KID APOLLO is a solo artist, a songwriter and a self confessed tortured bedroom producer. His new single ‘Shameless’ was released recently and to help celebrate, we thought it would be fun to spend a day with him in his workspace. It’s fair to say that every musician has their own way of doing things - take a look at how the Derry-based artist approaches his music.

8:30 - WAKIES

I try to get up as early as possible to buy into the whole “early to bed, early to rise” adage, but I think my brain has set itself on waking between 8-9AM by default. I resist the urge to look at my phone screen the second I wake up, then stumble out of bed and grab some coffee.

9:15 - START WORK

I work as a freelance writer which I started just before the pandemic hit (working from home before it was cool….just saying!), so unfortunately music isn’t my day job (yet). Every day is different and it’s important to be flexible when you’re creative, but as this is something I do every weekday, it has to be prioritised; therefore, I space all my music work between my writing gigs. I have to be careful with the balance here - if I start the day off with a heavy mixing session, sometimes my brain has trouble switching over to the writing side!

10:30 - ONTO MUSIC

I’ll write for about 40/45 mins at a time, then take a small break to clear my head, maybe stretch my back a little bit. Then I get started on whatever musical work needs done. In this case, I’m finishing a mix of a new single I’ve been mixing for a while. The headphones go on and the puzzle begins again!

12:00 - PRACTICE

I’m always bad at keeping the mixing work to a strict schedule, but usually, by about midday my eyes and ears are a bit fatigued. Usually at this point I’ll save my work and pause the production work and just let off some steam by strumming the acoustic guitar or playing with new sounds on my keyboard.

12:45  - FOOD

I’ll stop neglecting my bodily needs at this point and have some lunch (on this occasion it’s the tried and tested beans-on-toast, if you were curious) and chill for a while after, either watching something small on Netflix or being careful not to get lost down the rabbit hole of YouTube clips. Recently I’ve been fascinated by the Eric Andre Show, but admittedly you’re lost the minute you start watching that. Hey, it’s working from home, everyone does it (don’t they?)

14:00  - BACK TO THE FREELANCE GRIND

Now I remember I have a job that pays me that I need to get back to. I mostly help small businesses and blog owners write articles that they otherwise don’t have time to do themselves, or just tighten up their grammar and spelling. Sometimes this is a little dry, depending on the subject matter, but there’s a lot worse jobs I could be doing (or have done, but now’s not the time to dig up that dirt….)

15:00 - WALKIES

Now I need some exercise to stave off the cabin fever. My legs are still a bit battered from the run I went on the other day (thanks shin splints!) so today it’ll be a walk. I’m lucky that I have a few parks and back roads near me, and today is an oddly nice day in the North West of Ireland to take a long walk outdoors. Drink in that fresh air!

16:00 - RETURN TO THE MIX

I’m feeling pretty refreshed, so I put the kettle on for another cup of coffee and pretend like I don’t know why I’m getting heart palpitations. It’s time to listen to the mix I finished earlier. It’s at the stage where I’ve listened to it so many times that it’s hard to tell what’s an improvement and what’s not, so I try to listen to it as a finished song instead of a file on Logic Pro. I’ll play it on a speaker and do some things around the house to see if it sounds natural, or play it in the car stereo alongside other songs I referenced it with. Luckily, this file named “FINAL FINAL MIX” sounds finished so it doesn’t need to become “FINAL FINAL FINAL MIX”. A small sigh of relief, now it’s off to mastering!

16:30 - WRITING AGAIN

The final mix listening party wasn’t too torturous, thankfully. I get back to writing again, even though all I really want to do is work on the stack of music I’ve started on my laptop. 

18:00 - DINNER

I shouldn’t have pizza and chips…..but I’ll tell you a secret (whispers - I’m having pizza and chips!)

19:00 - LEARN SONGS

When gigs come back I’d like to hit the ground running, so I like to spend a bit of time each day practicing some songs, be it originals or covers. If they’re good enough, some even get recorded and end up on my social media pages. Not tonight though, it’s fair to say I’m a little rusty!

20:15 - CONTENT PLAN

A lot of content is involved in the upkeep of social media pages. Tonight I’m taking a bit of time to make a schedule for my posts, and to look further ahead and make a plan for future music releases. A tad tedious, but it’s also kind of exciting.

21:00 - VINYL LISTENING

We’ve reached the chill out time. I put all work aside and just spend the next 45-60mins listening to vinyl upstairs on the Hi-Fi. Luckily we’ve built up quite a collection in our house over the years, so there’s a great selection. I think tonight a little mixture of St. Vincent and Tame Impala is in order!

22:00 - NETFLIX & TEA

Pretty self explanatory. Note: re-watching The Haunting of Hill House before bed is never a good idea.

23:00 - LIGHTS OUT

Thank you for joining me on today’s creative journey. Hopefully you learned a bit more about me and my sporadic work ethic. Tomorrow I’ll do it all again - albeit in a slightly different order - Goodnight!

‘Shameless’ is out NOW on all digital platforms - Listen HERE

Follow Kid Apollo:

Facebook

Instagram

Youtube

Spotify