Hope and heart: Truman Sinclair knows how to play the game right
It’s easy to get jaded in the music industry.
The dropout rate across the industry is high for that reason. People in their 20s join major labels full of enthusiasm, believing they can make a difference, only to burn out and move on within a few years. Journalists end up stuck in stale conversations with artists worn down by media training and expectation, leaving nobody truly fulfilled. People begin with big dreams, only to be beaten down by the realities of the modern industry, eventually losing both their interest and excitement.
But then, for those who still believe in the power of art, there comes a reviving spark. Maybe it’s a gig, a great album, or the emergence of a new artist. Whatever form it takes, something arrives to remind you that, beneath it all, a pure core of hope still exists. Sitting on a sofa in a tenth-floor meeting room at a record label building, Truman Sinclair is that spark.
At the time of our conversation, Sinclair was just rounding up a tour of Europe supporting Tyler Ballgame. As his team shuffles out of the room, we joke about being in ‘parent mode’ as he’s spent this entire tour solely with his dad, repaying all the childhood holidays and support by bringing him on the road. By the end of 11 dates, 24-year-old Sinclair is absolutely gagging to misbehave a little, to be back playing with his friends again, driving around in his own truck.
There’s hope in that already, or at least a palpable romance. So much of Sinclair’s excitement and desires connect to an old-school view of it all, a longing to do what all the greats have done before. There’s a sense that he has no interest in being here on this press day with me or on a glossy tour made easy by a record label as he later turns down the offer from his team for them to send a car to drive him somewhere; he wants to get the tube, wants to carry his guitar on his back, and wants it all to be rough and rowdy like a rock tour should be.
It would be easy to shrug it all off as naivety, but that’s a jaded mindset, proof we’ve slipped so far from the optimism of how art should be. Make no mistake, Sinclair’s excitement isn’t foolish. When I ask him about his most recent EP, Rivers of Blood and Sugar, his first shared through a label after years of self-releasing, he’s strangely ambivalent. It’s not that he’s not proud of the songs; it’s simply that the release was really the end of a period of playing the necessary game.
“It’s been a year of sorting and signing the deal,” he said, a deal he worked hard for. He knows exactly what major label money could help him achieve, admitting, “I was really selling myself hard and trying to get in this, because this could be my job, so I’m gonna treat it like a job interview. I’m gonna do anything for this.”
But it’s not at all about the co-sign from the label; it’s about the doors being opened. “I’m really excited to just make music,” he said, smiling ear to ear as he talked about what’s next. “I’m about to go home and record all summer at the studio that I used to work at.”
Recalling the time spent doing the bitch work, he said, “I was just a runner, I used to mop and go to the grocery store or pick up the producers’ kids from school and stuff. They would tell me to hide because they were having an argument, and the last thing you want is some artists turning to some kid being like, ‘So what do you think?’ So they used to shuffle me away.”
As the ultimate sign of work paying off, and a validation ten times more meaningful than a signature on a dotted line, Sinclair is now that artist: “I was dreaming of using all this awesome gear because I would go home at night and record my songs on my laptop or whatever, and now this producer is letting me record in the studio. I’m literally going to sleep there.”
“You can’t just pull the wool over their eyes and make something that they are gonna like without you actually putting a piece of yourself into it, because then the connection isn’t genuine.”
Truman Sinclair
Overwhelmingly, Sinclair feels like someone who gets it. Despite being so young, his hope and excitement exist in perfect balance with his smarts, as he says of the coming studio days, “That is a greater reward than any of this. Signing the record deal was sick. But to me, what it really means is that I get to make music on a scale that I haven’t really made before.”
The way Sinclair talks is infectious. There is so much joy and energy in how he looks at his career and goals that surely anyone nearby gets swept up, as he says, “My master plan is coming to fruition. I’m gonna make a proper record on Capitol Records and be a part of rock and roll history”, and then, as if he’s surprised himself, adding, “Can you believe that’s what I’m saying?”
Mostly though, he just can’t wait to get to work because “nothing is more exciting than that, because I’ve talked my shit, I’ve gotten myself in the room, I’ve done what I needed to do, and now I’m allowed to make music with all these tools. That was always the goal.”
The goal is also to hit the road, and hard. After finishing up with Tyler Ballgame, he’s now joining Courtney Barnett for a string of dates. That infectious joy applies here, too, as Sinclair still believes in the classic sense of duty a musician holds. “When I play live, it’s much more of a service mindset,” he said, knowing he’s there to give the audience a good time. The way he sees it, for the time he’s on stage, he works for them in a way; they come first.
That mindset connects to how he writes songs as well. “When I make the music alone, it feels like a piece of me. It’s super personal,” he said of his sharp, candid and vulnerable lyricism, “Then when I go play it live, it’s celebrating the fact that there’s other people out there that feel just like me, and that makes me feel not alone.”
Both things work as one. Sinclair writes personal music because it helps him, but he also knows that when he’s in front of a crowd, that willingness to be open in his work helps them too, because “let’s sing this song together, because we all feel this”.
It’s another pearl that stays polished and untainted as Sinclair vows to never grow cynical about his role up on the stage, stating, “People really do underestimate the audience, and they put them in this box of the listener or the audience. This is a real person who is just as smart as you and has a whole life and works really hard at what they work on.”
When it comes to the industry and stories of the suits getting involved, trying to neaten up feelings to package them and sell them easily to the masses, Sinclair refuses. “It really bothers me when people are like, ‘Oh, the people just want to hear this. Like, who are these ‘people’ that you’re talking about? This is you, your friends and everybody that you know; these are the people. It’s all real people. So you can’t just pull the wool over their eyes and make something that they are gonna like without you actually putting a piece of yourself into it, because then the connection isn’t genuine.” Amen.
As we sit and chat for half an hour or so, I can feel my own enthusiasm returning. Sinclair is sweet, naturally funny, and endlessly energetic. He talks about the various aliases he has online, releasing secret projects across all kinds of genres from punk to garage rock, all done DIY as he’s always known. He talks about the thrill of now expanding beyond that, but about how he’d probably be equally happy just playing in bars or running karaoke nights, as long as his job always involved getting other people to sing, stating, “everybody has a folk album in them”. Catching him live later that day, he’s exactly the same onstage, all smiles, full of easy charisma, the type of artist you root for.
Truman Sinclair seems to get it; he’s played the game just enough to get to the heart of it, but he’s always devoted to keeping the spark alive.
