When Your Surgeon is Your Plumber

It doesn’t help if the surgeon walks in and tells you about how he’s spent a lot of his time lately learning how to be a plumber and how he wants to open a little side business because he wants to diversify his skills and revenue streams, and he’s looking for new clients (i.e. you)

No. You don’t need him to be good at anything other than surgery.  You don’t need him to sell you anything other than surgery. You don’t need to think that he does anything other than spend all of his time being a really really really good surgeon.

It helps you if he helps you believe that all he does is live and breathe surgical procedures. 

Plain and simple.

The plumbing side business maybe TRUE, but it’s not USEFUL.

You don’t need to know all of the surgeons gifts, talents, interests, strengths and thoughts when you’re the one on the table.

It’s very important that the surgeon communicates and performs ONE thing very well.  

“The plumbing thing is great, and I’m sure you love rock climbing and cooking too, but right now absolutely none of that matters to me and in fact it’s confusing and causes me to question the one reason I’m here to see you.”


Stop trying to tell so many stories.

Your audience and potential audience need you to tell one story very well.  To be one thing very well. Consistently. Over and over. So they can develop trust and comfort with you. 

I know you have so many stories and sides of yourself that you want to share at your live show and through your PR campaigns and social media and your career.

But slow down…be one thing first. 

If you will be a great surgeon and fix me, and help me believe you’ll fix me, I’ll love you forever and come to you every time and give you all my money.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Going To The Pep Rally

You don’t go to the pep rally to learn how many points a touchdown is worth (although you probably will if you don’t already)

You go because you enjoy the party.  

You don’t go to a Garth Brooks show to learn the words to the songs (although you probably will if you don’t already)

You go because you enjoy the party.

The show/pep rally isn’t designed to be informative, it’s designed to be experiential…for people to don’t play music or football (but love it) to enjoy the full effect of it anyway.

 
p.s.  It’s just not about informing your audience. I can’t stress this enough. We come to your show in hopes of having a moment that we can’t explain with information.  

A personal moment. Yeah, there were fireworks and confetti and an encore…but during that one song at that one moment there was just something special.  I can’t explain it. You had to be there.



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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Hit Send More

If you’re a songwriter the best thing you can do everyday is to finish and send the song.

And by “finish” I mean, get it to a point where you believe it will get a reaction.

And by “send” I mean to the people you co-wrote it with, or to your A&R, or to your manager, or your bandmates, or people who want you to send it.

Songs are incredibly potent.  They’re a powder keg of potential excitement and action.

Hit send more.

Get more songs out there. Not necessarily to the public (although that wouldn’t be bad either), but to the world around you. The world that is looking for a song to take and do things with.  They take the song, attach themselves to it, and pass it along to someone else, taking a little credit for themselves.

The more you hit send the more reactions you’ll get.  The more reactions, the more people will remember the song and ultimately that you were the original sender.

Hit send more.

p.s. Important note here: you’re not in control of the timeline of the reactions or the reactions themselves.  That’s ok. Focus on your part of the bargain. 



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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Joining The Club

If you have any of these experiences it means you’re part of the club.  And among the wide range of artists in this club, there are lots of highly successful, household name artists in this club.  

So if you’ve gone through these or are going through these, you aren’t failing, you’re joining.

-you didn’t get paid what you were promised

-the big crowd was totally silent when you walked out on stage (probably because you were the opener)

-you found out after the show that the backup vocal mics weren’t turned up at all

-a truly awful, depressing, life numbing load in and somehow an even worse load out

-the fine print screwed you

-your lawyer lied to you

-you truly believed there were no more good songs that could be written

-the artist you know you’re better than got to do the thing you should have gotten to do

-your record tanked

-you over bought….no you waaaaaay over bought t-shirts

-you’re pretty sure no one cares about your career

-you equate “no one cares about your career” with worthlessness

-your drummer forgot there was a gig

-you have yelling matches over the setlist

-the gig you were really looking forward to got cancelled

-a person who you respect promised you something and then didn’t follow through


I will say…Not all of these are prerequisites (or necessarily merit badges) for being a successful rockstar member of the club.  They’re not causal.  It’s not “if you go through these things you will be Bruce Springsteen”.  It’s just that Bruce Springsteen has gone through a lot of these things.

