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Okay, I figured I'd give this a shot and see what y'all know that I don't yet know.
I'm soon to be 34 years old, though I'm often told I look several years younger. My wife and I are professional musical performers, predominantly for elder care facilities such as nursing homes and assisted living residences. (She's 29, by the way.)
I play numerous instruments - piano/keyboard being my main instrument (I'm classically trained and could be accurately classified as a "virtuoso" on piano), and then also guitar, bass, drums, organ, accordion, etc. I'm "decent" at those other instruments.
I sing, and can cover a 3+ octave range. If I average my so-so opinion of my voice with the decidedly positive opinions I've gotten from listeners of all ages over the years, I could state with reasonable confidence that I'm at least "as good as" any singer out there, if not necessarily "obviously better than" the pack.
My wife is learning keyboard... at my hands of course. She also sings - predominantly as an alto. Most people believe she sounds really good, though she is also her own harshest critic.
We're nobody's idea of "Hollywood good looks" but we're nobody's idea of "ugly" either. We don't repulse people, but we won't be able to craft a musical career based upon our sex appeal like so many modern no-talent "musicians" do today... not that we'd want to even if we could.
Playing for elder care facilities is great, it's enjoyable, and it's appreciated. I'm going to do it until the day I die, and I'd bet my wife would too. The problems are that it doesn't pay much and it can be a pain to schedule shows - activities directors return phone messages less than 10% of the time, and my response rate for mailed advertisements has been only around 7%. We're looking to make more money doing what we love to do, essentially.
We're open to playing pretty much any type of show as long as it is not focused on people's alcohol-fueled self-destruction (as in, we won't play in bars) and as long as it does not violate our Christian principles nor put us at risk of legal action should we follow said principles (as in, for example, the day gay marriage becomes legal in our home state, we will cease playing for weddings immediately because refusal to play for a gay wedding could subject us to legal action in our wonderful modern America). Naturally, we don't run into any of those problems playing for the elderly at their various facilities.
We want to be able to play good music (as in, not the modern processed auto-tuned computerized garbage that is being passed off as music) for appreciative audiences in an atmosphere where we are not encouraging people to "sin" by playing what we play. To us, good music is stuff like old rock 'n' roll and country, and even some polkas. (Don't laugh. You'll never find a happier form of music than polka.)
We're open to pretty much anything - making CDs, for one thing - I'm working on one right now. The problem is that making an album, if you're going to do it through a studio, is horrifically expensive. We'd also do radio, concerts, you name it... anything that, as I said before, won't violate our principles. We'd travel the world if we could afford it, though we know no language other than English (unless you count my mediocre knowledge of Spanish). We're also open to writing and performing original songs - we already do, to an extent.
We are essentially old souls in young bodies. It's been said that we're the best there is, in terms of elder care facility entertainment... there are some places that will move heaven and earth to get us to come in if they know we'll be in the area or available at that time, even if we've only been there once before, and it's not unnecessary boasting to say so. I say that to state for the record that we have achieved a certain level of success thus far... meaning a precedent has theoretically been set, upon which we could build more success.
The problem is that we aren't making enough money doing what we do.
I fail to see why the two of us can't make a comfortable living as performing musicians. We love music, we're good at music, and we're "the best there is" in at least one entertainment arena (in the opinions of many). We don't smoke, drink, do drugs, nor live ostentatiously. Were we to become celebrities in any way, we wouldn't be the type of celebrities that people would grow to hate... because we don't do anything that's hate-worthy. We'd be sort of like Weird Al Yankovic. You never hear about him in the news because he doesn't do anything. Underneath the insane stage persona, he is (as far as I have been able to gather) as clean as a whistle. Everyone knows who he is but he never shows up in the tabloids because he never does anything that's scandalous (nor even anything that can be convoluted into sounding scandalous enough to sell magazines).
