Pre-COVID
Route A
Find bandmates. Post Ad to Craigslist. Sift through countless weirdos. Decide who to respond to amongst the tongue-baring drummers with bandanas who list Iron Maiden and Guns N’ Roses as their heroes; the guitar players claiming to shred like Jimmy Page or belt a tune like Chrissie Hynde, and the John McVie look a-likes seeking players with record label interest only. Once bandmates are found, start rehearsing. Practice two to three times a week in absolute shithole of a facility where other unfriendly bands size you up and believe they are the only group in the joint who will, ‘Make it’. Only use bathroom in absolute emergency since it most likely hasn’t been cleaned in months. Ensure not to touch microphones with lips or run the risk of contracting a bacterial infection. Fidget with standby switch on half broken Fender Twin Reverb amplifier for ten minutes before getting it to work. Don’t get too frustrated with the horrible sounding snare drum, or the grossly stained table from spilled beer seven years prior, or the ugly black couch that has never been cleaned and hides its germs very deceptively, or the stench of B.O. that permeates the room from the sweaty group of men who preceded your session and forgot to throw out their empty pungent tall boy cans of Budweiser. Occasionally get into the odd disagreement with bandmates, but let it go because together, you are soon going to take over the world. During breaks, tell stories about other famous bands who were once deemed unlikely to, ‘Make it’. Start gigging in mostly empty bars to your family, friends and local drunks. Learn to accept the 1 a.m. time slot on a four-band bill because the first act will stall their set as they don’t want to play to an empty room at 9 o’clock. Praise each of the bands after sound check, but secretly judge them and hope they don’t go as far as yours. After sound check, awkwardly have drinks with other self-assertive bands, continuing to tell yourself that your group is better and will go further. Learn to chase down crooked promoters that leave early and steal your $40 door sales. Self-fund an EP to shop around. Record with self-indulgent engineer/producer who tells stories about the famous people he produced, when in reality, he really just set up microphones for the drums and got coffee for the sessions. Nod and smile through his bullshit stories and pretend to buy into his hype as he won’t shut up about how his console was once used by Fleetwood Mac. Please consider hiring a female engineer/producer next time around, as you will likely receive better communication, a more accepting and comfortable environment, and you will get sick of working with creepy men who care more about flaunting their egos and suggesting shitty ‘Industry advice’ than investing time in your actual product. Produce album release party. Spend all your savings on a product no one buys. Tell everyone you know that you have, ‘Label interest’ because one person who works for an unknown recording company said they liked your songs, when in reality, no one is serious about signing you. Continue playing dumpster dives. For purposes of being polite, momentarily entertain shitty contracts for services offered by random people who claim to work in the industry and say they can help you out, but ultimately turn them down because they are just trying to rip you off and pat themselves on the back for whatever it is they do. Be appreciative that the crowds at your gigs get ever so slightly bigger. However, not big enough to quit your day job of bartending. I know. I know. Bartending can be a decent paycheck. But your city has become unjustly expensive since it has been overrun by short term rentals and a growing trend called ‘Renoviction’, so everything you earn just barely covers your bills.
Total earned from hundreds of gigs over two years: $6,000.
Total earned from sales of EP: $50.
Reconvene. Come up with new strategy.
