It's a unique business, this band stuff.
The stew of creating and selling art, with co-workers side by side, often leaves me feeling a bit bewildered. There's no MBA for band management. No textbook. You figure out how to sell it - or you end up relegating this hobby to your personal history. "Ya know, I used to be in a band..."
Our office isn't like yours. It's not four walls, a door and a window (if you're lucky). Our workplace is a bar where we commune musically about our common humanity, while dishes crash, the wait staff announces last calls, boozy dancers sometimes hit on the boys and I shamelessly encourage diners to "feed the tip bucket" because "my bucket is lonely."
Don't judge me.
Compensation makes us smile and pays the bills, yet it doesn't drive us. We play because we don't have a choice. It still surprises me when I ask the guys, "It's a good cause ... are you in?" And they are. They'll drive to two practices, haul equipment to the gig, set up, play, tear down arrive home with far less in their pocket than it cost them in time and equipment, and never complain.
Or not much. :)
The business side has changed over the years in one significant way. Many women now book bands into restaurants. This is a welcome development. Nothing against you guys who book bands. I'm sure 99% of you are God-fearing, family men who teach Sunday school, never swear/smoke/drink and call your mother three times a day. But some club guys aren't. #eyesrollingatyoubehindyourback
That's another blog. :)
Back to business. So I assure the booking person we will be an asset, put fannies in their chairs and money in their wallets. They take a chance on us; we bring them customers. They don't care (much) if we're good -- they want to make money. We care (much) if we're good -- and we want to make money. Mostly, along with singing, this negotiating is all in my job description. Along with marketing, poster-making, website diddling, Facebook eventing, blog writing and climbing on a chair to sing the first part of "Something's Gotta Hold on Me" without a microphone.
So, it's a job. With a reputation.
Tell some folks you're a musician, and you see the quiet smirk cross their eyes before traveling to the lips. Oh. A musician. Yes, I know what you're thinking. And it's not true. We're too busy hauling equipment and negotiating the load in/out to notice. Have an extra free hand? Come help move the speakers to the van and tell me again how wild we are.
Truth is: by the time you get to our ages, you either figure it out or you're dead.
My band mates don't worry about the public perceptions. They work day jobs in no judgment zones. We have a few engineers. A video/marketing guy. A professional keyboard player who feigns diseases for extra cash (that's another blog). In their worlds, the musical side gig is more an interesting personal anecdote in the cocktail party of life.
I stay slightly closeted. As a nonprofit professional, I'm responsible for the safety and well-being of hundreds of children in the community. Do I really want my Board of Directors hear me sing "Never Been Rocked Enough," which is pretty clearly about having sex with some guy who visibly needs to get some?
Yeah... no. Truth is, I am pretty sure, with a few cocktails in them, my Board would be the first to climb on the tables and start dancing.
But I keep forgetting to add them to the invitation list. My bad.
We are so fortunate to still be hobbying away at this, as we are all much closer to retirement than our younger, shinier, less exhausted days of making music for cash. We will do this until we can't.
And so we beat on, boats riding the current we were lucky to catch, keeping the past in our hearts, our eye on the future and gratitude on our tongues.
And one eye on the tip bucket.
