• If you say yes to something, do it 100%. Don’t justify not putting in the work because you don’t think you’re making enough money. If you can’t take the time to nail it, say no to the gig.

• You will get judged by how closely you follow what the usual guy does. Don’t try and reinvent the music unless the MD specifically tells you to get creative.

• The artist or band you’re subbing in with has spent decades getting to where they are. They deserve to have someone care as much about their music as they do.

• You won’t get everything perfectly locked the first time you sub in, so be open to criticism and ask what needs to be better the next time. Don’t pretend you nailed everything if you missed stuff.

• Swagger/confidence is key. Practice to the point where you can be outwardly confident onstage.

• Your reputation as a musician is judged based on what level you can show up to every gig with, not just your regular gig. If you are great with your usual artist or band but flounder every time you do anything else, people who can move your career forward will notice.

• If someone has hired you to play with them, you are already good enough and belong on that stage. Act/prepare accordingly.

Goal type #2 is about setting massive, seemingly unattainable goals that force us to change how we work. I want to be making 1 million a year by the end of the next 5 years. I want to be on tour with an A-list artist by X date. I want to own my own recording studio in the next 2 years.

Goal type #1 is useful for overcoming small challenges, teaching ourselves how to stick with something, and for building self esteem.

Goal type #2 is useful for changing how we fundamentally work and function. If we set a big goal that’s impossible to achieve doing what we currently do, we have to change what we do to achieve it. If the goal is attractive enough, we might just make the change.

Either goal type by itself is useful, but when you stack both together with consistency, some really amazing things are possible.

Acoustic resonance is when the soundboard in the piano sympathetically vibrates with a sound wave. Every piano resonates at a different frequency, based on the texture of the soundboard, the shape of the piano, and other factors.

An obvious parallel between humans and resonant pianos: each of us “vibrate” and respond to a different frequency. And the only way to find that frequency is to try out a lot of different pitches.

Maybe you played a gig over the weekend. Or maybe Monday is your first day home from a four day tour (a common pattern in Nashville). Or Monday is the start of your weekend because you don’t have a session until Wednesday.

As musicians, our schedules are always a little (or a lot) chaotic, but it also gives us flexibility to decide what we do, and when.

The problem with schedule is also the gift: we get to decide when Friday is. Just don’t make the mistake of deciding every day is a Monday.

There’s also perks like staying in 5 star hotels in Mexico, or flying to Hawaii for gigs that includes lots of paid time relaxing on the beach. It’s hard work, and a lot is expected musically and physically. But I feel very spoiled at a lot of the shows.

A friend asked how to get a gig like that. So here’s how to land a consistent spot (without having a current member step down, which is rare for obvious reasons):

• Find a small cover band that’s playing some weddings occasionally, who also has good management and a good band culture.

• Ride in a van and trailer around the country for about 6 years with all of them.

• Invest in each other’s lives to the point where you feel like you’re playing shows with your family.

• Help with load in and load out. Troubleshoot the sound system. Stay in kinda sub-par hotels. Deal with strange/difficult gigs for not a ton of money for a long, long time.

• Get lucky and have the leaders in the group start pursuing high end wedding and corporate work, and help build a team around that goal.

• Spend 4-5 years going through the stress and work of transitioning to luxury entertainment.

I never planned on joining a cover band. I did it because I needed money, something to fill the gaps in my touring schedule, and because I wanted to work with other amazing musicians. Along the way I’ve found some of my best friends and had some of the best musical experiences of my career.

The best time to join the right cover band (or any other band) is 10 years ago. The second best time is today.

Once all the wires were run and everything set, both of them sat down at the back of the control room on the couch.

One brought out a phone and started scrolling. The other quietly watched the entire time as we recorded. He stayed locked in for the entire 8 hour session, listening, proactively solving problems before they were problems, and watching the main engineer the whole time.

The other intern would pitch in when a need popped up, but was usually too distracted to see problems before they became problems.

No idea how either’s career will turn out, but I would lay money on who gets called back next time.

List #1:

• There’s no money in the arts

• I need a record label’s backing before I start making art

• I have too many obligations to devote the time to creating

• The tools/process is too expensive

• I don’t have the right connections

• I don’t have a good enough support system

List #2:

• I’m afraid I’m not going to be good enough

• I’m afraid I’ll fail

• I’m afraid when I finish what I make, no one will care

• I’m overwhelmed at starting something

• I’m not smart enough to do this

• I’m worried when I do my best work, I’ll find out I’m actually average

The second list is embarrassing to say aloud to colleagues (let alone ourselves). So we usually use list #1 to give ourselves reasons not to overcome the fears in list #2.

