Nathan Walker, Riot Act Media

💭 Thoughts on Jazz Is Dead, an artist with a fully formed vision, and how to carve out more space in your brain.

Nathan Walker is a Detroit-based publicist and owner of boutique PR firm Riot Act Media. He has held many hats in the music industry starting out as a photographer, then journalist, music editor, festival promoter, indie label head, and artist manager but the longest, most-consistent stint has been working at Riot Act Media since 2009 and eventually taking the company over in the 2015. Check out Riot Act’s roster of clients here.

🎯 Current focus

What’s on my mind lately is what’s been constantly on my mind. We have to stop taking the real creators in the music industry for granted. As a publicist, I work for artists and I work with journalists helping to bridge them together. I’ve been doing this for quite some time now and the consistent devaluation of what both of them do over the years has been shocking. If we don’t work to support independent music AND journalism, I’m not sure what the next decade will look like for all of us.

🎷 Jazz Is Dead

I love all of my clients and can and should go on at length about them. Literally my job but for sake of time, I’ll just speak on my work with Jazz Is Dead because they said something to me when we were in talks about working together that really struck me. Something akin to “let’s give these legends their flowers while they’re still here to enjoy them.” Which, to them, has meant creating a studio where artists like Ebo Taylor, Marcos Valle, Tony Allen, Jean Carne, Roy Ayers, and many more can come in and record with production, backing bands, and all of the tools to create new music in the same style as the music that made them famous and has been sampled countless times. The results are incredible.

🎶 Get It Sexyy by Sexyy Red

As a parent of a third grader, I’m in the car taking her to school, home from school, to tennis practice, to the doctor, etc. There’s no planet I could live on where I’m playing this song in the car with her listening in. It came on one day when I was stuck in traffic alone trying to get “siri” to change the music and it instantly hit. Had my trunk rattling and brought me back to the 90’s when we were buying bass tapes specifically for that kind of trunk rattle. Lyrically, it’s fun as hell. Musically, it makes my whole body move.

🌴 First trip to LA in over a decade

I’m returning to LA this weekend for my first visit in over a decade. It’s a town that I love dearly and have many friends in but between the birth of my daughter and the subsequent years of covid, it’s just not made sense until now. Eating all of the things and hopefully seeing all of the friends. And if someone reading this wants to get me to and from LAX, you must really love me.

🧠 How to carve out more space in your brain 

As a music publicist, email is my life. A few years back I read an interview with a CEO (I believe she ran Slack at the time) and one of her thoughts on productivity is to not open up an email you don’t have time to take care of. Mentally, that’s taken a lot of stress out of my life. There’s no need to read it and then have it take up space in your brain until you have the time to respond. 

🗣️ The ability to verbalize the emotions you feel while listening to music 

So many people are inspirational to me in the music industry. When you prioritize art over profit, you find yourself in a community of people with a lot of heart, compassion, and motivation. But since I spend a huge portion of my work week reading what others write about music, I’d like to list Amanda Petrusich. We’ve not met in person nor has she written about many of my artists over the years. When Amanda writes about an artist, I come away with words to describe their music and the emotions you feel while listening, that I couldn’t have verbalized prior. A huge feat considering I’ve been reading and writing about music for over two decades now. I’m sometimes in pure awe of her mastery of the English language and how it can be used on the subject of music.

🫶 Being kinder to yourself

Outside of work, gonna sound like therapy talk, but I’m working really hard on being kinder to myself. I grew up pretty poor and had to cobble together scholarship (athletic and academic) and an outside job just to go to college. After college, despite graduating with honors near the top of my class, I had a hell of a time finding work outside of being a barista and bartender and only did things in the music world in my spare time. Year, by year, bit by bit, I started to make a little money in the music industry but it took a lot of hustle and hard work. It's been hard to set that hustle mentality aside and give myself the mental space to enjoy the results of that work but I’m trying.

🔊 Sonos

I adore my Sonos system! Their recent app update was so abysmal that the CEO had to send an apology letter out to all of their users with a promise to do better. Still though, it’s become my go-to way of listening to music. Bonus points for being able to set the mood at a party with music throughout the entire house but switching it to extremely loud trucker country in the bathroom. A trick I learned from Tape Op’s Larry Crane but he was using hair metal.

🏃‍♂️ The power of running

Running is my ticket to health physically and mentally. It’s not for everyone but it’s been a lifelong passion and I can look back and track my lowpoints and see that I wasn’t running at the time. Which came first, I’m not sure. I really love a long, solo run without music. 30-40 minutes in, it starts to feel like meditation and a calmness fills me up. Hearing the sounds of the world, picking them out for their uniqueness, noticing things about your neighborhood you’d never see by car, breaking a good sweat, all of it, I can’t live without. And, obviously, my family including the chosen ones!

🧿 An artist with a fully formed vision

cumgirl8 was a band I worked with on one of their earliest EPs and they were already a fully formed vision. Plus, super nice too! From their music, to their performance, to their memes, to their website, to the merch, it all had a vision and consistency that stood out. Seeing them blow up in recent months on their own terms has been incredible.

I know it’s a lot to ask artists to have a top to bottom brand but if you can think deeply about “how does this compliment my art, my message? Does it further the story or is it just checking the box of ‘tour shirt, stage outfit, music video, etc.’?” 

Tell your story and don’t worry about the rest.

Follow Nathan on Instagram & Linkedin and check out his company here.

💭 Share your thoughts ➡️ DM on IG or Email us.

✅ Make Thought Enthusiast better by filling out a quick reader survey here.