The Jimmy Bruno Thread

[GuyBoden]

Another writer here, and I wouldn't disagree. Furthermore - in novels especially - quantity over quality has become the norm. And further to that, if you're a consumer of fiction there's an increasing chance that you'll buy something that isn't even written by a human.

Derek

Unfortunately for new writers, there are a lot of older books (40+ years), that are well written, have good plots, that I've never read, so I am reading them.

[pamosmusic]

Yeah the only places paying anything at all resembling real rates for short stories accept in the neighborhood of 1% of their submissions if they accept unagented submissions at all.

There are places paying $25 honorarium that take less than 5% of submissions.

I understand a lot of submissions of things like that are really bad (formatted poorly, in a dumb font, riddled with errors) but even if you assume that’s half of everything they get, it’s a brutal market.

[digger]

Unfortunately for new writers, there are a lot of older books (40+ years), that are well written, have good plots, that I've never read, so I am reading them.

I'm the same. But I'm the same with music, too - so despite being a writer and a musician my buying habits(*) don't support my fellow creative types.

(*) Actually my buying habits are simply not to buy anything. I've enough books and music already to last me the rest of my life.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

But not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur--let alone a multi-skillset engineer/manufacturer/entrepreneur/business manager--even if they have the necessary intellectual chops. Nor do the talents and skills that go into becoming a competent musician necessarily overlap with those that produce successful inventors or business owners.

That's certainly all true, except that anyone who has a band is an entrepreneur - we just don't think of ourselves that way and we don't impart students with that feeling and belief. Those young musicians now studying at places like Berklee who just want a career playing their instruments are in for a rude awakening - it's not likely to happen for all but a tiny few. The only way to incorporate playing into a viable long term career now and in the future is to embed your playing in a broader context that has a viable business model. The odds that a fresh Berklee grad will be the next Benson are about the same as the odds that a high school basketball star will be the next Kobe.

The talents that make one a competent musician include many that translate directly to successful business practices. Start with the ability to improvise and to create something new from or around old chestnuts. We listen to the space between the notes and we hear things that haven't yet been played. We (at least many of us) learn to work with others as a team and to leverage each others' skills into a collective that's far more than the sum of its parts. We use our imaginations well. We organize and guide groups of individuals into working units. Succssful band leaders use skills in HR, marketing, finance, logistics etc etc. We even make demos and PR kits.

This defines an entrepreneur. Selling ourselves short is the biggest failing of musicians. Not reaching beyond our perceived grasp is #2, and not wanting to be bothered with the rigors of plotting your own path is #3. Musicians have these skills and use them every day without even thinking about them. Let's use them to forge a new future for ourselves in the music industry. If we don't, Berklee et al will soon dwindle and die. This is not fear mongering - it's reality. We lost University of the Arts in Philly last year, which was a serious blow to many many students and faculty as well as the community. If job opportunities for grads continue to disappear, it'll be a bleak world for those who see making music as their calling.

[AllanAllen]

Yeah, as soon as you take the music and play it in front of people or record it, it becomes a product and the musician becomes an entrepreneur.

[Cunamara]

Living in a household in the 60's whose income wasn't much more than that,I can say you would be surprised how far it went.These guys that use these inflation calculators on things today to say" see it's not more expensive to live today" is a bunch of nonsense.

I was born in 1959 and when I was a kid our family lived on just my dad's income. My mom's grocery budget was $20 a week and she made it work; we never went hungry. They bought a house, had a car, we were able to take vacations and they sent me to Catholic school from seventh grade on. You can do an inflation calculator on all that but I don't think that captures the actual change in buying power.

For things like consumer electronics, things like TVs today are much cheaper than TVs were 50 years ago as well as being dramatically better. In absolute dollars, not adjusted for inflation, I paid twice as much for my first computer in 1986 than I did for my new laptop at Christmas time- but the laptop is probably 1000 times more powerful than my first Mac 512Ke. I had a Palm III nearly 20 years ago that had basically the same specs as my first computer and I think I paid $179 for it.

For housing, on the other hand, buying power is severely eroded (whether for rental or ownership) and inflation calculators don't remotely capture that. My parents bought their house in 1957; when I sold it in 2014 after my mother died, I got 16 times as much for it as they paid. I bought my house in 1993; to make the same gain in value I would have to sell it for $1,274,000 which seems unlikely to be achievable for a 1908 2br/1ba house.

