Q&A with Newburgh Singer-Songwriter John Newhall

John Newhall is ready to move on from playing background music at bars and vineyards. The 22 year old singer-songwriter from Newburgh has reached a point in his career where he wants to be selective in the gigs he accepts, proclaiming, “I’m John Newhalll and I’m playing a gig tonight.”

So far, this new attitude has worked out for Newhall. After leaving The College of Saint Rose in Albany to pursue music, he’s been working to make music a career while teaching in the interim. To promote himself, he’s been using Instagram and TikTok to stir up attention in the Hudson Valley for his music, and the algorithm has been receptive.

Newhall has over 7,000 followers between both Instagram and TikTok, with one video posted on his socials becoming popular promoting a gig in Beacon, pulling an audience just for Newhall. With thousands of monthly listeners on Spotify, Newhall is beginning to lay roots for a music career.

Newhall and I spoke about his early interest in music, how he learned guitar to impress a girl and who he see’s himself becoming in the next few years. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

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Tell me about yourself

My name is John Newhall. I'm from Newburgh, New York, and I am what I like to think of as a singer-songwriter. I've been playing music all of my life. When I recently went to college, like a couple of years ago for music, it wasn't my thing. So I ended up dropping out, and now I teach music. I'm a music teacher in a bunch of different private schools. Recently, I've kind of just hunkered down and said “I like the teaching, but it's not what I want to do forever.” So I'm trying to put myself out there now and it's working.

You talked about getting into music early. What were some of your earliest memories tied to music?

I remember my mom used to drive me to school when I was in kindergarten, and I remember her putting Billy Joel's Greatest Hits in the CD player. I also remember being in second grade with the lights off at night, trying to sit on the top of my bunk bed with my little brother below me, humming songs myself, and writing them down. So yeah, it's always been in me, which I think is really cool. So I'm trying to put it out now.

So you started singing as a kid but you also guitar as well. What prompted you from just singing songs in your head to actually putting them into a guitar or an instrument?

I got my first guitar in eighth grade, my mom got it for me for Christmas, and it was something that I always thought would come in handy. But it wasn't until some girl was like, “It'd be cool if you learn to play guitar”- It's totally for girl. Then I sat down and did it. I think it's completely different than singing since vocalizing something and then putting it into the guitar was so foreign to me. Instead I just kind of picked it up and thought I needed to understand how this mechanically works. It's cool, and it's just another element that it kind of helps.

Do you play any other instruments? Or is guitar your main instrument?

It’s definitely the main one, but I play piano pretty well. I played pretty much everything so I played drums (kind of), and decently played bass. I played tuba in high school for forever. So most instruments I can kind of handle. 

I read some of the interviews you have had so far, and they talk about you working with “Foreigner” and “Kidzbop.” What was it like working with those kinds of people?

Yeah! I was very fortunate growing up and I knew a lot of people that kind of knew a lot of people. So I very quickly from like, 13 or 14 playing in my room and learning crappy Ed Sheeran songs to very quickly playing pretty sustainable gigs throughout the summers and during school. I was in bands and kind of doing stuff. So when I was a kid, I opened for Kidzbop and that was the first one and it was at Bethel Woods. I said all the time that I opened for Kidzbop as a very silly thing, but at the time, it was so cool. Over 4,000 people were watching me, and I was like, “Oh, this is the coolest thing.” It was definitely something I could point to and think the feeling I had is what I want to kind of chase forever. 

To my understanding from looking at your TikTok and your Instagram page, it looks like you're putting social media content together yourself while also doing all your own music. What is that experience as a musician trying to juggle all those things at once?

Sure, the word that I keep using is grind. It's a grind, it's every day because I work too. During the day, I work for seven hours and then I come home thinking about how can I be productive. Then the weekends are like, “Okay, I have a full day, how can I use this to my advantage?” So it's tough. It takes a lot of planning in my head, but it's also very nice to have full control, which is something that I'm at the moment very fortunate to have. I can market myself and try to make people see me in the way that I want to be seen, rather than someone else interpreting that which is just kind of nice.

For sure, especially because you’re just you as a singer-songwriter. So what does that kind of songwriting process then work? What venues are you really kind of like aiming to be performing at and what crowds are you looking at?

