Jacob Mondry

If Jacob Mondry has his say, TV viewers will be hearing his music on shows like “This Is Us” and “A Million Little Things.” Hopefully, soon. He was recently signed to Universal Music Group and Elias Music’s sync licensing department, who will be pitching his original music to movies, commercials, and TV shows. Even if Mondry’s music isn’t heard right away on screen, this opportunity is huge. “It could lead to publishing deals, writing for other artists, maybe features for my new song...it brings some nice attention to my music and hopefully I get to reach more people,” said Mondry, who currently lives in Los Angeles. For some, focusing on this new deal would be enough, but not the Detroit Country Day School alumnus. Earlier this year he released a single, “Color Me Blue,” which is the song Universal heard which got their attention. It’s also a song Mondry thinks would fit perfectly on television. He also put out a new single in November, “Standing on the Face of the Earth.” Mondry said the song takes place in the future and is a conversation between a father and his son, who the former is talking to about what it was like to live on earth, a home the son never knew. “It’s really a song about being grateful for what we have on earth...it seems like a really timely message, and people are really asking for this kind of message,” said Mondry, who is also part of a group in Los Angeles which practices Shiva Murti, a Balinese healing modality. For Mondry, the song poured out of him and was written in about 15 minutes. He was on a singer/songwriter retreat in Mammoth Lakes, California. While in a hot springs staring at the stars he got inspired to write the song. What kind of singer/songwriter retreat was Mondry on when lightning struck? One of his own. A few years ago Mondry – who has always loved to sing but realized during his bar mitzvah that singing was what he needed to do – had some friends approach him about wanting to learn how to write songs and about the business side of being a singer/songwriter. It started as meet-ups to bounce ideas around and guidance but then more and more people became interested. “I thought, well, I could put together a retreat so that we could come together and have these conversations in a circle,” said Mondry, who has worked for the last six years with his own coach/teacher, Candace Silvers. So he did. The retreat in September – which he ran by himself – was Mondry’s first. There will be another one in January. At that September retreat, the group wrote songs and discussed everything from how to find the right band mates and how to have conversations with producers. “A lot of artists are really right-brained. They understand being creative, being emotional and vulnerable,” he said. “They don’t necessarily understand having structure in their lives, how to have business conversations, things like that.” Mondry has gotten lots of positive feedback from those who participated and has been able to watch their careers grow. He said he would love to do more retreats and eventually serve as a liaison between artists and business people at major labels. But he has no intention of leaving singing or songwriting behind any time soon. “If I want to keep growing and offering more to them then I have to keep growing as an artist,” he said. “They go hand-in-hand.”