[RLetson]

[QUOTE=nevershouldhavesoldit;1394817] That's certainly all true, except that anyone who has a band is an entrepreneur - we just don't think of ourselves that way and we don't impart students with that feeling and belief.
. . .
The talents that make one a competent musician include many that translate directly to successful business practices. . . . We (at least many of us) learn to work with others as a team and to leverage each others' skills into a collective that's far more than the sum of its parts. We use our imaginations well. We organize and guide groups of individuals into working units. Succssful band leaders use skills in HR, marketing, finance, logistics etc etc. We even make demos and PR kits.
. . .
This defines an entrepreneur. [ /QUOTE]

So, yes, every self-employed person needs some "entrepreneurial" skills. And yet.

I take my wife as an example of an artist who certainly has the intellectual and organizational horsepower to do all the marketing and general overhead labor required to organize an economically viable writing gig--she has, after all, run an academic career for more than 50 years. But those are not activities on which she wants to expend her energies. She cares about teaching literature and writing fiction, not promoting, running a platform, hustling for reviews, organizing readings at which to peddle her wares, and the rest of the stuff that self-publishing writers have to wrangle. Just getting stories out for consideration is quite enough overhead, thank you. And even that isn't writing.

Fortunately, the university environment not only provides her with a living wage and good benefits but takes care of the least academic part of the academic life, so she can put her teaching efforts into actually teaching. (At least, when she's not attending committee meetings or filling out forms or wading through mandatory on-line training sessions on workplace safety or how not to be a bigot.)

If this discussion is about how to make a living as a musician (or writer or actor or other kind of artist), that's one thing. My understanding is that being a professional musician, etc., has always been a hard row to hoe--"starving artist" isn't a cliche for nothing. Shakespeare died a well-off man (part owner of a theatre), but Stephen Foster died broke. Edgar Allan Poe died in the gutter. Sometimes the hustle works, and sometimes it doesn't. But that's indepedent of what drives the making of art. (Unless, of course, you're Thomas Kinkade or Walter Keane--and Keane was a fraud who ripped off his wife's work.)

[Cunamara]

That's certainly all true, except that anyone who has a band is an entrepreneur - we just don't think of ourselves that way and we don't impart students with that feeling and belief. Those young musicians now studying at places like Berklee who just want a career playing their instruments are in for a rude awakening - it's not likely to happen for all but a tiny few. The only way to incorporate playing into a viable long term career now and in the future is to embed your playing in a broader context that has a viable business model. The odds that a fresh Berklee grad will be the next Benson are about the same as the odds that a high school basketball star will be the next Kobe.

In any field, the cream of the crop is the cream of the crop. It is the far tail end of the bell curve. And it is human nature to estimate that we are much farther up the curve than we really are. In my case, I can hear it by listening to recordings of myself and then listening to recordings of, say, Peter Bernstein. I am much closer to the mean than I am to Pete's end of the spectrum. Whenever I think my playing is coming along nicely, I just listen to Pete and that brings me back to reality.

The talents that make one a competent musician include many that translate directly to successful business practices. Start with the ability to improvise and to create something new from or around old chestnuts. We listen to the space between the notes and we hear things that haven't yet been played. We (at least many of us) learn to work with others as a team and to leverage each others' skills into a collective that's far more than the sum of its parts. We use our imaginations well. We organize and guide groups of individuals into working units. Succssful band leaders use skills in HR, marketing, finance, logistics etc etc. We even make demos and PR kits.

Sure! To go back to Pete or any of the other successful (relatively speaking) jazz guitarist like Jonathan Kreisberg or Pasquale Grasso or Frank Vignola. All of these guys have multiple irons in multiple fires. They're not at home waiting for somebody to call them to play a gig, they're out actively seeking that work. And they teach individual students, they teach in schools, they do music camps, etc. And they can all tell you who gave them a leg up when they were first starting out as professionals. For Peter Bernstein, for example, has said that Jimmy Cobb was one of those folks for him and I think Brad Mehldau; Cobb met them when he was teaching at their school, if I remember correctly. Gotta look for those opportunities.

