Name: Lauren Urban.
Occupation: Professional musician (oboist).
Hobbies: Video games, Dungeons & Dragons, crochet, and sampling root beer.
==========
Joseph: Welcome to Five Question Interviews! I hope you enjoy your time here, as we delve deep into the burning questions on everyone’s minds.
Lauren: Thanks! Burn away!
J: As you know, Five Question Interviews is a unique interview format in which you will only be asked five questions (excluding follow-up questions), derived from your own interests and fan suggestions. I have compiled some good questions, so prepare yourself!
L: I’m as prepared as I think I can be.
J: You make it sound so fun!
L: Well I am an expert in myself, so I figure I should at least score above average on this test.
J: As long as you remember to fill in your name, I think you’ll do fine!
L: WIN!
Question #1: Let’s start with music, shall we? As a professional oboist, what is a typical day for you? Do you work at several different venues, or are you full-time at an orchestra?
L: At the moment I play freelance in a lot of different orchestras, as well as hold down a “day job” working at a stage theatre. So my typical day is a bit different then what it would be if I was making all of my money just being an oboist.
In general, when people say, “I’ve got nothing to do today,” they usually aren’t referencing things like eating, sleeping… it’s just implied. For me, it’s also implied I’m going to work on the oboe for a while. Lots of reed making. I’m a musician, but because of my instrument I spend a LOT of time whittling my own reeds.
When gigs are scarce I’ll just play whatever makes me happy, or create stuff to post online. When I’m busy (like in December when I had three weeks where I played half a dozen different concerts plus a few dozen rehearsals) it’s a lot of driving around the area to play.
J: Did you have a particular day or week during the holidays where you had to do a lot of driving between gigs? Say, halfway across the city just to get from one gig/rehearsal to another?
L: Furthest I had during the holidays was with the Federal Way Symphony. I play 2nd oboe with them, and we had two different concerts over the course of 2 weeks. Right now I live about 45 minutes away from the rehearsal/concert location… and that’s without traffic! So that was a lot of driving.
But the furthest I’ve had lately was when I played with the Olympia Symphony. That was an hour and a half… each way!
I also had a church gig at the same time. So there were a few Sundays where I got up at about 6am, drove about 45 minutes to the church to do a rehearsal and then the service, hung out for about 2 hours, drove another 15 minutes to play with Federal Way, then drove another hour home.
Long days. But fun!
J: I know what you mean! I had a Sunday like that before Christmas.
L: I’m sure everyone has long days before the holidays.
J: Especially musicians.
L: They’re just work days for me! I make more money in December then I do most of the rest of the year. It also usually means I don’t have a lot of time off with friends and family. But we make up for it. I was busy enough this year during the month that I actually didn’t take a Christmas Eve gig
I had Christmas off for once! It was kinda nice.
J: When you say you are a freelance musician for multiple orchestras, do you mean you are a go-to oboist for each orchestra, but they only hire you on a seasonal basis?
L: A bit of both.
For example, my position with the Federal Way symphony is that I’m a regular. I AM their second oboist. However, they don’t do a full year-round season. A full-time symphony plays a concert a week. FW does 5-6 concerts a year.
On the other hand, I substitute for a lot of other orchestras. Subs are common. If a musician can’t make even one rehearsal, they need to find a sub, because there are usually so few rehearsals before a concert. Most of my jobs are sub jobs; go play here for one concert, go play there for another.
You end up doing a lot of schedule juggling.
J: When did you first decide you wanted to do this for a living? What did you have to do from then until now to make your dream a reality?
L: I’m STILL trying to make that dream a reality!
I’ve played oboe almost all my life, started in 3rd grade. Super young. But for most of grade school I wanted to be an astronomer. Somewhere around High School I discovered that astronomy is more than just looking at pretty pictures in the sky… it’s a lot of math. And while I’m really good at math, it’s not something I enjoy.
I’m an idealist. I’d rather do something I love, even if I don’t make a lot of money, than do something I hate and be wealthy. And I loved playing the oboe. So I went to college, then went to graduate school, then moved all over the country taking gigs, and jobs, and learning, and growing, and being really poor.
