Candace Jeanne Clement is a musician, organizer and artist from western Massachusetts. Her creative life has been deeply influenced by DIY subcultures, and through her work she has rejected the individualistic narrative of “doing it yourself” for the more transformational potential that arises when we “do it together.”
Candace has been playing in indie rock bands for twenty years and, as such, has worked nearly every angle associated with the process along the way—from songwriting to performing to recording to booking to promotion to screen printing t-shirts to vinyl pressing and back again. A creative omnivore, she has co-founded a small independent record label, booked residencies, collaborated on music video productions, and played in numerous musical projects where she’s had the opportunity to share the stage with many incredible artists, including Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Cotton Candy (Mark Robinson), Thalia Zedek (Come) and countless others. In 2022, she completed a brief tour with Bonnie Prince Billy (Will Oldham) as part of his backing band and as opening act with the band Footings.
From 2011 to 2015 she served as President of the Board of Directors for Girls Rock Campaign Boston (recently renamed Boston Raising Powerful Musicians). Candace has been a member of her community’s local cultural council and also worked extensively with a local community radio station in its early broadcasting days.
When she isn’t making music with friends or creative project mischief with collaborators, she serves as the Managing Director for the national nonprofit advocacy organization Free Press that fights for a more just and equitable media and technology system in the United States through public policy change. Throughout her tenure at the organization she has organized national campaigns for Net Neutrality and against corporate and government surveillance, fought for more funding for public media, defended press freedom, and supported calls for media reparations.
Candace’s primary current music project is called All Feels. She’s a Gemini Xennial raised by 90s counterculture and has been described as a “pessimistic optimist.”