Our former next door neighbor is a jazz singer and is one of the more successful ones in the Twin Cities; we had a discussion about this and she was of the opinion that your offstage work is, in terms of monetary success, more important than your onstage work. You have to cultivate relationships with musicians, with club owners, with studios, with record companies. You have to learn how to do grant funding. You have to be able to generate an idea for recording projects and for gig projects. This is a full-time job; she said she makes more as a musician than she did at her day job prior to that, which I am delighted by because she's a wonderful singer and a wonderful person.

I think in the "Universal Mind of Bill Evans" movie, he talks about having come to New York City to play jazz and basically being in his apartment practicing and figuring that if he got good enough, people would call him for gigs. It does seem to have worked out for him, but all in all I think it was terrible career advice. Being a lonely musician working away in your practice room for 12 hours a day is a great recipe for being a lonely musician working away in your practice room for 12 hours a day. if you've actually got skills and chops, you have to find a way to meet musicians and get known so that you will be invited to play gigs. Taking some lessons from well-known, established musicians can be one way to do that. Jam sessions or sit in sessions, if there are any, can be another option.

This defines an entrepreneur. Selling ourselves short is the biggest failing of musicians. Not reaching beyond our perceived grasp is #2, and not wanting to be bothered with the rigors of plotting your own path is #3. Musicians have these skills and use them every day without even thinking about them. Let's use them to forge a new future for ourselves in the music industry. If we don't, Berklee et al will soon dwindle and die. This is not fear mongering - it's reality. We lost University of the Arts in Philly last year, which was a serious blow to many many students and faculty as well as the community. If job opportunities for grads continue to disappear, it'll be a bleak world for those who see making music as their calling.

I wish I could remember who talked about this in an interview; it was a well-known jazz guitarist. His dad took him to Berkelee to start his first year there; when they were checking into their room in the hotel, they mentioned that he was starting at Berkelee the next day. The bellhop brightened up and said "Great! That's a fantastic school! That's where I got my music degree."

We lost a music school here in the Twin Cities which went out of business abruptly basically overnight locking the doors and sending messages to the staff and students that they were no longer going concern. People who were just months from graduation with their degrees were screwed. Teachers were screwed.

And it's not just music. I am a licensed psychologist by trade; we had one of the main graduate schools here in the Twin Cities go belly up just as abruptly. Students and teachers got an email that basically said "don't come in tomorrow, we're closed. Good luck." Again, students who had put in four or five years of graduate school at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars just left flapping in the wind. This in the midst of a severe shortage of mental health professionals in America.

[yebdox]

That's certainly all true, except that anyone who has a band is an entrepreneur - we just don't think of ourselves that way and we don't impart students with that feeling and belief. Those young musicians now studying at places like Berklee who just want a career playing their instruments are in for a rude awakening - it's not likely to happen for all but a tiny few. The only way to incorporate playing into a viable long term career now and in the future is to embed your playing in a broader context that has a viable business model. The odds that a fresh Berklee grad will be the next Benson are about the same as the odds that a high school basketball star will be the next Kobe.

The talents that make one a competent musician include many that translate directly to successful business practices. Start with the ability to improvise and to create something new from or around old chestnuts. We listen to the space between the notes and we hear things that haven't yet been played. We (at least many of us) learn to work with others as a team and to leverage each others' skills into a collective that's far more than the sum of its parts. We use our imaginations well. We organize and guide groups of individuals into working units. Succssful band leaders use skills in HR, marketing, finance, logistics etc etc. We even make demos and PR kits.

This defines an entrepreneur. Selling ourselves short is the biggest failing of musicians. Not reaching beyond our perceived grasp is #2, and not wanting to be bothered with the rigors of plotting your own path is #3. Musicians have these skills and use them every day without even thinking about them. Let's use them to forge a new future for ourselves in the music industry. If we don't, Berklee et al will soon dwindle and die. This is not fear mongering - it's reality. We lost University of the Arts in Philly last year, which was a serious blow to many many students and faculty as well as the community. If job opportunities for grads continue to disappear, it'll be a bleak world for those who see making music as their calling.

Just a note of appreciation for your depth of knowledge, kindness and erudition, Never. Always appreciate reading your posts and your obvious commitment to a life of virtue. Thanks for being here!

