Towards the end of this past summer I took a trip out to Michigan to visit my mom and record vocals. In the process of failing to be able to operate the board and record vocals, I was introduced to two members of the self-made, critically acclaimed Rusty Wright Blues Band over dinner at a bar/restaurant where they (but not the band) play a mix of covers and originals. One of those places that when you play there, or the venue is having you you all call it, “intimate.” But really, it’s a grinder show for the musicians (a way to grind out some dough) and a way to drum up business for a slow Tuesday night for the venue. Ultimately, it’s not about the music – it’s about money. And that’s a problem.
I had a personal experience with that. I was working at a bar, at the best bar in fact – The Showboat Saloon. The bar has a reputation for having live music. It was a part of the visions of the previous owners, and is a part of the current owner’s. At the time I was working there, the bar was going through a massive transition, a time of refurbishing and addition. Musically, there were growing pains as the bar attempting to bring established and semi-established bands from Madison, an hour to the south. The bands weren’t bringing their fans with them and fans weren’t making the trip themselves. This caused somewhat of a retraction, and local acts, including singer/songwriter me, were brought in.
I was put in a strange position. As a musician, I was being paid well to perform whatever I felt like – including an incarnation as an 80’s remake band. (They weren’t covers trust me.) But as an employee of a small-but-growing business, who had a personal connection to the owners and management, I didn’t think it was a smart move. Bringing me into the bar to play music brought in the same local/regular crowd that would be there anyway – but instead of the crowd plugging the digital jukebox full of their favorite songs all night, the bar pulled money out of the till to pay me. I had conversations with the managers, good friends of mine, where we talked about this phenomenon – though they were kind enough not to apply it directly to me, I did. And when I couldn’t take the dissonance, I held a meeting with the owner and volunteered to stop playing at the venue. He wanted me to keep playing, and to this day I appreciate his love of not just my music but music in general. I wanted to move mellower, more singer/songwriter-y, less stage presence-y. The bar music scene wasn’t, and isn’t where I want(ed) to play. I didn’t want to be a human jukebox, I also didn’t want to stand on stage and play to a crowd caught up in their bar conversations and carrying little interest in what was happening on the stage. I felt it was bad for me, and bad for the bar and that was that.
That I did this might make me out as a traitor to some musicians out there. But it wasn’t that I was saying, just play your jukebox or don’t have live music or hire a DJ, it was that I knew I wasn’t the right fit for the bar – at least not as a regular performer. It was my way of saying, keep looking for the bigger, better bands. Don’t settle for the locals who only bring in the same people who’d be here anyway. For me, it was what I had to do. I am not the kind of guy who does something just for the money. Money pays the bills and is largely necessary, and getting paid to do something you love is a great feeling – but it was the other factors, that were making me dislike something I loved. One of those was the pressure of playing music at a location where the music being played was out of place. I felt a pressure that may or may not have been there because of my connection to the bar as an employee (and as family). For me, music can’t be about the money. It has to be about the music. And, whenever I see solo acoustic artists playing the long-set at dance venues I can’t help but feel a little of the old dissonance creeping into me and I wonder if they feel it too.
The meeting with the owner of the Showboat basically started the period that became almost a two year hiatus in my performing. A period where I really only played if someone called me and needed someone to fill in for so-in-so who couldn’t make it that night. By the time I sat down at this restaurant with my mom and her friends, I was over that and itching to get the album out and start performing.
Over the course of the dinner, I got so much information of incredible quality from a couple of working, artistic musician-lifers. By the time I left the table, I felt like there were so many mistakes that I didn’t have to make and that most of the ideas I had that I thought were weird were in fact better precisely because they were not the norm. Which played right into the book I read immediately afterwards, Tim Ferris’ “Four Hour Work Week,” which is conceptually applicable to making music, but when you make your money by making music, a temporal art, a four-hour work week just means that you’re not gigging that week. He/it does have some interesting ideas for freeing up time and making money so you have the time to spend making music. Innovation.
