I remember a time in the not too distant past that me making money as a musician was a rare event. I was lucky to break even after buying strings and the occasional instrument cable. In the less than four years since then, I have made leaps and bounds in playing, band leading, and networking. I have put hours and hours of work into learning how to treat my music career as a business. And over the last three years, it has really started to pay off. For instance, I have made more money in the last two weeks than I used to all year…No exaggeration. Here’s the story.
In my teens, I viewed success as a musician as the number of bands I could be a member of and how many RHCP tunes I could play. As I approached my 20s and got into jazz, I learned to focus on one band (two at the max) but still based my idea of success on that of the band. In my mid 20s, I started my own band, moved completely away from rock n roll and went balls-to-the-wall jazzer. I had stopped doing any gigs outside of jazz (minus a stint with a hip hop group in ’04). Then, in 2008, I got a call from this guy who needed a bassist for a country group that played every Saturday night in a little bar about thirty miles away. I thought about it and ended up taking the gig. This kind of lit a fire under me to start freelancing again.
Since then, I have been fairly busy playing double and electric bass in pretty much every genre you can think of. I have a steady stream of pop/rock gigs, some classical and jazz gigs. I guess the point of my rambling is to not let genres and bands hold you back. The music is all around and somebody’s gotta play it.