And as I said, I’m still working on it. Every year I make a bit more money playing the oboe, or teaching oboe lessons, or doing something in music.
J: What has surprised you the most about being a professional musician?
L: Hmm… That’s an interesting question. I don’t know, as I’ve been in this world so long it feels normal to me.
I’m surprised occasionally by divas… the old school way of being a professional musician. That the conductor is a tyrant, that your peers are your rivals, that you can be a horrible person and still get gigs because you’re talented. That might have been true decades ago, but today you need to be a good person as well as a good player. And 99% of the time my colleagues are wonderful and generous and amazing people.
But every so often you come across a real jerk. And it’s a shock, because for every talented diva there are ten talented nice people. So I guess that’s a good kind of surprise… the kind where most of the time people are wonderful and so the one person stands out.
J: Was there ever a moment of clarity, or perhaps a reality check, when you realized just how hard it would be to make it as a musician?
L: I always knew it would be difficult. But there was a year when I was living in Florida, when everything fell apart.
I was making a decent living working at a stage theatre and doing gigs. And then the Miami Symphony went bankrupt. Just up and died. I remember playing an opera gig, and one the cellists in the group was talking during the break about this news article that came out. She was a member of the Miami Symphony and knew they were in debt. But she insisted the players were told it was only 2.5 million, not the 25 million the news article was saying.
A few months later, the symphony folded. It was huge… just a gigantic blow to the orchestra community, and a lot of players fled the area because Miami is an expensive place to live and without the symphony they didn’t have a job. There’s usually one major symphony in a city. When it folds, it’s not like you can find another full-time symphony down the road.
So players fled. Smaller groups feeding off the Miami Symphony cut back… everything just fell apart. I’d been considering moving back up north anyway, as Florida didn’t agree with me. Then that happened and my gigs dropped from 1-2 a month to nothing… And then four hurricanes came through… And the next thing I know I’d packed up my car and driven to Buffalo to stay with my parents.
J: The nail in the coffin, so to speak.
L: Oh yeah! Plus “No Child Left Behind” was just RUINING the music programs, especially in huge lower/middle class school districts that had to cut music to fund math and science because they’d lost all kinds of government money.
I’d lost oboe students because suddenly they didn’t have a band to play with or an instrument to play on. It was horrible.
Question #2: On the internet, many people know you because of the Glib Shark Podcast, and you’ve even had panels at RTX for multiple years. In a similar vein as my last question, what has surprised you the most about Glib Shark’s rise in popularity? Was there ever a moment when podcasts first started to become popular that you thought to yourself, “I want to be on a podcast someday”?
L: I was lucky to be in radio a bit just when podcasting started.
One of the bright spots of living in Florida is I ended up on this nationally syndicated radio show called “SciFi Overdrive”. Old school radio, in a studio with headphones and everything! We interviewed all kinds of celebrities, talked geek news, science news… it was loads of fun. This was early 2000s, not long after podcasting started.
When Jenga started doing his thing, I was lucky enough to be a guest on one of the early episodes, something in the first ten or so. He was looking for people to join his team, and knew about my radio experience, and I had this idea of “This Week In Geek”. And I like to talk.
As far as what surprised me about its popularity… Jenga and Roadblock are awesome. Nothing surprises me about people loving them.
J: When did the three of you decide it would be a cool idea to have a panel at RTX?
L: Probably the instant RTX was announced!
The hardest part was getting all three of us in the same place. I think the last time we managed it was when all of us were at PAX Prime. We just set up the mics in a lobby of a hotel and talked and grabbed people as they walked by. It was super fun. But we wanted to be a part of RTX because Rooster Teeth is such a big part of our lives and the show.
The hard part is having a “panel” that doesn’t just devolve into us doing an episode!
Roadblock does a lot of that work, especially last year’s panel. I was just along for the ride.
Question #3: You and Luke McKay have been together for quite a while now. What is life like, since you started dating an artist?
L: He’s just on his computer a lot. You should ask him what’s life like dating a musician! The artist part is easy. I totally get being passionate about your craft.
The CANADIAN part… well… that’s been tougher to deal with. For some reason the United States really doesn’t want people moving to America, and doesn’t trust anyone who says it’s for love. So long distance relationships… kinda suck. But we’re working on changing that. Quite soon, actually!