Mise en place is easy to miss when it’s done well, and painfully obvious when it’s done poorly or not at all.

Ironically, I figured out that I had this many chorus effect plugins while I was thinking about buying another chorus effect.

What I really needed wasn’t a new effect plugin. What I needed was someone to say “these are all the chorus effects out there, and this is what they sound like”.

Or even more helpful, having one plugin company create a product that has all of the more important chorus types available in one plugin. Then their pitch is easy. “Just buy this, and you never have to hunt through plugin lists for the right chorus ever again”.

If you make Art, your job is to be your own Curator to your audience. Responsible curation is what allows us to build a reputation, trust with an audience, and gives us the best shot at being remembered when someone needs what we make. Our pitch should be “If you’re looking for this specific feeling and this specific experience, that’s what you’ll always get with my art”.

And then we need to say it again and again for the rest of our careers.

It’s easy to argue that we should be getting paid. We’ve spent several years learning how to drive and take tests to qualify to become a licensed driver.

We pay an extravagant amount of money in gas, car payments, taxes, tolls, and maintenance. And then on top of that, those of us in the western world are spending almost 28 hours in a car each month, 100% for free. That’s the equivalent to about 20% of each work week, sitting in a car.

The logic would seem to say, if I show up to your business, event, or job, I should be paid for my expertise in driving and ongoing driving costs.

Artists face the same dilemma: practice takes hours of time a week. Equipment and supplies costs thousands of dollars to buy. It took 15 years of work to get to a high level of expertise at making art. How do you charge for that?

The problem is, the client can’t see 15 years of hard work (and usually they don’t see how long your commute was, either). They can only see the art you make, and how much it does or doesn’t move them.

Nobody wants to pay for drive time. Everyone wants to pay for something that excites them, emotionally engages with them, and brings beauty to their world.

This time, the lead mechanic cleaned my windshield with a squeegee while I waited. For whatever reason, he wasn’t super thorough, and left streaks across my windshield. A simple mistake, but a very noticeable one as I squinted through the smears on the way home.

Logically, how well a mechanic cleans a windshield should have no effect on how well he does his job.

He’s not a cleaner, he’s a mechanic. Cleaning the window was a “low priority” job. He was probably distracted by something far more important with my oil while he was cleaning.

And yet as illogical as it is, I can’t help wonder about if the rest of the oil change was done correctly. Because there’s a stripe of dirt across my windshield to plant that tiny seed of doubt.

• Studio time was super expensive. It usually cost $60-$150 an hour in 1970’s money ($515 to $1,218 per hour in today’s money)

• It was nearly impossible to get nationwide distribution without the help of a record label

• To reach and engage with fans meant painstakingly writing and mailing individual letters

• The only way people could find out about you was through word of mouth, seeing you perform in their town, or finding you randomly in a record store or on the radio (after you’d already gotten picked)

Then the world changed, and suddenly you could pick yourself.

• From about 1996 on, you could buy a computer and audio interface (or one of these, which my dad owned) and make as many recordings as you wanted

• From about 2001 on (the birth of iTunes) you could distribute your music worldwide with the push of a button

• Starting around 2004 with the birth of the myspace social media era, you could engage and find new fans from your computer

The really insane part of this equation? Most musicians and artists, decades after all the barriers to making music and connecting with fans came down, still are waiting to get picked before they devote themselves to making the art.

Most musicians, engineers, and artists have one of the below situations going:

• They have a spouse or partner who works a good job, which allows them the time and resources to pursue their art

• They work a day job that doesn’t require a lot of them, and spend as much time as possible on their art

• They work a job that is in the music industry, but a large chunk of their day doesn’t involve actually making art

• They make money from their art, but the bulk of their income comes from investments and partnerships both inside and outside the music industry (this includes almost all top artists)

There’s some big upsides to this model:

• It takes the pressure off of art financially, since we’re not expecting it to pay all the bills

• We don’t have to feel imposter syndrome when we don’t get all our money from art, since nobody gets all their money from art

• Since we don’t have to push our art to pay for everything, we can be more choosy about picking what we work on

• We can build a long term career strategy that starts with the assumption that we need non-music revenue streams in order to keep making music

(I know there’s more, drop a comment if you think of other upsides)

• Raising children

• Taking care of elderly parents

• Having pets

• Going to church, or attending a weekly religious function

• Tithing

• Mentoring

• Volunteering

• Caring for a disabled loved one

And, of course:

• Choosing a career in the arts

The great lie we’ve been fed by an out of control, economy-first world is that for something to be worthwhile, it has to generate money.

