Week Three of the Tour: 5 hours if gorgeous driving to an Indie Bookstore/Cafe
I’m in the third week of my tour, which is one half invigorating, and one half stressful.
This week I’m playing all new cities and towns, in small venues I’ve wanted to play for years, which include some lengthy drives between gigs.
However, some long drives have been a great opportunity to see parts of Anerica: 5 hours between Cleveland to Harrisburg, but ut it was a gorgeous drive through the mountains and valleys of Pennsylvania. My friend Nate recommended a slightly longer route, and it was worth it. The clouds were casting shadows over the green hills and mountains as I traveled south on 22.
Playing at the Midtown Scholar was heavenly for this former English teacher. The Midtown is a well known, indie book store that features major folk shows on a larger stage in the middle of the cafe. It was fun to play where Ellis Paul and John Gorka have stood and sang.
Technology Musicians Fear, & the Tech They Fearlessly Use
As songwriters, musicians, and music creators, we live in a time of transition and chaos.
The revenue problem we face is simple: Musicians & songwriters are, collectively, discovering less and less people buying music in the traditional formats (CDs, downloads). (Vinyl collectors, see my footnote**)
The question we, as indie artists, ask ourselves is this: Can we make up the revenue once gained from limited pressings of CDs (say 1000, 2000, 4000 units) with other formats or revenue opportunities? (Streaming, monitizing ads, etc.)
We just don’t know.
But we do know this: While musicians might fear technology making culture’s buying habits change, musicians are using other technology, fearlessly.
For example, for my current tour (4-5 weeks on the road, 4000+ miles), I’ve used these tools, most of them free, to do all of the booking and planning myself:
- IndieontheMove.com – a venue database
- Couchsurfing – to find people willing to stay at their places
- Airbnb – to find people offering a room for a reasonable pric
- Priceline (app on my iPhone) – to find a deal on a hotel room
- Square – to accept credit cards for merch sales from my iPhone
- Google Docs – to create and share itineraries and spreadsheets
- my iPhone’s GPS & map- to navigate myself without worry
- iPhone camera & Instagram – to share photos
- iPhone camera & Youtube – to share videos on the fly
- a WordPress App on my iPhone – I’ve updated any part of my website from my phone
- Noisetrade.com – I shared a sampler of music of the songwriters I’d meet on the tour.
- iPhone’s regular apps- One day many months ago, I booked gigs while sitting at a coffee house, using nothing but my iPhone’s Wifi connection, cell phone, email, and iCal. No computer.
Honestly, I don’t even need to bring my laptop on tour. I can do anything I need from my phone, if I can handle the small screen.
Would musicians give up these new tools? I wouldn’t.
It’s difficult to give up the revenue we once had from CD sales, even if was a small revenue source; however, we need to remember that we are benefiting from the other advances. We don’t live in an”if this, than that” world.
It’s not simply a CD being replaced by streaming; it’s that the entire way we operate as musicians has changed.
Sadly, musicians and songwriters can’t expect to have their cake and eat it too. As we are creatively using the new tools, we also need to get creative with the way we will make up the revenue stream once had from CD sales and downloads.
* * Footnote * *
(Vinyl collectors, I’m inspired by you, but I’ve priced how expensive it is to do a pressing for a 7″, and it’s quite expensive. I doubt indie bands working hard for 100-1000 sales of anything a year are making much money on vinyl. Sure, Jack White might move 30,000 units, but how much is that local band in your hometown really moving at the cost ratio it takes to make a record? Vinyl is a great art form, but from a DIY business standpoint, it’s not very profitable. I also recognize some styles of music may lend to more of the audience being vinyl collectors.)
A Story about my Chemistry Professor
During my freshmen year at WMU, my Chemistry 100 teacher had to take a sabbatical because he was fighting cancer, and a new professor took over the course with a few weeks left in the semester.
The original professor was not only a great teacher, but approachable and nice. The new teacher was the very opposite.
I’ve thought often about the first–and only–conversation I had with the second professor before an exam. After class, I asked him, “Which problems in the book do you recommend I do before the exam?”
The new professor scoffed, and said, “All of them.”
“There are 200 problems in this chapter,” I commented. “Can you narrow that down?”
“Yes, do as many as you need to do to master the subject…” the professor replied. He then walked away.
I have thought about this conversation occasionally during my careers as a teacher and musician. At times I have chuckled about it.
Over the years I have realized a teacher who isn’t kindhearted and approachable isn’t actually a teacher. Simply a person who lectures to others. A vessel that spits out knowledge…
But not a teacher.
Did you watch last night’s Breaking Bad? Wow.
No spoilers here, just a personal statement and a literature reference. First, the statement: That was the most heartbreaking episode of Breaking Bad I’ve watched…
Now the literature reference:
The title of the show, if you bought it on iTunes, is “Ozymandias.” This title makes an English teacher jump up and down and scream, “Allusion!” (My former students will chuckle at my continual obsession with literature terms.)
Anyways, today I thought I’d reread the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelly. (Here’s a fun coincidence: I used this poem during first teaching lesson in my own classroom at Holly High School, in 2003 for World Literature seniors!) It’s a powerful message to anyone believing money or power matter.
* * *
“Ozymandias”
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
* * *
After rereading the poem again today, it was the first time I noticed how Shelley puts distance between us, the readers, and the very statue described. The speaker of the poem is retelling a story from an traveler. It’s not even a statue the speaker witnessed! Even the ruin is simply a telling!
That’s the less obvious Romanticism theme: The most powerful thing in humanity is a story; the sublime is found in passing down of words, as nature continues…
And Breaking Bad sure has its characters, and fans, retelling stories…
