Samuel O’Connell is the 41st #NEPACreative of 2017. He brings creativity to the area through his love of music and more recently through his music project named after his own town, Noxen.
Sam co-founded a music app called TuneFly, and through the creation and marketing of the app he has been able to meet and collaborate with some incredible musicians in NEPA and beyond.
Tunefly is a mobile app and community for artists, fans and venues built around local music discovery in your scene and beyond. Artists can record or upload their music to their profile and post upcoming shows. Fans can stream and review music, make mixtape playlists and find out what shows are happening in their area. Venues can post upcoming concerts and open mics, book artists and promote them with never-before-experienced access to fans (coming soon). Tunefly aims to make the world of independent music accessible again by providing a platform for recognition and exposure and a way to build and interact with an engaged fanbase.
“Matt Simoncavage and I had the idea for Tunefly after hearing from a musician friend that he felt like he didn’t have a platform to gain a following, and he didn’t know how to get started,” O’Connell said. “We had never built an app but over the next two years we worked and grew into the app and team that we are today.”
Some of his major influences are Andrew Belle, Paul McCartney, mewithoutyou, Lord Huron, Kevin Garrett, Maggie Rogers and Justin Timberlake.
Sam is constantly inspired by his family and life on the farm. In his spare time, Sam likes to spend time with his wife and their two dogs, Walnut and Willow, their six chickens and their pig, Mabel. Honorable spare time mentions include writing and recording music, making videos, creative writing with his wife and spending quality time with his five brothers and three sisters.
To Sam, being creative is problem solving — coming up with an idea and pushing yourself until it’s done.
When being considered as an NEPA Creative, individuals are asked to explain how they bring creativity to the area, how long they have been doing it and why, and finally what being creative means to them. Once chosen, the next step is to bring each creative into CoalCreative’s studio space to be filmed for a 60 second video that is shared every Wednesday across all their social media platforms. The series plans to highlight all sorts of creatives throughout the rest of the year. There are no limits to who could be considered. Photographers, musicians, barbers, magicians, and improv artists are just a handful of the submissions CoalCreative has received thus far.