[Doctor Jeff]

In any field, the cream of the crop is the cream of the crop. It is the far tail end of the bell curve. And it is human nature to estimate that we are much farther up the curve than we really are. In my case, I can hear it by listening to recordings of myself and then listening to recordings of, say, Peter Bernstein. I am much closer to the mean than I am to Pete's end of the spectrum. Whenever I think my playing is coming along nicely, I just listen to Pete and that brings me back to reality.



Sure! To go back to Pete or any of the other successful (relatively speaking) jazz guitarist like Jonathan Kreisberg or Pasquale Grasso or Frank Vignola. All of these guys have multiple irons in multiple fires. They're not at home waiting for somebody to call them to play a gig, they're out actively seeking that work. And they teach individual students, they teach in schools, they do music camps, etc. And they can all tell you who gave them a leg up when they were first starting out as professionals. For Peter Bernstein, for example, has said that Jimmy Cobb was one of those folks for him and I think Brad Mehldau; Cobb met them when he was teaching at their school, if I remember correctly. Gotta look for those opportunities.

Our former next door neighbor is a jazz singer and is one of the more successful ones in the Twin Cities; we had a discussion about this and she was of the opinion that your offstage work is, in terms of monetary success, more important than your onstage work. You have to cultivate relationships with musicians, with club owners, with studios, with record companies. You have to learn how to do grant funding. You have to be able to generate an idea for recording projects and for gig projects. This is a full-time job; she said she makes more as a musician than she did at her day job prior to that, which I am delighted by because she's a wonderful singer and a wonderful person.

I think in the "Universal Mind of Bill Evans" movie, he talks about having come to New York City to play jazz and basically being in his apartment practicing and figuring that if he got good enough, people would call him for gigs. It does seem to have worked out for him, but all in all I think it was terrible career advice. Being a lonely musician working away in your practice room for 12 hours a day is a great recipe for being a lonely musician working away in your practice room for 12 hours a day. if you've actually got skills and chops, you have to find a way to meet musicians and get known so that you will be invited to play gigs. Taking some lessons from well-known, established musicians can be one way to do that. Jam sessions or sit in sessions, if there are any, can be another option.



I wish I could remember who talked about this in an interview; it was a well-known jazz guitarist. His dad took him to Berkelee to start his first year there; when they were checking into their room in the hotel, they mentioned that he was starting at Berkelee the next day. The bellhop brightened up and said "Great! That's a fantastic school! That's where I got my music degree."

We lost a music school here in the Twin Cities which went out of business abruptly basically overnight locking the doors and sending messages to the staff and students that they were no longer going concern. People who were just months from graduation with their degrees were screwed. Teachers were screwed.

And it's not just music. I am a licensed psychologist by trade; we had one of the main graduate schools here in the Twin Cities go belly up just as abruptly. Students and teachers got an email that basically said "don't come in tomorrow, we're closed. Good luck." Again, students who had put in four or five years of graduate school at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars just left flapping in the wind. This in the midst of a severe shortage of mental health professionals in America.

Thanks for your insights.

My daughter is being considered for a post-doc in clinical psychology in the Twin Cities right now—waiting to hear from them. She is currently doing her internship in Charleston, WV. If I understand correctly, she said that in order to get licensed in Minnesota you had to do a post-doc there.

Having grown up next door in Wisconsin, she and her fiancée would undoubtedly like it there. Her fallback is a clinical position in Charleston, where they really enjoy the tremendous opportunity for outdoor activities and find the local culture “interesting.”

(sorry for derailing the thread!)

[AdroitMage]

So in your all-knowing estimations, how much or how little does believing in oneself factor into the equation of successfully becoming a jazz musician?

[Al Haig]

I was born in 1959 and when I was a kid our family lived on just my dad's income. My mom's grocery budget was $20 a week and she made it work; we never went hungry. They bought a house, had a car, we were able to take vacations and they sent me to Catholic school from seventh grade on. You can do an inflation calculator on all that but I don't think that captures the actual change in buying power.

For things like consumer electronics, things like TVs today are much cheaper than TVs were 50 years ago as well as being dramatically better. In absolute dollars, not adjusted for inflation, I paid twice as much for my first computer in 1986 than I did for my new laptop at Christmas time- but the laptop is probably 1000 times more powerful than my first Mac 512Ke. I had a Palm III nearly 20 years ago that had basically the same specs as my first computer and I think I paid $179 for it.

