Musician Charlie Faye and booker Adrienne Lake founded Daydream Believer Creative to fill in some of the gaps for local musicians.
By Kaitlyn Wilkes, Photos courtesy of Daydream Believer Creative
Charlie Faye and Adrienne Lake were already involved in the Austin music scene when they met. Faye was a musician, and Lake was a booker for The Ballroom at Spider House. When a mutual friend connected them, they realized they had similar interests in helping the community.
“Every time we would get together, we would talk about, ‘What are the missing pieces here? What do Austin artists need? How can we help?’” Faye says.
It was during the pandemic that Lake and Faye decided to combine their skills to create Daydream Believer Creative, a company that helps music businesses, artists and nonprofits with consulting, PR, project management, event planning and team building.
Faye noticed she and Lake were both doing a lot of consulting at that time. Lake had also taken on some PR work. This made Faye wonder how she could turn her consulting side job into something more permanent.
“My thought was, number one, artists, music, businesses, everybody needs creative consulting; everybody needs somebody to talk to about that kind of stuff,” Faye says. “Not everybody realizes the value of it, to the point where they’re willing to pay for it. But what people in the music business do value and do see as worth paying for is PR. I saw that Adrienne was doing both of these things. I started thinking about doing both of these things in combination.”
In Lake’s estimation, one of the benefits of starting Daydream Believer Creative during the pandemic was that it afforded them the space they needed to figure out what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it.
“It allowed us to finally figure out that niche, what that was and how we could fill that,” Lake says. “It was sort of the answer to all of these questions that we’ve been tossing around for so many years.”
Daydream Believer Creative differentiates itself from other businesses through their ability to sit down with and customize their services uniquely for every client. “We don’t work in any kind of cookie-cutter way,” Faye says. “We really start by having a conversation with the artist or with the business owner and trying to really tease out exactly what their needs are and what their goals are, what they’re trying to accomplish, so that we can really help them in every way that we’re able to.”
Even though they have been in business for a little over a year, Daydream Believer Creative did not launch publicly until early February. Before officially launching, Faye and Lake relied on their connections in the local scene and word of mouth. Luckily, because of their established relationships, this grassroots PR successfully established their client base.
“That was so nice, I think for both of us, not only to feel like becoming a team is going to be something awesome and make us stronger, but everybody else is feeling that way too,” Faye says. “They’re excited about it, and people are talking about it, and word’s getting out.”
When Lake started working in the music industry in the ’90s, there was not the community and help for women that there is now. As she reflects on how no one was looking out for the women in the industry at that time, she acknowledges that things are better.
“I think it’s helped everyone realize how absolutely crucial it is to have women involved and women’s voices heard,” she says. “That goes for everybody: queer folks, people of color. We need to hear everyone’s voices in order to be an equitable industry, and that’s certainly a goal for me, to fight for that.”
As the music scene in Austin changes, and as the city changes, Lake and Faye are intentional about ensuring their clients have the best, most up-to-date information so they can make waves.
“A big part of the job is to keep an active role in learning and in keeping up, and honestly there are some great resources for that. But one of the best ways to do that is to connect with other people in the business,” Lake says.
As Daydream Believer Creative heads into the future, they want to continue to level up, serve more clients and make the scene a better place for all musicians, music businesses and nonprofits.
“I want clients that are doing something to make the world a better place, and they seem to just come,” Lake says. “I’m really excited about seeing the ones that pop up around the corner.”