Ethan Buckner on Music, Activism and Living a Life By Design
6/9/202647 min
Ethan Buckner is a singer-songwriter, community organizer and activist based in Venice, California. He's spent years fighting big oil pipelines, organizing solidarity fundraisers for communities in crisis, hosting backyard concerts during the pandemic, and building Westside Sounds, a monthly music showcase highlighting local talent in LA.
In this conversation we get into what it really looks like to build two careers at once without sacrificing either. Ethan shares how a trip to Poland at 16 shaped his entire life's mission, why he dropped his pseudonym and started releasing music under his own name, and what happened when a disc in his back exploded in India and forced him to slow down for the first time in his life.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSumi Krishnan· Host0:00
Welcome, everybody, back to the Dream Life Club podcast. We are here today with Ethan Buckner, community builder, artist, and activist here in Venice, California. Welcome, Ethan.
Ethan Buckner· Guest0:10
Thank you so much, Sumi, for having me.
Sumi Krishnan· Host0:11
I'm- It's wonderful to be on ... so excited for this conversation. Ethan, what most lit me up about talking to you on this podcast was that you are sort of building a dream in a really unique way because a lot of people think, "Oh, in order to follow my passion of being a musician or an actor," like whatever it is, "I ha- like I'm gonna... How am I gonna make it work? Like I, do I have to, do I have to give up something else? Do I have to be a starving artist? Like do I ha- h- how do I make it work?" And you're a living example to all of us of what it means to make it work simultaneously and have a beautiful personal life, too. You recently got married, and- Yeah ... so I just am so excited to dive into kind of how you integrate all those worlds and create this life by design.
Ethan Buckner· Guest0:57
Yeah, let's get into it.
Sumi Krishnan· Host0:58
[laughs] Okay, awesome. [laughs] Um, okay, so first tell us a little bit about yourself. What kind of artist and musician are you? How long have you been doing music?
Ethan Buckner· Guest1:08
I've been doing music for my entire life. I grew up in a musical household. I'm from Minnesota originally, and my father was a Jewish clergy. He's a cantor. So I, uh, was surrounded by music, uh, both, you know, the, the music that I would hear, you know, at synagogue as a kid, but also, you know, '70s, '80s singer-songwriters