For housing, on the other hand, buying power is severely eroded (whether for rental or ownership) and inflation calculators don't remotely capture that. My parents bought their house in 1957; when I sold it in 2014 after my mother died, I got 16 times as much for it as they paid. I bought my house in 1993; to make the same gain in value I would have to sell it for $1,274,000 which seems unlikely to be achievable for a 1908 2br/1ba house.

One of my favorite youtube comments is: "The people who say this generation doesn't want to work are the same people who could buy a house working at the grocery store."

[starjasmine]

So in your all-knowing estimations, how much or how little does believing in oneself factor into the equation of successfully becoming a jazz musician?

Not sure who you are addressing, but it is widely accepted that believing in oneself is critical to success in the arts. It's a truism. Everyone who has achieved any measure of success says that they believed in themselves. If you didn't, you'd give up long before you achieved even a rudimentary level of proficiency, much less a professional level of skill and any modicum of success.

[ragman1]

Agreed. There has to be a very good measure of faith in one's own abilities, which doesn't mean there's no interrogation or self-criticism. Without that there's no discovery, but that's not the same as crippling self-doubt.

[Fusionshred]

Success in any artistic endeavor requires self-assurance and probably a bit of self-aggrandizement. In fact, the most popular (successful) artists aren’t always necessarily the most talented.

I have a cousin who is a successful writer. He’s had 5 novels published, one that was bought and made into a film, and other projects. He’s not the greatest writer, but he is adept at marketing himself, getting interviews, signings, etc.

I was also acquainted with an up-and-coming guitarist in a prog metal band who now has a line of signature guitars, amps, picks, pedals and other products. One thing for sure is that he (and the rest of the band) were hell bent on making it no matter what. And he has said that unless you are, you won’t. He has said that, regardless of talent, if they didn’t have that drive and unwavering determination and a strong belief in themselves they would have packed it in long ago and would all be working day jobs. Fortunately, they all were intelligent, responsible and talented people.

ironically, one member left the band and the music business altogether, went to medical school and is now a psychiatrist.

[ragman1]

is now a psychiatrist.

[AdroitMage]

Not sure who you are addressing, but it is widely accepted that believing in oneself is critical to success in the arts. It's a truism. Everyone who has achieved any measure of success says that they believed in themselves. If you didn't, you'd give up long before you achieved even a rudimentary level of proficiency, much less a professional level of skill and any modicum of success.

I would say believing in oneself is important to achieving success in any area not only the arts.

Agreed. There has to be a very good measure of faith in one's own abilities, which doesn't mean there's no interrogation or self-criticism. Without that, there's no discovery, but that's not the same as crippling self-doubt.

In this thread, it is clear that some people are not optimistic about their chances of becoming successful musicians and that's okay, for them, because due to factors in other areas of their thing, whatever that thing may be, that is the truth for them. That's their truth, but I don't believe it's right for them to put that off onto everyone else because that is not the truth for everyone. There is some other guy who is confident about his chances of becoming a musician, and that's okay because due to factors in other areas of his thing, whatever that thing may be for him, that is truth, he should be confident. Ya see what I'm saying?

And yes, a player should be critical of his or her own playing because that keeps you from accepting mediocrity and makes you push yourself to become better while believing in yourself all along.

Personally, I think it's easy to tell how good you are. You just have to listen to great players and compare your own original playing to that. Maybe some guys have a hard time being honest with themselves in that regard? It's important to be honest with yourself and do some really honest soul-searching.

[AllanAllen]

In this thread, it is clear that some people are not optimistic about their chances of becoming successful musicians and that's okay, for them, because due to factors in other areas of their thing, whatever that thing may be, that is the truth for them. That's their truth, but I don't believe it's right for them to put that off onto everyone else because that is not the truth for everyone. There is some other guy who is confident about his chances of becoming a musician, and that's okay because due to factors in other areas of his thing, whatever that thing may be for him, that is truth, he should be confident. Ya see what I'm saying?

And yes, a player should be critical of his or her own playing because that keeps you from accepting mediocrity and makes you push yourself to become better while believing in yourself all along.

Personally, I think it's easy to tell how good you are. You just have to listen to great players and compare your own original playing to that. Maybe some guys have a hard time being honest with themselves in that regard? It's important to be honest with yourself and do some really honest soul-searching.