J: That’s exciting!
L: I know, right?!
J: Is Luke nearby at the moment?
L: Yeah, he’s just in the other room. Is this now 5 Questions for Lauren… with a 6th for Luke?
J: Haha, well you already suggested the question!
Lauren: Oh! That’s right! Let me ask him…
Luke: Dating a musician is fairly easy, we both do arts professionally, just mine is visual and hers is audio. It’s nice to share a profession and find comradery in that, but also it’s different enough that we can have different perspective conversations and learn new things all the time and be interesting to one another.
J: I can imagine that the dynamic can spark some very interesting conversations. Although I wonder… Are there ever times where Lauren – because she likes to talk – starts off on a tangent about music terminology, or maybe the proper process of crafting oboe reeds, where you are a little lost in the conversation?
Luke: Only every time. But that’s the fun part… you should hear me talk to her about photoshop filters.
J: I was actually about to ask if you get her back by talking about in-depth artistic stuff!
Luke: Only all the time.
J: I would be very interested to find out if one such back-and-forth results in a moment of brilliant inspiration for one or both of you. Maybe you etch a cool design into a reed.
Luke: Not too much yet, but I’m sure we will.
Lauren: I’ve suggested a lot of stuff for him to draw, and he’s suggested a lot of stuff for me to play.
J: Thanks for hopping on with such short notice! I’ll have to get you on as a guest at some point in the future!
Luke: Danke schoen!
Lauren: And now the computer is mine again.
J: I have one more question while we’re talking about artsy stuff.
L: Go for it. Luke is still around so I can always yell something out to him.
J: I know you have helped Luke whenever he has a booth at a convention. Have you had any opportunities to help him in a more direct way with his projects, be it inspiration, direct involvement, or some other contribution to the creative process?
L: He’s pretty brilliant, and funny, so a lot of the time I’m just a sounding board. We bounce ideas off one another a lot, especially for Balls 2 That. But I wouldn’t claim to be a direct inspiration.
He’s a writer, I’m a performer. You’d be surprised how different that can be.
I think the closest to helping him directly is less with his art and more with D&D. We both play, and he’s super interested in running a campaign. So I’ve helped a lot with rules, or ideas for settings, or suggestions for what to try.
J: You’re getting ahead of me!
L: I type fast.
Question #4: Another thing we have in common is we both lead regular roleplaying game sessions (Dungeons & Dragons or similar games). When you were just a fledgling player new to the roleplaying scene, what led you do try your hand at being a Dungeon Master/Game Master?
L: I wanted to bring D&D to people outside of my regular group of players, and the easiest way to do it was to be the DM for them. My first few experiences were short one-off adventures. I ran a game for Luke for his birthday a while back, and then for Glib Shark for RTX, and at Portland for RvBOR. I wanted to bring that fun to those places, or those places wanted to play D&D, so I agreed to DM because I was the one with D&D experience.
My regular group has been together for a few years now. We’ve grown and shrunk and moved a bit, but we’re all still together. We rotate who’s the DM on a regular basis, to give people a break and to give others a chance. So after all these one-off adventures I wanted to try my hand at something more long form. And now I DM on a regular basis
J: Off the top of your head, what is one of the craziest incidents to happen in one of your games in recent history?
L: RTX last year…
I guess this is kind of a spoiler, because people can watch the whole game. We filmed it for Glib Shark and it’s up on YouTube.
But at the end of the adventure the party had beaten the final bad guy, and literally just had to walk down the road and deliver a flag to a castle and it would stop a century-long war. And instead they basically went evil… kept the flag, kept all the treasure they found, and took off.
It was one of those moments that, as a DM, I loved, because suddenly the players had done something awesome and unique and I had to just come up with an ending off the top of my head because I’d never expected them to GO EVIL. I’d had a few contingencies depending on a few things that happened, but never outright maniacal evil. It was awesome.
There’s a lot of moments of amazing dice rolls causing insane things to happen, and I’ve had characters die, and parties wipe, but that was the first time a purely RP (role playing) moment made my night.
