge and make some decisions.
Whole Soul.
As soon as I left the Gala, I hopped on the phone with my girlfriend and vented to her. I feverishly word-vomited ideas for names and she, being the wonderful person she is, humored me and played along.
Me: “What about Old Soul Strings?”
Her: “Ewww wtf. Naw, it makes ya’ll sound crusty haha. What do you think about "Cold Soul Strings”
Me: “I think it sounds dope. Like really dope. But I can’t get past the whole cold soul part. We’re actually really warm people, so that would cause some dissonance in the branding. What about Whole Soul Strings?”
Her: “I’m not sure about that one. It just sounds a bit wordy.”
Me: “You’re probably right….”
But here’s the thing, I couldn’t stop thinking about Whole Soul Strings. It resonated the more I said it. But my girl was right, it wasn’t perfect.
For those of you who may not know, string players and composers from the classical realm typically believe that Hip-Hop, Soul, and R&B music is “too hard” to arrange. Therefore, the majority of the music written for string quartet in these genres is incredibly basic. The arrangements were shallow and were obviously meant to be played in the background. But I didn’t think this was right. This music deserves more investment than that.
“We should write and commission our own arrangements of these songs. Let’s make them virtuosic—worthy of being showcased in a featured concert setting like these Candlelights that we’ve been doing,” I thought. The key insight blossomed: R&B and Soul music for string quartet. No one else was doing it.
I felt like Whole Soul Strings would be a good name for a group that embodies these values. However, the gang HATED the name, and there was no way around it.
Fast-forward a month or two, the quartet resolved to have a quick meeting after a gig. We had some things to discuss.
If we were going to build this business, we needed to agree on a few things. We needed to structure our idea and build the skeleton of the brand. What’s more, everyone seemed to look to me for leadership. So, I told them everything I thought. “Remember that DTLA gig where the emcee couldn’t remember our name? That has been eating at me ever since. I don’t ever want to feel disrespected like that again. Let’s get started.”
I told them that we have to be smart. We have to niche down and bring a unique product to market. Let’s change the way string quartets are used in music. Let’s become the nexus between the legacy of the traditional string quartet and the legacy of music and art from African American culture. Let’s play Jazz, Hip-Hop, R&B, and Soul music. Beyond just playing it, let’s utilize extended percussive fiddle techniques as a quartet. Rhythm is the essence of the music we will be playing, so we should reimagine how a quartet can produce rhythmic sounds as a unit. Finally, let’s learn to improvise and take solos. If we do these things, we’ll be unlike any other quartet on planet Earth. What we need is a focused approach to bring something fresh to the industry.
They bought into the vision, but they still didn’t like the name Whole Soul Strings. Unbeknownst to me, they had gotten together without me and attempted to find a better name. Unfortunately, they didn’t succeed (HA, ain’t so easy, huh???!).
Halfway between our third glass of red wine, Michelle broke the brief silence and went “what if we just took ‘strings’ out from Whole Soul Strings. What do you guys think about Whole Soul?” Daniel, Seung, Andrew, and I were in shock. NOW it was perfect. We are Whole Soul.
This is how my quartet, Whole Soul, came to be. This story only encompasses what has happened with the quartet up to May of this year.
In June, everything changed. The quartet almost died as soon as it was born. There’s so much more to this story that I haven’t shared, but I think I should end things here for now. This has already gone on long enough.
If you want to hear more of the story, leave me a comment! If I get 5 comments on here, I’ll continue the story and unveil the catastrophe that was in store for us in June and July.