Route B
Skip the whole playing live thing. Record first full-length album. Release it online because physical products have mostly been phased out, except for the resurgence of vinyl, which unfortunately is too expensive to press on your own DIY budget. Connect with music supervisors to license music for film and television. Land a big sync for a hit TV show on a major network that is played all over the world. Celebrate when the YouTube clip goes viral and your Spotify count hits a million listens. Consider telling your boss that you are through with slinging drinks for ungrateful white collared bankers who brag about cheating on their spouses since you will soon be famous but sit on the decision before you muster up the courage to pull the trigger. Get back into the rehearsal space and start practicing with anticipation of a potential label signing. Grind it out in the shithole for a month thinking that any day now your band will become a household name and the labels will start calling. Despite weeks of radio silence and your patience wearing thin, consider throwing in the towel. But just as you’re about to pack it in get excited again because a major two-week festival in another country emails you and invites your band to play. Get ecstatic about the opportunity, but simultaneously be prepared for disappointment because the festival doesn’t provide a definitive performance date, and won’t do so until two weeks before the event starts, which means you need to find a hotel and book accommodations for the entire festival (14 nights) to ensure you have a place to stay when you do get your dates. Let disappointment really sink in when you realize all the hotels in the area jack their rates during the festival and all the Air BnB’s are completely booked. Try not to guilt yourself too much that you’re no longer an 18-year-old that could potentially make the trip work by happily sleeping in a van for two weeks. However, in the end, pass on the gig after realizing it will cost upwards of $10,000, performance visa included. But don’t worry. For one, despite the recognizable brand of the festival, it has turned into more of a corporate convention for media conglomerates rather than a place to discover unknown artists. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of bands on the bill, and you would have most likely played to a room full of no one. Secondly, it was a non-paying opportunity even though they tried to rope you in by telling you it’s great exposure. Whatever you do, remember this: musicians can’t eat exposure.
Total earned from sync and one million Spotify streams: $10,000.
Total earned from EP and album sales: $50.
Reconvene. Come up with new strategy.
Route C
Your cousin just got a prominent A&R job at a record label and she recommends your band to the obscure indie imprint. After miraculously signing a deal (that not even you had anticipated) and celebrating by getting wasted on a bottle of Hornitos Plata at the bar where you played your first gig, get back into that shithole practice facility and grind it out. Don’t worry about your lips hitting the microphone because you’re soon going to be famous, and who cares about a little grime when you’re playing to 20,000 fans chanting your name right? C’mon! Feel good, because everything will seem brighter! Don’t let toggling with that half-broken Fender Twin Reverb amplifier switch for ten minutes bother you because guess what? Soon you will have your own Marshall Stack for your roadie to lug around, your rider will include that bottle of Woodford Reserve you love whetting your beak with, that strain of marijuana you crave during a late night writing session and those peanut butter M&M’s you so desperately need at the end of a crazy bender. You should even use the bathroom at the rehearsal space and while you urinate, reminisce about how much you actually love the decrepit place. Ride that high, because soon enough you will hit the road and meet lots of beautiful people who will want to party with you, sleep with you, and tell you how much your music has changed their lives, you will become excessively rich and not have to lie that you already ate when you’re out for dinner at a friend’s birthday party at their favorite five star restaurant since you’ll be able to afford more than a glass of water, and you will definitely not have to continue bartending for pretentious tattooed hipsters and stock market thieves who boast about their portfolios (you know, the ones composed of equities responsible for building mines and contaminating the soil while causing workers to contract tuberculosis, the ETF’s containing corporations that poison drinking water and destroy the formerly owned indigenous land of communities thousands of miles away, and the GIC’s funding pipelines that disturb wildlife and natural resources, not to mention their detrimental effects on climate change). Sorry if I mislead you, but in the entertainment business, one’s imagination can get carried away with the delivery of great news (in this particular case, signing with a label). Unfortunately, this is the most likely scenario: get used to opening for other lesser known bands, accept going back to the hotel room alone and masturbating to fuzzy softcore porn on the tiny television screen, or whatever spicy scenario you can fantasize about in your far less than glamorous life on the road. Prepare to be uncomfortable because rather than flying through the air in luxury on private jets with mini bars that spell your band’s name in cocaine you will be crammed into a half broken down van driving 10-12 hours a day to bars that reek of urine and can barely hold 100 people, sleeping in motel 6 because the label penny pinches on an upgrade to a Super 8, and you will subsist on a diet of cheap fast food and late night 7-11 runs. Ensure to breathe as you constantly question the path you chose when you see your friends back home posting pictures to social media of the houses they bought. Remain calm as you have daily emotional meltdowns as you wonder why you left your corporate job many years ago to pursue the life of an artist. And sorry to break the news, but you will most likely still have to bartend for those scenesters who receive monthly rent money from their parents and the bankers who boast about their ROI’s without considering the environmental and social impact of their portfolios. It will be difficult to admit, but the reality of the so called, ‘Rock star life’ will smack you right in the face and at 2 a.m. somewhere on the road between Boise, Idaho and Eureka, Nevada, you will realize the unthinkable…..that you hate being a musician. Despite your denial, you keep posting edited versions of your life to your social media feeds to ensure everyone back home thinks you’re, ‘Killing it’.