That'd be us. We'd be well-known but we wouldn't be hounded because our lives just aren't interesting enough to sell news media. We'd never be caught doing the "walk of shame" any morning because neither of us has any desire to be unfaithful to the other. We'd never be busted racing our cars for three reasons: 1) we don't consume intoxicants, 2) we try to stay safe, 3) no vehicle we'd ever own could do much at the stoplight challenge. We'd never have high-profile acrimony. We wouldn't buy $10,000,000 mansions in Beverly Hills... we can live just fine in a $200,000 house in the middle of nowhere on 100 acres and give the rest of the money away to the less fortunate if we have that much left over. We wouldn't end up with drunken-monster-looking mugshots plastered all over the Internet after being busted for some alcohol-fueled rampage because we never touch anything that can intoxicate.
Essentially, I see my wife and myself as being good people, and good musicians... if these processed-food musicians such as Justin Bieber and Britney Spears can make tens of millions of dollars every year, I would think there'd be a niche for us wherein we could make at least $100,000 every year (which isn't too much to ask for TWO working people - it's essentially $50,000 each) and not have to musically prostitute ourselves in any way. We don't aspire to making billions... just enough to live comfortably. We don't aspire to worldwide fame... the only use I have for fame is that people would actually listen to me when I talk. We just want to make a comfortable living doing what we love doing. We see little point in doing what so many other people do - which is fritter their lives away working at jobs that slowly wreck them emotionally and/or physically just to make a living.
I figure that, if we could break out of obscurity in a way that would take (rather than turning us into one-shot wonders like that "Pants On The Ground" guy), we could easily make this happen.
Any thoughts on how we can make this happen? (Please, no snide remarks. If you disapprove of our Christian principles and/or our choice of music, either put those feelings to the side in favor of being objective in your response or don't respond at all. If you don't have anything helpful to suggest, nor any intelligent and civil questions to ask, don't clutter up this thread.)
1. Make YouTube videos.
2. Get a professional website and blog (use WordPress.org, since you want to look professional)
3. Get a MySpace page.
4. Twitter and Facebook
5. Get a Tumblr (there are some wonderful inexpensive Tumblr themes for musicians. With Tumblr, you can be noticed quickly. You will have to put some effort though into visiting other Tumblrs and re-blogging other posts. But it's worth it.
6. Put up your YouTube videos, and links to your website, blog and MySpace page on your Tumblr, in addition to your Facebook and Twitter links. Tumblr is a lot of fun and it is easy to learn how to use it.
Most of the stuff above is free or lost-cost. It is worth using a professional looking theme for Tumblr and WordPress, but you don't need to spend a lot of money. Getting hosting for your website and blog doesn't have to cost much per month either.
If nothing else, at least do the YouTube videos and the Tumblr. It is so worth it. Once you learn about to do all of these things, they are easy to maintain.
There is a company in Portland, Oregon called CD Baby. They assist in making and distributing only independent artists not signed to a label. I have made a number of purchases from them.
After leaving feedback for one artist we started emailing for a time and she told me her story. She worked for a film company and was responsible for placing music into the film. She got up one day and said 'screw it, I can do this myself'. She pressed a CD and started hawking them on street corners, community fairs and bars she sang at. Eventually, she her music was picked up and placed in a number of television shows and movies, which is how I found her. She now has close to 7 CDs for sale on the site.
You can google their name for a list of different departments and how to contact them.
"I know that there was an anti-rock movement but I have never been able to understand it. The closest I've ever come in my own conclusions is that people were unusually stodgy back in the day and they saw any change away from what they were used to as being a bad thing."
Exactly, and I suppose young people today think about me the same way when I reject Rap, D&B, Metal, and such, from my perspective, wild, modern genres whose names I don't even know.
Your "clients" probably require that you know a certain repertoire of evergreens and standards. Songs they danced to in the 40s...
How old are you?
I never rejected rap... of course, rap has been popular for as long as I can remember... at least since the late 1980's when it really caught on. In the beginning, rap was fine. I grew up with Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, etc. Tone Loc was a bit edgy but there's a difference between his sexual innuendos and the constant barrage of obscenities coming from the mouths of most of today's popular rappers. Taken by itself, rap is fine... it's essentially poetry set to a beat. People have been reciting poetry to a beat for decades. It's the modern twist that the genre has taken, which bothers me.