Aka…you can go through all these things, be in the club, be able to say “me too”, and be 45 years old living in your mothers basement eating black beans every meal.  Not ideal.

I will also say…The club is worth joining. Worth it because of what you will learn if you take the time to notice.  

And the stories are amazing.  But I’d rather be telling the stories from on top of the garbage heap than underneath it.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

A little more Hum Dinger

A very distinct visual memory I have from the Hum Dinger was this:

Each day that week as all the groups were figuring this thing out, our teacher Mr. T (Mr. Tollefson) would take a lap around the room to check in with each group and then just find a seat and observe the class while we worked.

The visual memory I have from him sitting surveying the class was there was always five or six or ten of us huddled around him saying the same thing:

“How do we do this?! JUST TELL US!!!!”

We would just circle him like a bunch of birds hoping he would give in to our whining.

He didn’t. He knew better. We did not know better.  We were 5th grade twerps who wanted the answer so we could be finished.

He knew the longer it took, while not giving up, the better the exercise.

So all he had to do was make sure we didn’t give up…he didn’t have to make sure we figured it out…he knew we would get it as long as we didn’t give up.

Again…almost everything you need to know about making it (or moving on from) the music business is here in the story of the Hum Dinger.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

The Hum Dinger

In my 5th grade class our teacher had us do a week long project called The Hum-Dinger.

Here’s how it went.

At the front of the classroom on a chair was a brown grocery bag.  The teacher reached into the bag, apparently flipped a switch, and the contraption in the bag would hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm and then DING! then hummmmmmmmmm and then DING!

A Hum-Dinger. True to its title.

We split into groups of five.  

One person from each group was elected to go up to the brown paper bag at the front of the class room and was allowed to reach into the bag and feel the contraption as it was humming and dinging.

You couldn’t look inside the bag but could touch what was in there.

Then each group was given it’s own paper bag that we were instructed to dump out it’s contents on the middle of the desk.

So now, on our desk was all the same (disassembled) components of a Hum-Dinger and we were instructed to make a machine that hummed and dinged.

We’d all heard the machine. One of us had felt the machine. None of us knew where to begin building a machine like this.

So we began.

It was a lot of the one person trying to communicate what they’d felt in the bag.  Maybe this wire goes here, errrr, no, maybe this wooden dowel has to be connected to the paper clip and the paper clip is hitting the bell.  Lots of attempts, no solutions.

So that was Monday.

On Tuesday, new insight. Everyone from each group got to go up to the front and touch the machine that was inside the brown bag.

So now there was lot’s of new ‘expert’ opinions. No I felt this. No I think it was that.  There was a lot more talking about what to do than actual doing.

Wednesday everyone got to feel the machine again. Still not allowed to look in the bag.  

The second go-around with everyone in the group being able to feel how that machine worked seemed to be the tipping point.

We recognized that there were some parts that were just fluff, just for show.  They were only really there as a distraction and didn’t have anything to do with the hum or the ding.  

By this time we had the hum locked down, and were searching for a consistent ding to sound off intermittently.  

Our group figured it out Thursday…we were the second group in the class to get it.  When the first group figured it out before us we were all jealous and frustrated and wanted them to just show us how they did it so we could be winners too.

But when we got it (without the other group telling us how), it was pretty awesome.  

It hummed. It ding’d.  And that was the sound of success.


The sound of success sounds a lot different now.  Or what I want success to sound and look like.

I’ve decided not to point out every nuance and life lesson that this story so beautifully illustrates. 

Because honestly, there’s way too many for one blog post.

I’m pretty certain that everything about working, succeeding, failing, relationships and persevering in the music business is found right here in 5th grade building The Hum Dinger.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com