Total earned after label, publicist and manager recoup their costs: $6,000.
Total earned from EP & album sales: $50.
Reconvene.
New World
Route D
Consider a new career. However, before you make that difficult decision to finally throw in the towel, a worldwide pandemic hits and live music screeches to a grinding halt. All of a sudden, everything you have worked towards is no longer possible.
Think about going back to school. Get depressed about your fading dream that never came to fruition. Stop playing music for months, but realize you strangely miss it. Set up modest little recording space in bedroom closet. Make simple beat and write lyrics in five minutes. Record song alone in bedroom on shoestring budget. Realize that after years of self-engineering, you’re surprisingly able to put together a decent mix and master on your own. Post song to YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Tik-Tok and whatever other social media platform was invented that day. Come to the surprising realization that you’re actually having fun and falling in love with making music again.
As some of that joy comes back, you’ll also realize the following:
There’s no such thing as ‘Making it’ in the sense that we’re taught to believe. If you’re here, you’ve already ‘Made it’. If you’re playing to a bar full of no one and you’re just happy to be on stage rocking out, then you’ve ‘Made it’. If you’re on tour and actually kind of enjoy grinding it out in a run-down van and rickety motel, then you’ve, ‘Made it’. If you’re broke and on the road somewhere in the middle of nowhere and you turn to your bandmate and share a laugh over the ridiculous gig you just played to a half dozen tourists in a hotel lobby where you were paid with a 50% off meal voucher for chicken wings and fries, then you’ve ‘Made it’. If you receive $50 from your digital distributor (which actually translates to thousands of people streaming your music since each stream is a fraction of a penny) and your songs are being heard in countries all over the world, then you’ve, ‘Made it’. And if you’re jamming with your friends in a grimy rehearsal space and you accidentally forget to collect your pungent tall boy cans of Budweiser as you were leaving because you were too caught up in a funny moment of reminiscence, then you’ve, ‘Made it’ too.
You’ll come to the realization that you’re thankful and privileged to even be able to pick up an instrument or sit down at a computer and do what you love. Where you play, who you play to, who follows you on social media, how much licensing money you rake in or the number of physical products you sell doesn’t govern whether or not you’re talented or if you’ve ‘Made it’. The only person that gets to decide that is you. But after all this, you’ll discover another important lesson: to fully enjoy your version of, ‘Making it’, you need to bring love to your creative process.
After rediscovering the joy to your craft and coming to these life altering understandings, you wake up the next morning to realize you have become an overnight sensation as your video went viral. Win multiple awards. Instead of posing on the red carpet with Drake and Post Malone, and dancing at the after party with Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, you have a celebratory drink with those in your bubble. Instead of being invited to perform at shows; real shows with thousands of people, and riders that actually come with Woodford Reserve and of course, your favorite – peanut butter M&M’s, you perform via Zoom in your living room to a select group of people who are still half-heartedly interested in watching a slightly delayed live music broadcast over the internet. However, as time progresses and things start opening up, you get invited to perform at socially distanced events. As such, you call up the band and start coordinating how to practice in an environment that would be approved by public health.
But even though you’re feeling as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders, and you have a better handle of your emotional health, find a good therapist because after all, you’re still in the entertainment industry!