R&B - same thing. I remember getting a Boyz II Men tape when I was a teenager. I thought they were great. You want to know how clueless I was back then? I didn't catch on to how "I'll Make Love To You" was ENTIRELY about sex. I figured it was just the title. It took years before I actually understood that they were singing "Throw your clothes on the floor" in the middle of that song! I could never figure out that "clothes" word... it started out as one of those incomprehensible words in a song, and there are many... I guess I never imagined that a song would talk so frankly about two people getting down and dirty! But even at that, I cannot recall anything about that song which inferred or implied in any obvious way that the two people in the story weren't married. Be that as it may, to the best of my knowledge, all of the other songs on the album were clean. These days, R&B is far worse than it ever was... though it still has a while to go to catch up with rap.
Even metal... when it started out in the late 1970's and early 1980's, almost all of the music was clean... it was just louder, more distorted, and often angrier-sounding than previous incarnations of hard rock. I'm referring to bands like Van Halen, Quiet Riot, etc. Metallica probably started the shock metal genre... I wouldn't know, because I haven't listened to anything by Metallica except the beginning of "Nothing Else Matters" so that I could arrange it for a student of mine.
My audiences these days like it when I know "standards" but you'd be very surprised. Both they, and the activities directors who book us, tend to say that the standards are overplayed. If I look back on my request list from the last 300 shows I've done, I'd bet that less than 10% of the requested songs could be considered "standards". By contrast, the audiences we play for seem to enjoy how we do things differently. That has set us apart. That has kept people wanting us back. Some people have remembered me / us for years after our last show at a particular place, if that much time has elapsed since the last show we were able to do at that place. I think they get bored with the standards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neuling
Well, I am very intolerant when it comes to diet. I won't even eat at the same table with people eating animals. Yes, they don't kill the animals, but they are killed in their name through the demand created, To me it is basically the same thing, like the difference between a hitman and the person hiring a hitman. But that's another topic
I see things from a different perspective but you are entitled to your opinion... and I see no need to lie about it in order to please people. That's one thing I don't want to do as a musician / entertainer. I don't want to lie about who I am in any way, whether through word or deed, in order to "make it". Remember that movie "That Thing You Do"? Remember the part where Tom Hanks' character (the record label representative) was going back and forth with "Jimmy", the leader of the band, about what songs would be recorded? Hanks said words to the effect of "You have a contract with us, and that contract says that you're going to record what we want you to record. And we want you to record songs that sound like [this], not this lover's lament crap that you've been writing". "Jimmy" then quit, because he wouldn't tolerate his artistic freedom being squelched like that.
That's the main reason why I never went on "American Idol" in spite of the numerous suggestions of varying levels of strength that I received from many people back when I was still young enough to go on the show. I had read about what the winner receives and decided that I didn't want it, even if I could actually win the show (which I doubted, but hey, any decent musician is generally going to be his own harshest critic, so who knows). I'd read about the recording contract that you won, its terms and conditions, etc... and I didn't want any part of that. If I'm doing the singing and the playing, and especially if I'm writing the songs, I call the shots. If you want to call the shots, you learn how to sing and play as well as I can and then you can do whatever you want. Nobody is going to manipulate me like a marionette.
Honestly, I think that manipulation in the world of entertainment, and the fact that it causes celebrities to have to be far different from the way they truly are in order to make their living, is the main cause of the rampant drug abuse problem among celebrities. Ostensibly, one would look at these super-rich celebrities who have throngs of adoring fans and think "WHY in the WORLD do they need to use DRUGS?! They have EVERYTHING! They have enough money to buy anything they could possibly need. If they are overworked, they have enough money to be able to take as much time off as they want - up to and including the rest of their lives. They'll never be rejected by a potential romantic partner due to inability to provide for that person. WHY must they be [on drugs, alcoholics, criminals, etc]?!?!?!?!?!" The only logical answer to that question is because, in spite of their fame and fortune, they're not happy.