And musicians unconsciously fall into that pattern of thinking like everyone else. If I buy this piece of gear, how much money can I generate with it? If I invest in an ad campaign for my latest record, will it allow me to recoup the money I spent in ticket sales?

This way of thinking splits are attention between two opposing metrics:

1. How do I create the best art I can make?

2. How can I invest well so I can see a monetary return on my investment?

When art inevitably doesn’t return the investment of time and money that we’ve made (because it was never fundamentally designed to do that), we get discouraged and frustrated. Some quit, others become jaded.

The only two questions we should be focused on is:

1. How do I create the best art I can make?

2. How do I make enough money overall so I can keep making that art, while keeping up my financial commitments?

Warren’s a talented singer/songwriter and amazing communicator. He also comes from a long line of farmers and sharecroppers, who no matter how tired they were, got up every morning well before dawn to put in 10-12 hours of hard, manual labor.

Warren puts the same tradition of sweat equity into making music. I’ve gotten an email every week from him. He posts something meaningful and fun on his instagram every single day. He writes constantly. Over years and years of repeating this routine, he’s built a loyal group of people that not only listen to what he’s making, but support him financially so he can keep it up.

If you’re in music, there will be hundreds if not thousands of musicians who will be at least as talented as you are. But there will be few that will have the ability to keep putting out good work, day after day, year after year.

Then we get sidetracked somewhere in the journey with the way we’re perceived, our own egoic tendencies, with ambitious ideas about the future, with hurt from the way the industry works, with paying the bills, etc.

But if we can resist the temptation to focus on the distraction, all we’re left with is the deep love that started us down this path in the beginning.

The job of every musician is to chase the discipline of following that deep love each day, and to only let the distractions in as briefly as possible.

Most musicians, engineers, and artists have one of the below situations going:

• They have a spouse or partner who works a good job, which allows them the time and resources to pursue their art

• They work a day job that doesn’t require a lot of them, and spend as much time as possible on their art

• They work a job that is in the music industry, but a large chunk of their day doesn’t involve actually making art

• They make money from their art, but the bulk of their income comes from investments and partnerships both inside and outside the music industry (this includes almost all top artists)

There’s some big upsides to this model:

• It takes the pressure off of art financially, since we’re not expecting it to pay all the bills

• We don’t have to feel imposter syndrome when we don’t get all our money from art, since nobody gets all their money from art

• Since we don’t have to push our art to pay for everything, we can be more choosy about picking what we work on

• We can build a long term career strategy that starts with the assumption that we need non-music revenue streams in order to keep making music

(I know there’s more, drop a comment if you think of other upsides)

Most musicians do just enough musically to get the gig, and then stop advancing.

I play in a high end corporate party band, and there’s a familiar pattern to most people subbing into the band:

1. The first show they know about 80%-90% of the material, but are tentative and need coaching to get through the set
   

2. Shows 2-3 they lock in a little more to the point where they feel comfortable playing
   

3. From show 4 on, there’s very little in the way of growth- most musicians feel they’ve locked in enough, and seem to let off the gas.

My friend Gabe is the exception. When we first started playing together 9 years ago, he was a solid bassist with a lot of musicality.

In the last 9 years, he’s worked every week to get just a little better at bass. Each week he was trying to add a new little “thing” into the set, trying some new approach to a song, honing some new technique.

Today, he’s one of the best bass players I’ve ever played with, and the quality of the group drops significantly when he has to sub out. He’s bought as much job security as is possible to buy as a bassist (and MD).

Getting the gig is great and important. But the place where you can grow the most is after you’ve settled into the show.

The principle works with music, too. When you prepare for a gig or recording session, over prepare. If you have a gig at a local open mic night with an artist, prepare like you’re getting ready for a national tour. If you have a recording session for a less than talented artist that isn’t paying great, prepare like you’re walking into the studio with your childhood musical idol.

It’s harder, but in the end it’s the easiest way to keep growing in your career. And it’s a lot more fun than doing just barely enough.

This is when we’re tempted to do the bare minimum, complain, and show up with a bad or indifferent attitude.

If you’re a career musician, there’s really only two options: all in, or not at all.

Our job is to always show up as the best version of who we can be artistically to every gig, regardless of if we’re being fairly compensated or not.

There’s many reasons why all in is the only option, but maybe the most practical reason is all future gigs come from current gigs. People hire people who are crushing their current gig, not limping along.

Added bonus: when you practice going all in on everything you say yes to, you get really good at going all in. So when the right gigs come along, you know how to get into gear quickly.

. . .

Also, if you’re a musician and you consistently find yourself not being able to go all in on gigs, the answer is probably to say no to the things you can’t or won’t go all in on, to free up time and energy.