J: I was going to ask you how often you get to be a player in someone else’s game, but you sort of answered that already. What type of character do you prefer to play? Do you like to specialize, or does being a Game Master lead you to play a more versatile character?
L: As a player on paper I min/max. I want someone who does one or a few things REALLY well. And then I build the character as we play.
One of my most favorite characters was Karian, my archer. He could turn into a dog because of his race. All he did was shoot things really well, so all of his skills were based on that core mechanic. He had amazing perception, was super dexterous, and really fast. He once saved the universe by playing fetch. But all he really could do was shoot things with a longbow. He was just super good at it.
J: So… Dogeye.
L: Kinda!
Question #5: What was the moment when you first decided to become involved in the Rooster Teeth Community?
L: One of my best friends, Linnea, got into Red vs. Blue early in the first or second season. And she knew I loved playing video games, so she started sending me links to these videos. I didn’t own an Xbox, I played on my computer and on the PS2 most of the time, so I’d never seen Halo before.
But the episodes were funny, and I got a lot of the game references in general. Then the first RvBTO happened, and Gus and Burnie and Nico were all going to be there. I was living in Buffalo at the time, just got myself an apartment and job… and that’s a very quick drive to Toronto. So Linnea came to visit for a long weekend, and brought her big brick of an Xbox. We played the entire Halo campaign co-op, and then drove up to spend Saturday at RvBTO.
A few days before we left I figured I should stop lurking and actually sign up for the site, since I was going to meet people up there. And the rest is history.
J: What’s your preferred console now?
L: The One. And the 360 before that. I really got into FPS games after Halo. I just don’t own a computer powerful enough to run games. And as much as I love the Playstation I don’t have the money for more than one console, and right now most of my online friends are on the Xbox.
J: Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today! However, we’re not finished just yet.
L: Thanks, this was a blast! Holy cow do I type a lot!
J: One of the unique elements of Five Question Interviews is that now that the interview is complete, you have a chance to ask me one question. What have you prepared for me?
L: Well, Mr. Dunlap, I was curious if you have ever played a musical instrument? And if you could learn one what would you choose and why? Which is like three questions in one, because I’m sneaky.
J: I have a Bachelor’s degree in piano, and a Master’s in music theory and composition! I am also proficient in most brass instruments and auxiliary percussion, including mallet percussion. In fact, I recently did a gig at a church that was doing a cantata and played mallet percussion.
During college, I kind of swapped around in marching band and concert band based on what they needed, but in jazz band I played trombone almost exclusively.
L: Do you have a spit towel? Because all good brass players bring a concert black spit towel.
J: Funny thing, my jazz trombone is kind of old and it endured a lot before I got a hold of it, so it actually doesn’t have a spit valve. I don’t mean to say it wasn’t made with one, but rather the spit valve was completely missing when I got it. So I have to keep scotch tape over the opening and pull the slide completely off to empty my spit.
If I ever get any professional gigs as a brass player, I will definitely have to invest in a spit towel, though. During college it was never a big deal, of course.
L: Your spit needs are HUGE!
J: Fortunately I never build up a lot of spit!
This is definitely the grossest ending for an interview, ever. Thanks for that.
L: I WIN!!
I knew you were a musician… I just never imagined we’d dive into spit!
J: Let me be perfectly clear… We did NOT dive into spit.
L: I’ll ask Luke to draw that. He can make that happen.
J: I am SO getting you back when I’m on Glib Shark tomorrow.
L: I look forward to that gross moment!
J: Ugh… Anyway, thanks for meeting with me today. I honestly don’t know what to say after that.
L: My pleasure! It was an honor to talk shop with you. I’m gonna go make reeds.
J: Have fun!
If you want to know more about Lauren Urban, you can find her at:
- Website: http://www.oboecrazy.com/
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/OboeCrazy
- Rooster Teeth: http://www.roosterteeth.com/OboeCrazy
Have a question for Lauren that has not yet been asked? Do you want to see Lauren return and answer more of your questions? Suggest more questions below! Did you enjoy the interview? Leave your feedback below, subscribe, and share with your friends!
==========
Update: The day after this interview was held and published, Lauren released this image announcing her engagement to Luke McKay. Congratulations to them both!
JDunlap Media 