Heroes in Business - HVTV Presents LTEF with Marc Hoberman FT Dylan Jett

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Dylan Jett is our special guest from "Down Under" today on Lighting the Educational Flame. Dylan talks about songwriting, performing, and being a teenager in an adult business in this episode of Lighting the Educational Flame with Marc Hoberman, Presented by HVTV. 

Welcome to the talk show, Lighting the Educational Flame, with your host, Mark Hoberman. The goal of this show is to provide a learning experience to people of all ages, with guests from various fields and academics, a wide range of industries, and insight into the many forms of art, athletics, and entertainment. We hope you enjoy the show. Today's featured guest is Dylan Jett. Dylan is a rising star from Australia. He is a self-taught musician, singer, songwriter, and actor.

Dylan talks about his passion for music and the work it takes to succeed in any venture. Hello and welcome to the talk show Lighting the Educational Flame brought to you by Great Success Education. I'm your host, Mark Hoberman, and today's guest is Australian singer, songwriter, actor, Dylan Jett. Dylan, welcome to Lighting the Educational Flame. Thank you for having me. It's great to have you here. And I have to tell you, the viewers out there, if you're a teenager, it's not easy to get Dylan during school time because he's very serious about his work. So that's all great stuff. So and also,

it's interesting, you know, I read a couple of articles on you. So I didn't go but September 9, I had follow up tickets. It's supposed to be from last May to see Michael Buble in concert. And I know you're a fan. I'm a very big fan. But sadly, we punked out things that upticking a little bit here. We are vaccinated but uh as you know the world has changed but it's usually when i say the word michael buble uh to someone your age i either get laughed at or they say ho so i am so thrilled no good music when you have such a big uh eclectic taste in music i think that's outstanding so he's a classic yeah absolutely absolutely you know it makes me feel old when I see that

someone of your age has accomplished so much already and you're still a teenager you're 18 yeah 18 oh unbelievable you just ruined my weekend but anyway where where does that drive and determination come from for a teenager um honestly it's it's just because I love it. Like, it's like the ability to do something that I love every day. And creating music and acting is just, I do it because I really enjoy it. Right. And there's so much to it. You don't just sing music, you write music, you don't just sing and write music, you play music. So because of your age, obviously you have to balance school and a career simultaneously, which is not easy under normal circumstances. And we've had 16 months of abnormal circumstances. So what strategies do you use to maintain that healthy balance between school and entertainment?

It's all about organization. It took a very, very long time to get everything right because I'd always end up having to skip a couple classes here and there and stuff for commercials and different little acting jobs and different interviews and stuff, which I still do, but it's occasionally. It doesn't really take a massive hit to my studies. And my mom will not let me like flunk out of school. She's, I have to work hard.

I have to study as much as possible. And yeah, it's just kind of a balance, not sacrificing either one. Just, yeah, it's time organization i guess no excellent i don't know if you know that great success education is my education company my tutoring company and we actually do time management courses and uh you could probably teach one because how you do the balance is truly unbelievable and it's interesting you said you know sometimes i have to skip classes so in the states skip classes means you're in school and you skip and cut the class that period and you hide out in the bathroom or, you know,

or on the football field, then you come back. So, you know, it's great. And I'm sure your teachers work with you and they respect what you do because you're doing it the right way. You're doing it with a good message. And now we mentioned earlier that you taught yourself how to play the piano. You're doing it with a good message. And now we mentioned earlier that you taught yourself how to play the piano. I took piano lessons for a while and now I just play chords, but I don't think I could have taught myself. Tell us about your, your earlier years of learning how to play. So I did, when I was very young,

I did take a couple lessons for classical piano and I just, I didn't enjoy it. I didn't blend well with it and I wasn't really getting anywhere. And then my dad, he's a sound engineer. So he plays piano, guitar, everything. And I remember he, he like played one song for me that he made with a certain certain like a certain method to playing which I hadn't really seen before where the left was doing my left hand was doing most of the work and the chords were always moving and fluctuating and I I copied everything he did for that one song and then with that one song I just like went from there and I applied it to all my music and that same technique.