Everything had changed, and nothing. I understood that if I was going to attempt to go solo-musician as a job, I was going to have to play these grinder shows. But I didn’t. I chose to get a day job and stay in school and play music in a band and keep making my own music, but following my heart and my head and my own rules. To innovate, or at least try new things instead of following the same-ol-same-ol-status-quo.
One of the gifts I got from that dinner that keeps on giving was a recommendation to follow The Lefsetz Letter, I get it in my inbox but there’s probably a dozen ways to follow it. If you have any interest in music, the music industry and the future course of either, I highly recommend following along yourself. The man’s kind of a snob, but when you’re as right, as connected, as storied as he is it’s probably hard not to be.
So I’ve been following. He’s prolific so I can’t quite say I read them all, but I do read quite a few and he harps on some themes. Oddly enough, he’s applying directly to music and occasionally to other things, themes that I see running across the board. One of those themes is the importance of innovation, of moving forward with fresh ideas and not rehashing old themes. He talks about how Rock is dead, it’s not progressing, while Hip-Hop is constantly breaking new ground. How labels are dying and continuing to attempt the business as usual 2.0 model (let the bands make themselves, then pick them up; as opposed to the 1.0 model, find a good band and make them great/huge) while the 2.0 model and modern technology puts the artist in control of their own destiny and leads artists to eschew the labels. He talks about how this is getting even easier due to the on-demand streaming music revolution.
But what I hear is bigger than music. I hear him talking about the wobbly nature of culture (aspects expanding and acquiring while others remain static or shrinking) as it moves through time. I see him writing about those who benefit from the status quo attempting to do what they can to maintain it and continue to use their tired and worn-out systems and advantages, while those who don’t are seeking to change it through innovation and collaboration.
In this recent post, he says, “The future is about collaboration. That’s what social is all about. Talk to the younger generation, they’re about a free exchange of ideas amongst everybody. It’s about being a member of the group more than dominating as an individual.” Even he’s not just talking about music, but he might as well be talking about ‘the 99%’ and Wall-Street.
We’re living in a time that, like all others, requires innovation. Some periods require more rapid innovation, others require innovation on a grander scale. From the economy to the environment, we are living in a time that requires both, and anyone or thing that is standing in the way of that is holding back humanity. It’s about the group, not about the individual. As a musician, it’s still not about the individual, even if I’m a solo act and all my music is about my life, opinions, feelings an experiences – it’s about the group – about the fan. Even if a fan is just someone who likes the individual. It’s not musical demagoguery as much as it is a matter of people picking up on quality, artists pursuing it and finding fans who’re craving it.
When I stopped playing at the boat, I was experiencing a problem of quality. I wasn’t delivering the ‘quality’ that I felt should be expected (something to push people to the dance-floor, keep their heads nodding and their senses piqued) by the venue, if not musically, and that made me uncomfortable. Also, playing three hour blocks once a week at the same place without cover, made me too easy to access. Never allowing for commodification of my product, let alone any idea of quality – as I was expected by the audience, or at least members of it, to know and perform songs that I did not.
So why do two members of the Rusty Wright Blues Band and not the whole band play these little bar/restaurant gigs? The band a) costs too much; b) is too big for the venue (in terms of both size and popularity); and, c) can’t make itself available for free consumption without hurting it (the band) as an in-demand commodity. When they told me that, I had an epiphany.
I realized something about quality and quantity – you can’t just spread quality around to quantity proportions and keep the quality. Echoes of socialism vs. capitalism, to which I would add how interesting I find the rise of super-wealth as a natural phenomenon to be so interesting, especially since the market has been mapped. If, or even because, it is a natural process doesn’t mean that we can’t alter it. It certainly wouldn’t be the first natural process we’ve harnessed for greater good. It’s time to find a better way to do things, not just rehash old arguments and systems and harp on the problems of the past. The future should be new, and while in many ways it may remain a reinterpretation of the past, new ideas come into play they have to, or we are no longer adapting which means were failing evolutionarily – much like the business adage, if you’re not growing than you’re shrinking. Because the market is always growing. Because the future is always coming and innovation always finds its way to center stage.