One also needs to define and understand what they mean by successful musician.

Successfully play over jazz changes, that’s easy, just takes time and practice. Get a band together, not we’re getting involved with luck, have to find the right people with the right personalities and a commitment match. Booking gigs, that’s more luck, have to find the right contact who wants to try new bands, have to coordinate everyone’s calendars to get a date. A lot of, non musical work.

It goes from there. Let’s say you get a weekly gig, uh oh, 3 months in the gig is on your bass players 25th wedding anniversary, what happens then? Are you “pro” does he do the $75 gig over spending the milestone day with his wife, do you sub him, do you cancel the gig?

That’s all local stuff, never mind if you get big enough to tour, that machine doesn’t stop for holidays, birthdays or kids baseball games.

Everyone thinks they want to be a rockstar, but it’s mostly sitting on a bus smelling other peoples farts, waiting to play.

[Stringswinger]

One also needs to define and understand what they mean by successful musician.

Successfully play over jazz changes, that’s easy, just takes time and practice. Get a band together, not we’re getting involved with luck, have to find the right people with the right personalities and a commitment match. Booking gigs, that’s more luck, have to find the right contact who wants to try new bands, have to coordinate everyone’s calendars to get a date. A lot of, non musical work.

It goes from there. Let’s say you get a weekly gig, uh oh, 3 months in the gig is on your bass players 25th wedding anniversary, what happens then? Are you “pro” does he do the $75 gig over spending the milestone day with his wife, do you sub him, do you cancel the gig?

That’s all local stuff, never mind if you get big enough to tour, that machine doesn’t stop for holidays, birthdays or kids baseball games.

Everyone thinks they want to be a rockstar, but it’s mostly sitting on a bus smelling other peoples farts, waiting to play.

Running a band is business management, a very different skill set from playing an instrument. Most musicians are not very good at it. I say that having worked quite a bit as both a sideman and a bandleader. I have also found that some very good bandleaders are not the best musicians, but their strong marketing/management skills keep them playing.

Playing music for a living today is tough. The supply of willing musicians exceeds the supply of willing consumers of music who will pay for it. A scant few will do very well playing music. A larger number will eke out a living doing a combination of teaching and gigs, often with a spouse helping to make ends meet. And then there will be many who really should not be performing in public who will be playing the tip jar gigs. IMO, anyone playing a $75 gig is hardly doing better than a tip jar gig. What independent contractor shows up with tools to do a job for $25 per hour today? I hear the same tired line of it is what it is and I just want to perform for people. Come on folks, have some self respect. $75 is NOT enough in 2025 to leave the house with a guitar.

[RLetson]

I confess to always feeling a bit skittish around discussions of what I sometimes think of as the "self issues"--self-confidence, self-love, self-care, believing in/trusting oneself, and so on--especially when coupled to discussions of "success" or "making it" and the rest of the terms that cluster around self-help culture.

While, as several posters have pointed out, self-confidence is one component of getting along in just about any endeavor, it is inevitably (at least in healthy personalities) in tension with self-doubt. Ask any perfectionist. I've been a "successful" (that is competent and dependable) writer for a long time, and I still go over my copy repeatedly looking for weak spots--and then give it to my wife for assurance that it's ready to give to my editor. And when I make music, I'm careful to stay within what I know are my limitations. No neurotic doubts there, just hard-nosed realism. Which does not prevent me from exposing whatever modest skill I possess in public, because making music for an audience is worth the moderate emotional strain. The validation of a little money is nice, but it's not what drives me to play out.

So what is "success," anyway? Making a living? Or (in the arts) making something that satisfies both artist and an audience? Stringswinger's observations match what I've seen over decades of hanging out with materially-successful professionals, highly competent day-job players, and plain old amateurs (among whom I place myself). The only point at which I might disagree with Marc is the "self respect" line at the end of his post--if he's talking about professionalism in the viable-career sense, that's one thing, but there's also value in non-career-level musical activities, such as the side-money gigs taken on by our local jazz guys. They love playing, and their small audience (compared to, say, that for rock-band tribute shows) shows up every Thursday for their dose of real music, played for the satisfactions found on both sides of the bandstand.

Later today I will spend several hours playing in public with other amateurs (some of whom are former touring band guys) and not a nickel will change hands. Nevertheless, pleasure will be generated and self-doubt will be minimized for a while.