And then with that, I've just been able to over the years just keep on learning. And yeah, from him showing me really just one chord and one short song, I was able to learn everything else. Well, the average person who hears that saying what yeah I did the chord I did the song and everything else but this everything else is is is tremendous when you your piano playing can you sit down hear a song and you start playing it or is your piano playing melded more with your writing and then you sit at the piano and you start to write a song what is that about um well just like playing in general i'm a hundred percent by ear if i listen to a song like three or four times i'm unable to get down the chords and know it pretty well to the

point where i could play it for someone um because i have relative pitch which it isn't perfect pitch but it's like perfect pitch for one note and then I just work all the other notes from knowing that one note so if you play me a song if I listen to it like two times I'll be able to perform it to at least a decent um extent and with writing um my process of writing my songs usually comes from piano first but i just i just mess around with random chords and then when i find a chord progression that i like i start writing melodies over it and then it leads lyrics are these you know not to get too tactical but you know major chords major fifths sevenths, you know, are they those kind of advanced chords or you just hit those notes and you happen to hit the chord and it's the right chord because you have that gift? Well, I do that, too.

I just kind of randomly. But I love I love my sevenths. I love my ninths as well. Right. Which I've been able to mention. Ninth, I think. I hate this sevenths. I love my ninths as well. Right. Which I've been able to do. You mentioned ninths. I hate this. Yeah.

It's interesting because I played the clarinet for 30, 40 years. At one time in high school, I was very, very good. And as much as I love it, I'm much better on the clarinet than the piano. You play the clarinet alone, it gets kind of dull after a while. But that piano just is really going to really an extension of your whole soul and really can play some beautiful, beautiful melodies just on your own. So that's gotta be a wonderful thing. You can do that. Yeah.

I've been able to blend chords now where it's like, I'll play a C major with an A minor and just together, they sound so beautiful and it's just different random chords like all the chords weirdly kind of work together and any any two chords you can you can make something amazing out of it that's that's outstanding and when we talk about entertainment and the playing and the singing and and it's professional entertainment might be loads of fun uh but it's called the entertainment business for a reason. I know you're an actor and you've won awards and you've worked with Russell Crowe.

People looking at you think you should be about 50 years old with all these things I'm saying that you've done already. But, you know, and many others. But, you know, I've talked I've talked to a number of child actors. I've talked to a number of singers, people on The Voice and even on American Idol and such. What have you learned about the business of entertainment? Keeping in mind you're 18, but you're now part of the entertainment business. One of the main things, which I learned at a very young age, but it was probably the toughest to learn is just, I think it's about resilience because especially in the acting industry, in the music industry as well, but in the acting industry, you face a lot of rejection.

Like your agents will tell you, you should be getting one callback out of 20 auditions. So that's 20 times you go for something and you don't, you don't necessarily get it. And any actor would know, like, that's very, like, there's a lot of rejection. There's a, like, you're not going to get every role. And it's just becoming resilient to that. But luckily I was thrown into the water diviner

with Russell Crowe at such a young age. I was thrown into the water diviner with Russell Crowe at such a young age. I was thrown into the deep end. So it made it a bit easier to grow that resilience and be able to keep strong in the industry. Absolutely. And that resilience has served you well during a pandemic also because you're as busy now as in what we'll call normal times, let's say. You know, so I know in 2020, you released four songs.

You know, many people in 2020 released The Couch, and that's about all they released. You released four songs. What can you tell us about? So I saw Tokyo. First of all, I think I have a decent eye. I love your, I don't know if we're going to call them your video team, your whatever, but it is so polished and so fun.