So I guess when I write a song, it's typically me grabbing a guitar and just kind of humming something with it. So there has to be some kind of element that's ear-catching, right? So if I'm playing a guitar, I'm like, “Ooh, this sounds cool,” and then I'll hum a melody on top of it. It’s never words first. Some people do words first, and I think that’s cool but I can't do that. For me, it's the other way. It has to be the music first, then it's like a puzzle connecting kind of thing about how it's going to relate. 

I guess for like the venues and the crowds that I want to draw, I think all my life I've kind of played background music for people in bars and vineyards, stuff like that. I think I've done with that. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to be able to go somewhere and say like, “Hey, John Newhall is playing a gig,” and then have a crowd come, which happening for the first time in my life now which is really cool. 

So it's interesting to hear how recently for a lot of musicians, so much of it now is wondering “when will the social media algorithm get me,” or “when will the right person come into play in my life,” and so it's interesting to hear TikTok picked you up. So, what has social media done for you so far?

I guess I really started kind of pushing out original music in November online, and there were like, three, four months, there was nothing was happening. Then all of a sudden, I kind of leaned into the local kind of aspect of it. I'm looking like, “I'm from here [Hudson Valley], if you're from here too, check me out,” type of thing. Leaning into that with the Instagram reels has helped tremendously. That's also another reason why I'm able to bring these local people to the shows because they're not too far away. It was nice but it was odd because in the last couple of months, it's gone from kind of nothing to a lot. Every day I'll go on social media and someone else is messaging me or commenting or all the stuff. So it's cool and it's also wacky on my self-image. Some days there'll be like, “Wow, I'm so cool today,” and other days would be like, “Why is no one DMing?”

It's one of those things where it's like “I'm getting so far but also why is this happening? Like, what am I?” 

Yeah, suddenly people are like, paying attention. Like, what's up with that? 

I think one of my questions is like what are some of your current influences or people who have kind of like, influenced you, musically, artistically?

Growing up there was always music on in the house, but no one else did anything musical. Classic rock was always a big thing in my household like Billy Joel was a huge thing since my dad's from Long Island. Very recently, I've gotten into it guess more folk singer-songwriter stuff like Noah Kahan, The Lumineers and also Zach Bryan, he's so cool. I like the singer-songwriter sounds with an edge and not the Ed Sheeran stuff that's been done “X” amount of times. So just something different.

I think right now there's a big move towards folk musicians and singer-songwriters so it's interesting to hear when musicians say, “I want to keep up with that sound, but I want to add my own thing to it that makes it different.”

The cool thing about him [Zach Bryan] is like, I could listen to his music and it doesn't even have to be him singing; I can listen to a second and be like “That Zach Bryan, That's what that is.” I know what it is right away, and that's something I'm still kind of looking for my music.

Music is one of those things where it can turn into a career, but it can also just stay a hobby. It's so dependent on a couple of different factors going into it. What are some of the challenges you faced so far as a musician? What's something you've had to overcome to get confidence to keep going with music in today’s industry?

Just putting a phone in front of my face. It's really hard for me just to record myself. I hate that feeling, and I also don't like talking about myself too much. Those are just two things that I've had to get over. Whenever I have a guitar or piano in my hands. I feel so confident. I know I can hold my own in this certain situation, but as soon as I'm not there to speak for myself when someone is making a snap judgment about me, that's a weird feeling that I was not acquainted with. So it's one of those things that specifically has been the hardest part for me with the social media content and everything. Bbut you need it, It's just the way it is and it's working. 

Within the next couple of years, couple months, where do you see yourself ideally?

Great question,  this is the hard one, I think. I really just want to keep growing, and as silly as that sounds, I want to keep growing. I want to have a little more control over what I can put out and I want a little more control over that. At the moment it's tough because it's just me in my bedroom making all these songs. I love it, it's fun but it's time-consuming. I would love the opportunity to look over to someone and be like, “Hey, can we make this song today and get it done and kinda then put it out?” type of thing. That's the thing that I'm working towards in my head, just being able to kind of be more in control of when things can happen, and have the ability to bring more people in.

I think that's a great response, that's a valid thing to be aspiring toward. My last, fun question is if you had to get on stage right now and perform with any musician, who would that be?

Right now, I think I would want to play with Billy Joel. I don't know how much time he has left, unfortunately. I would say that's the first one that comes to mind. I also really like John Mayer, so I’d love to shred a minor pentatonic thing with him. That'd be sick.