Today we’d like to introduce you to Caleb Fleischer.
Hi Caleb, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Indoor Creature began as a bedroom project. I was eager to beef up the production and happened to meet Travis Kitchen working at a now closed Japanese restaurant called Banzai. I was training him for the job and during the down town of tasks struck up a conversation about music. It was pretty obvious he was serious, knowledgeable and experienced so pretty quickly after meeting we started working on each others music. Within a year of working together I won a competition to perform at a showcase. I had no idea how to perform live in an indie band. Travis helped me book the practice space and write up the stage plot. After the first show, I was hooked on performing. Through his connections and experience we started building the band out and booking shows. The lineup has evolved quite a bit over the years. Travis has since gone on hiatus to focus on getting a bachelors degree. Most of the current lineup has been together since 2019. We’ve toured the country and played hundreds of shows. We released a LP last year called “Who’s Afraid to Look?” on The Record Machine, which is a label out of Kansas City. We’re in the middle of working on the next record.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road has been predictably bumpy. The challenges are diverse. Inner struggles of self doubt. Arguments over the direction of the band. Figuring out how to finance the thing. The ever evolving world of social media marketing. So many distractions from the actual thing that inspires the work, chasing music.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I consider myself a songwriter first, producer second. I see production as huge component of songwriting so it was only when other people started calling me a producer that I realized how integrated the two processes are for myself. I am known for my vocals and saxophone. I also play keys but people usually compliment my singing and saxophone work. I am most proud of my lyrics. I really try to connect to personal feelings either I experience or observe in others. Lyrics serve as a way for me to process some of the heavy feelings I have towards the many positive and negative facets of reality. My music usually feels different than others because I’ve never tried to emulate a specific artist. I let my subconscious do the borrowing and luckily for me, its got a very diverse taste. My music is a reflection of the many genres I adore and consume.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Self compassion. Its cliche but you have to really love yourself through the journey. It’s really easy to let my inner perfectionist tear my creative self up. I’ve learned to settle that perfectionist down into a more constructive role. When I need an opinion I know who to ask, but when I am just messing around and having fun, the perfectionist needs to go sit elsewhere. I’ll call it in when I am ready. It took me years of inner work to finally have a healthy relationship with my inner perfectionist critic. It was debilitating for a long time. The critic was so loud it would stop me from playing anything, or stop a song from being written before I hit record. I’ve really learned to go back to a childlike love of creation, where there’s capacity for all experiments, not just working on “high level stuff” like my inner critic desires. The only way I’ve ever made songs that my inner critic even liked came from experiments, so in a way the critic was preventing anything it would like from being created.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.indoorcreature.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indoorcreature/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/indoorcreature/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/IndoorCreature
- Other: https://thetunebridge.com/s/68e70a133d