And it has such a great vibe. This is an older person telling you this, but it's not what I expected to hear when they said, oh, check out his song, Tokyo. So who wrote that and what's the message behind it um me and Nico wrote that and um it was uh my manager Nico Larson um he him and me wrote that together and it was it's just it's a really fun song Tokyo um the beat was made by um Rob Agosti which is um our producer so he sent us over the beat just like a really rough draft of the beat was made by Rob Agosti, which is our producer.

So he sent us over the beat, just like a really rough draft of the beat. And then we just started writing. Nico wrote like the melody of the choruses and stuff. And then I added some lyrics and then I worked on the verses and the second verse, the rap part. Let me ask you about the rap part, right? Because I knew that was you without you telling me that was you because you don't expect that.

You're hearing it, you're watching it, you're enjoying it, and all of a sudden this cool rap. Wait, did I hit the second song by mistake? What's going on over here? It's really blended so well. But I will say, although I know you're an actor, I've taught long enough over three decades,

you're not acting the fun you're having when you're performing. I can see that coming through. It's not like, thank God, let me get the hell out of here. So it just looks like you don't want it to end. It's what I love.

And like working on music, I love both sides of it i love performing what i've worked on and and my music and i love making the music and the whole process leading up to it so even though that's such a fun process when i finally get to perform it or when i'm filming the music video and we're out and about and i'm just like lip syncing and stuff. It's a really good feeling. And yeah, just sharing my creativity with other people. I'm so glad that you talked about the creativity, but more importantly, the process, because people think, you know, they wrote this song for Dylan. He pulled up in his car. He came out. He shot it and went home. They just don't know. And I say this on the show all the time. We know we know the glory, but we don't always know the story.

So the rejection was one piece of what you say is difficult and about the business. But what obstacles besides rejection do you have when there's writing obstacles? And you have to be a producing machine. This is a business where if you're not productive, you're not remembered and you're no longer in. So what obstacles have you had kind of musically and in the acting career besides the rejection, the work, the balance of the life and the work? When we're talking like, we'll start with music.

When we're talking like just'll start with music when we're talking like um just the amount of work you have to put in it's i'm constantly writing i'd say i'm writing a new song every day um it's become just like it's just even if i don't use that song ever it's just something you've got to practice and working with different chords and melodies and lyrics in each song even if you scrap it it's finding a new way to do something that you didn't do the day before and um with working with um nico and everything it's it's it's it's a lot like he'll he's he's so like on point and i love it he sends me he's able to send me, like, a new track every day,

or he's able to send me new tracks so often, like, just a basic draft of a beat. And with, like you said, that you appreciate that I do a lot of my writing, I kind of, I make sure I can do as much as possible. Because before I started, started like releasing my own music and before all of this, it was just me writing in my room. And I would say I love writing just as much, if not more than actually singing and performing.

Because it's like, it's my own body of work. So I always want to have as much creative choice in my music as possible but it's yeah it's a lot of work that's right and it's been and it's not just work like school work it's not work like the job after school at the mall I'm not demeaning any of those things but it's it's work on another level so talking about another level uh most uh I'll say kids or people your age don't have to deal with the next thing that I'm going to ask you about. When people get older, many times people try to befriend adults or co-workers because what they can, what they think they can get out of them,

what they can do with them. And 95% of teenagers don't really, they have their own problems, but no one's really befriending them to get something out of them. But let's call it what it is. You know, you're a rising star. You're in the limelight. You're on YouTube. You're doing your thing. your for lack of a better term how was your bs radar how is your you know this person's not authentic because uh even though you're more mature than most 18 year olds you know i can tell you that straight up but that's got to be something you have to deal with yeah honestly a lot of my life um i've i've had to deal with that or at least kept it in mind ever since The Water Diviner. I've just been like kind of – I've had my eye out, but it hasn't been able to distract me because usually I'm like – I'm naturally – I feel I'm like polite and I always want to talk to people. Like if someone comes up to me and it's there,