For a perfect counterexample to that statement, I refer you again to Weird Al Yankovic. As far as I know, Yankovic is an honest-to-goodness genius. He got his start on the Dr. Demento radio show having done a song that he created - a re-wording of "Another One Bites The Dust" which he called "Another One Rides The Bus". He has essentially always been able to do what he wanted to do... and to hell with anyone who didn't like it. He's never had a number one hit, he's always been sort of a niche artist... but he gets to do what he wants to do... and as such he never feels that disconnect between profession and personality which tends to make people abuse substances. No, I don't know much about the guy. I know far more about Lindsay Lohan's exploits than Weird Al's... despite how I think Lindsay Lohan is trash and Weird Al is awesome. Why do I know so much about Lindsay Lohan and so little about Weird Al? Because Lindsay Lohan is constantly in the news for the results of her idiocy... and Weird Al is never in the news for anything, again because he never does anything that creates a scandal that people will pay money to follow!
That's the type of artist I want to be. I want to do things my way, and make a reasonable living doing so. As I said before, I'm talented enough and capable enough... and I don't need to make anywhere near what these big-name celebrities make. Just enough for a tidy living. Being wealthy has its bad points too... you become a mark for criminals, and you also get hit up by people less fortunate than you are on a regular basis. It's a form of "Lottery Winner's Syndrome", for sure. I'd bet I would find out exactly how many relatives I had if I suddenly came into a lot of money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewJerseyMemories
1. Make YouTube videos.
2. Get a professional website and blog (use WordPress.org, since you want to look professional)
3. Get a MySpace page.
4. Twitter and Facebook
5. Get a Tumblr (there are some wonderful inexpensive Tumblr themes for musicians. With Tumblr, you can be noticed quickly. You will have to put some effort though into visiting other Tumblrs and re-blogging other posts. But it's worth it.
6. Put up your YouTube videos, and links to your website, blog and MySpace page on your Tumblr, in addition to your Facebook and Twitter links. Tumblr is a lot of fun and it is easy to learn how to use it.
Most of the stuff above is free or lost-cost. It is worth using a professional looking theme for Tumblr and WordPress, but you don't need to spend a lot of money. Getting hosting for your website and blog doesn't have to cost much per month either.
If nothing else, at least do the YouTube videos and the Tumblr. It is so worth it. Once you learn about to do all of these things, they are easy to maintain.
Yuck... social media. I don't like social media... it seems too hipster-ish and/or modern-kid-ish.
That being said, I do have some crude-quality videos on YouTube. I have to be careful though... copyright laws, and all... and even the one original song I have posted has intentional peculiarities in it because I don't want anyone copying it. That's the problem with YouTube... if I write a really good song and I don't have a copyright on it (or at least proof that I did the song first), someone else could take it and make lots of money from it, and I would be left without the royalties due me for my creation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thursday007
There is a company in Portland, Oregon called CD Baby. They assist in making and distributing only independent artists not signed to a label. I have made a number of purchases from them.
After leaving feedback for one artist we started emailing for a time and she told me her story. She worked for a film company and was responsible for placing music into the film. She got up one day and said 'screw it, I can do this myself'. She pressed a CD and started hawking them on street corners, community fairs and bars she sang at. Eventually, she her music was picked up and placed in a number of television shows and movies, which is how I found her. She now has close to 7 CDs for sale on the site.
You can google their name for a list of different departments and how to contact them.
I'll look into that. It sounds promising. At the very least, my audiences have been on me for months about making a CD, so I'm working on that at the present time.
Well, I am much more focused and specialized in terms of music, most genres are simply not on my radar, nor are most songs as I only like songs that are special. I hate all things mediocre. I only listen to music that touches me, and I have a very low threshold for getting irritated. So Metal etc. is completely taboo for me...
Unlike you I don't have to play music for other people, so I can afford to be this picky
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