Musician | Entrepreneur | Lover of Sandwiches.

Who is PJ Bovee? Well, how do you write a page about yourself without sounding like a totally conceded, pretentious jerk? I’m not sure, so I’ll try to be brief…

My name is PJ Bovee — hence the website — and I am a musician and entrepreneur. I have a wife named Meag, a pug named Walter, and we live in San Diego. I’m going to share my life and my business  How’s that for brevity? Seriously, you can stop here. I won’t be offended.

Musician

Ok, the real stuff. The story goes that I would crawl to the speakers (before I could walk or talk) and hum “The Music of the Night” from Phantom of the Opera in the right key and with the correct pitches and intervals when I wanted to hear music. My folks were always into my sister and me being creative and stuck us in/allowed us to be in choirs at church and take piano lessons from a very young age. We eventually started singing and taking other classes at the Colburn School of Performing Arts. This was from the time I was about 5 until 16. Throughout high school, I sang in choirs and had a couple of bands with my friends.

After high school, I decided to go to San Diego State University and pursue a degree in Jazz Studies on guitar. After a couple/few years of that, I dropped out. There was a money component, my almost complete boredom with school (General Ed’s? Yuck!), and the fact that I was starting to make a living as a gigging musician, private teacher, and working for a well-known educational music publisher. Life was just so much better working and learning on the bandstand or in the office than it was sitting in a dull classroom. Disclaimer: Kids, don’t listen to me! Listen to your parents and stay in school.

My very first professional guitar gig was for a musical called tick, tick…BOOM! in 2008. I was instantly hooked on being a theatre musician. You see, I acted a bit growing up and always loved it, so being able to play my instrument in the theatre and get paid for it was a super win. From there, I went on to another show, and then another, and then another. You see, with each gig, I met a few more people who hired or recommended me later. Our musician family in San Diego — as I’m sure it is anywhere else — likes to help each other out and you eventually start getting to know people really well, shows overlap, and you gain a nice rapport (both personally and musically) with your colleagues.

At one of the earlier shows, I played with a husband and wife — Chuck and Diana Elledge — who worked for a music publisher. This show, The Light in the Piazza, was a long run, so we all had a lot of time to get to know each other. Chuck and I became close and bonded over the fact that we both dug computers and music/music technology. You can read my full story on that chapter of my life here (I’m not done with this yet, but I will be soon!), but — long story short — I started working for that publisher about 6 months later and was there for just shy of 6 years.

Wrapping up the musician half of my life … while my main flow is musical theatre/orchestra pit work, I play in a couple bands, do some recording work, and compose a little here and there, as well.

Entrepreneur

I’ve always been interested in running my own business; I suppose I’ve actually been an entrepreneur for many years now as a freelance musician. When I talk about being an entrepreneur here, however, I’m referring to freelance/online work other than being a musician.

While working for the music publisher, I picked up a lot of skills (or honed skills I already had or was interested in) that aren’t necessarily music related. Some of these things were on the job and others were fed by my own curiosity — from web design/development and graphic design, to internet marketing and consulting, and even a little bit of video production. I use all of these skills and do freelance work for different people and companies.

My main goal here, though, is to be an Internet Entrepreneur and not do a lot of freelance work. That’s why, with this site and my other projects, I plan to build some passive income sources that will feed my creative endeavors and help build the lifestyle that I want. Because who wouldn’t want to make money in the background and do whatever they wanted???

Click around the site and read more about all of the different projects I have my hands in. So many different things hold my interest, so I like to keep it fresh and work on several projects at once.

Lover of Sandwiches

I just really, really love sandwiches.