they want to be friends with me. I'll happy to have a talk and a discussion. And like, I'm, I'm quite social when it comes to that, but I always just like keep it in the back of my mind. But I, luckily I haven't had to face too much of that. Most of, most of the time close to all of the time like a lot of the people who I end up

being friends with it's really genuine and I don't even there isn't that much of a connection between them and like what I do like acting and singing it's kind of like a separate like we don't talk about that much we just kind of chill and

hang out and yeah how old are you in the uh the water diviner i was 11 wow okay big deal people seeing you recognizing you and uh you know it's a big deal it's good and it's great that you have your head on straight and help people parents many teens who are watching this can see that you can't have it all. You can succeed. You can be in the so-called limelight. But it's wonderful. I love to interview people who are doing this because it's really their passion. The fact that it is a business.

You want it to generate revenue and things like that. But I don't think that's even fourth or fifth on your list. And so that, I think, is a big deal. And your next single is due out uh the middle of this month so what can you tell us about break my heart um so break my heart is coming out 17th of september so pretty soon in in at least australia it's this friday um but yeah it's it's uh i really love this track it's again it's different to tokyo and my one before that packing it's just each single since like working with nico we haven't been working with each other for a long long time we've released this would be the third single

that we're releasing together so it's of, we're just experimenting and trying completely different sounds to see what sticks. So this one's a bit more, it's, it's poppy, but it's more like kind of a darker sound to it. And. Is there a message?

Is there a message in the song? For this one, like Tokyo was filled with a bunch of lyrics and fast raps and stuff but um for this one we can't i kind of just want to let the the melody speak so there's like lyrics but it's not too it's not too deep like i i want like it's just the sound i want people to just hear the sound and yeah well there's there's creating the music and there's performing the music and obviously you could you know in a pandemic you could create a ton of music you can't perform a ton of that music luckily through youtube videos and all

different media outlets and stuff you can but when we talk about live performing, when's the last time you performed live? Last time I performed live, I was actually able to a few months ago, I think late July. But that was with my side thing. It's a band that I'm in with my brother. My brother's also a musician. How old is your brother? How old is your brother? He's 21.

Yeah. And our band's a bit more rock. But it's just I love going up and performing just any music and anything. But last time I performed Dylan Jett was january which was a great show um i really enjoyed that but yeah it's it's been it's been like rough with you know quarantine pandemic most like musicians and actors alike we've been sure yeah it's great

to join it's it's it's been difficult but it's great that you include i don't know why you let somebody so old be in your band a 21 year old but you know it's your brother so you got you got to give him a you know his props there but uh so um let's talk about school let's talk about education uh what is your studying like and what's it like now i believe there's a lockdown on school in your area now here in the states everybody pretty much is back in school uh most with masks and there's lots of arguments here pta meetings i don't want my son to wear a mask and that kind of thing but i know it's it's a worse situation where you are so what's going on with that um yeah currently we are in like the toughest lockdown um so i can't leave i can't go

further than five k's from my house two hours of exercise a day curfew from 9 p.m to 5 a.m so i think this is a school this is a big lockdown this is a country yeah it's a big lockdown yeah um it should be ending pretty soon the next few weeks um but yeah with school all of it is online right now um which is is tough because i i personally i have adhd so it's like welcome to my world but go ahead yeah um so just attention and focusing has always been rough for me uh rough in in a in an environment that is meant for studying let alone my room so it's it's been hard to focus but we're so interesting yeah so interesting uh because it's hard for anyone to focus now but i'm i'm so proud of you for opening up and saying something about that

because for the younger people who watch the show, that could be a badge of honor. There is no shame in that whatsoever. And I've been telling their teachers I've seen and dealt with and said, oh, that kid has ADHD. When he's off his meds, he's crazy and that kind of stuff. And you know, and there are teachers I've seen who are the best teachers I've ever seen that when school went to zoom, these are people with

25 years experience who could only spell zoom. They couldn't operate zoom. So yeah, yeah. Three or four weeks. And they've got 11 year olds telling them, no, no, no, Mrs. Johnson, you want to click here. If you want us to check, we should go there. So all this comes together. And, you know, it's so interesting to me that, you know, focus, but you are, there's academic focus, and there's life focus. And it's amazing that you've done both. So a 12 year old boy or girl comes up to you and says, hey, I want to do what you do. And you say... I would say just start creating. Like, do as much as possible.

