do I have good taste in music and is it being affirmed
am I going to feel cool about telling my friends I was here
The audience doesn’t have the power to make an artists worries go away, but the artist has an unbelievable opportunity to do things, to act in a way, to lead, to put on a show that DOES cause the audiences worries to go away.
As an new-ish artist, if you’ve been working and writing and connecting and helping for a while but haven’t played a show for all these (industry) people to come out to, you might think about doing it.
People like going to shows of people they like.
So if you’ve been workin it for the last twelve months making good impressions everywhere you go…then that’s a lot of people walking around with a positive vibe about you. And these people can help you (and you can help them).
A show is a great way to trigger the help.
You can get people to promise you a lot of favors in the moment if they come out to your gig and have a fun night. The trick is making sure those promises come to fruition…which is an art unto itself.
But the show is a point of excitement. It gets peoples brains vibrating at a higher rate on your behalf.
If you haven’t in a while…PLAY. Good things will happen.
p.s. That last sentence “good things will happen”…as in: good things will be happening, and you must be disciplined to open your eyes, see, and keep paying attention, learn and take action.
Rather than getting good at decision making we look for how we’re trapped so we can have our hand forced and then complain about it all.
We’d rather seek out a responsibility-bucking trap than a responsibility-full decision.
Probably none of us do this on purpose because in theory we value our freedom to make our own choices and claim to be beholden to no one.
But in practice it seems to be different. As the complaining is rampant in this business.
As with anything, getting good at decision making (and therefore taking responsibility) takes time and you’re going to fail a lot along the way to getting good. And the times you fail will really actually hurt. Hurt you and the people you work with and live with.
That’s why it feels so much safer to sit in a trap instead: (in theory) you don’t risk hurting anyone by your poor decision making skills.
Make a decision to stop leaning on traps.
p.s. I’ve found that most traps in business are merely perceived and not real.
p.p.s. Increasing your number of options or possible solutions is a great way to work yourself out of a trap if you want to be out of a trap.
Tiny Dancer finding me is better than me finding Tiny Dancer.
That’s why radio…or the idea of radio will never die.
I don’t always want to pick out my music. I don’t always want to know what track is coming next.
I even remember making mix tapes for the cassette player in my 92’ LeBaron. I would make a tape with all these songs that I loved, but the best listens through the tape were the first handful…when I’d forgotten which song came next. So when it came on it was “Ahhh, yes, this feels good”.
When a song finds us we feel taken care of.
It’s someone or something else taking care of us rather than us taking care of us.
Hold me closer…
p.s. And specifically pertaining to the song Tiny Dancer: If you know THAT scene in Almost Famous, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.
Thirty years from now you need to own something so you’re not out looking for a gig.
Owning parts of lots of songs (that get played somewhere) is kinda like a mutual fund.
So if you don’t own parts of lots of songs, get a mutual fund.
There are A-list musicians who after years of amazing gigs all of a sudden stop getting amazing gigs. They spent all the money when the money was good and now they got nada. Back on Broadway 10pm-2am.
But in the above scenario you can sub out ‘A-list musician’ for just about anything else in the music business if you don’t start down the road of ownership now.
Songs have legs and the royalties are forever. You can pass them down to your children and grandchildren.
As you can do with the guacamole from mutual funds.
I can do a really great job of explaining to you where the paper towels are in our kitchen, but I don’t need to.
You know where they’re going to be.
Knowing what information to spare your audience of is just as important as the information you decide to share.
Here’s a good example:
If you make a show poster for your next gig, the reason you go around and hang it up is so that, ultimately, people who see it will come to your show.
So what purpose does the poster have? What needs to be on the poster?
Your name. The date. Possibly the venue (but probably not).
It’s not the time of the show. You can leave that off.
It’s not because you listed the city. If I see your poster on a street pole in Nashville I already know the advertised show is in Nashville with out you telling me. You can leave that off.
It’s not how artsy the poster is. A poster is to inform, not persuade.
If the poster is hanging in the venue, don’t use up space on the poster listing the venue. If you’re poster is hanging up at Exit/In, I automatically assume that’s where the advertised show is.
It’s not the price. For sure not on the show poster anyway. Leave it off.
If I know who you are and what date you’re coming to town via your show poster I have everything I need in order to take the next step. And truthfully I’ve probably already made my decision with those two factors.
Don’t over complicate.
Your audience is smart. They connect the dots. Their eyes see and remember the most important information and discard the rest, so you can do them a favor and not tell them things they’re going to discard anyway.
With this idea in mind…sorry this post was so long.