In this, like, day and age, we're so lucky with sites like TikTok, with apps like TikTok. It's so, like like right at your fingertips you can get out there and start posting consistently and start releasing your work on Spotify or YouTube or anything. And it's a long process. It takes a long time, longer than most people would like. But if you really love it um you just got

to keep on creating and create as many contacts as possible make as many friends as you can who do the same thing as you do and collaborate with them um and especially make sure that you know while you're doing that you're enjoying it as well because i think meeting other people who are doing the same thing you do and working on them with projects and constantly releasing hearing feedback and trying to better your work is the process for me is the best part i would say it's even better than the final result because the work is like while you're working she's like this is why i do it just is what i love but yeah yeah we talk on the show a lot about golden answers i think that was a platinum answer because uh we started with the work uh yeah you know you

didn't start with oh you're gonna love this people are gonna be clawing at you and dancing to your music or create create you know someone says to you i want to be in. People are going to be clawing at you and dancing to your music. Create, create. You know, someone says to you, I want to be in the limelight and I want to do what you do. And you start with, okay, here's the homework that you have to do. Yeah. Get to this level. And they just, a lot of people don't realize it.

You know, we're in a world now. You could write a song tonight and 10 o'clock, 20,000 people could hear it. You know, when I was 18, if I yelled out my window, maybe nine people would hear it if I sang a song. With the media, it's a double-edged sword, but it's a wonderful thing that there's so many ways to get out there and create and write.

And you ended with and have fun. We are all both, you and I are too familiar with child actors who have not had a good adulthood because they never had a childhood. It was tough. It was for me that the hard part was going from being in the limelight and being on such a big stage and having everyone know me to going back to school and kind of having to adjust to regular life obviously with a lot of experience now and and a lot of like life knowledge I guess

from going to Turkey and and LA for the first time um but it was definitely tough just like getting used to like normal again and it was rough because like not when you get something like that you expect or just your mind thinks that it's just going to be like that now and then when you go back to school it's kind of just a tough like you know i should be doing this i should be doing this but i i'm really glad it happened that way because i feel like i i had my my teenage years i've been able to have a childhood i've been able to do the stupid things with your friends and stuff and now i'm able to finally you know work on music more and get somewhere with, yeah. That's great.

And I heard you mention LA. So any plans in the future, near future, future, future, to come back to the States, come to LA or New York? A hundred percent. Yeah. As soon as we're able to, as soon as stuff opens up, I would love to go down there and start working with anyone working with some producers and yeah just seeing what we can do i think i think that's been

my favorite part of all of the music stuff so far is meeting up with people that i've never met before and we just that day we've just created a whole new song and a whole new piece it's it's so much fun i can't wait to get back to it. Right. I think your next album may have to be called Process because you're so into that. So important. But, you know, you thrive on that. And I think that's great stuff.

So Dylan Jett, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your passion for music and for education. Where can we learn more about you and see your music? You can look at me on Instagram or if you YouTube my name, search it up on YouTube or Spotify. And yeah, just listen to my music and see if you like it. And yeah, thank you so much for having me as well. Such a pleasure.

And to the viewers, this is Mark Hoberman, thanking you for watching Lighting the Educational Flame. Catch us on Monday nights, 9 p.m. EST on E360 TV, on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire. And remember, we are 24-7 on the Lighting the Educational Flame YouTube channel. Have a great day. Dylan, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for watching Lighting the Educational Flame. To contact Mark Hoberman, email him at info at gradesuccess.com or visit him on social media through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Thank you for watching Lighting the Educational Flame. Thank you.