[SierraTango]

Running a band is business management, a very different skill set from playing an instrument. Most musicians are not very good at it. I say that having worked quite a bit as both a sideman and a bandleader. I have also found that some very good bandleaders are not the best musicians, but their strong marketing/management skills keep them playing.

Playing music for a living today is tough. The supply of willing musicians exceeds the supply of willing consumers of music who will pay for it. A scant few will do very well playing music. A larger number will eke out a living doing a combination of teaching and gigs, often with a spouse helping to make ends meet. And then there will be many who really should not be performing in public who will be playing the tip jar gigs. IMO, anyone playing a $75 gig is hardly doing better than a tip jar gig. What independent contractor shows up with tools to do a job for $25 per hour today? I hear the same tired line of it is what it is and I just want to perform for people. Come on folks, have some self respect. $75 is NOT enough in 2025 to leave the house with a guitar.

I was fortunate. After being on the road as a youngster in the mid 1970's I snapped to the fact that it was a tough life. A airplane crash on the way to a gig that I opted to drive to (I didn't trust the pilot) really reinforced that decision. I made the recording/studio life my goal, and lucked up getting a 2nd engineer job (read slave) at the Sound Factory in Hollywood. No picnic either, I remember clearly being on a session with the guitar player coked up and doing his 20th stab at the perfect solo at 2 a.m. The lead mixer turned to me and said "records are gonna kill us...I've got a interview at Warner Bros and if I get in I'll recommend you.." I did get in and made a fairly handsome living as a union re-recording mixer for film and TV.
It was a very crash course in business management at a fairly high level.
Why this in a Jimmy Bruno thread? I was again fortunate to spend some time with Jimmy and I learned a lot. The most important lesson-the realization that I would never in a million years be that good. He was kind enough to say "steal stuff from me all you want, but just play like yourself".
I've been working with a great trumpet guy since 2011. I worked hard in a corporate gig and retired at 62. While I'm fairly well set up, the extra dough comes in handy. Trumpet guy and I decided we won't do a gig for less than $100 a piece. Some corporate and festival gigs we get $200 per man.
Since it's a duo that makes everything so easy! One text..can you do such and such a date yes/no? Done.
Playing a private party today at 3:00. 2 sets 100 each. I'm OK with that.

[AllanAllen]

What independent contractor shows up with tools to do a job for $25 per hour today? I hear the same tired line of it is what it is and I just want to perform for people. Come on folks, have some self respect. $75 is NOT enough in 2025 to leave the house with a guitar.

This is simple supply and demand, lots of people want to play, nobody is going out like they used to, for many reasons, so the entertainment budget disappears. But people still want to play, so their budget decreases to get gigs.

I don’t like it, but it’s the reality of our situation.

[AdroitMage]

@allanallen You should say that's the reality for you, and maybe the people you roll with, at your ability level on guitar, etc, but don't try and put that off on everyone else because that is not the reality for everyone else, just for you where you are with it right now.

For example, I know a local cat who has been playing jazz gigs on the local scene for years. He's not rich but he owns a nice house, and a nice car, always has a pretty lady on his arm, has lots of local gigs, and can afford to take nice vacations every year that he loves to talk about and show pictures of, all from his gigs, he has no day job.

Okay, he plays a mixture of jazz tunes and instrumental versions of popular songs like the Beatles or Earth, Wind & Fire, etc., with some improv included. It's all instrumental, though, and he's making money.

He's very good, but I wouldn't say he's the best player ever, yet through his persistence and good business savvy he's been able to build a good local fan base who comes out to gigs and supports.

What you're experiencing might be true for you at your ability level on guitar, but don't try and put that off onto everyone else because their truth might be something much different than that.

Not trying to dilute your enthusiasm, but in all honesty, you have a ways to go before you could realistically expect to make any appreciable money as a musician. That's just a fact.

[pamosmusic]

@allanallen You should say that's the reality for you, and maybe the people you roll with, at your ability level on guitar, etc, but don't try and put that off on everyone else because that is not the reality for everyone else, just for you where you are with it right now.

For example, I know a local cat who has been playing jazz gigs on the local scene for years. He's not rich but he owns a nice house, and a nice car, always has a pretty lady on his arm, has lots of local gigs, and can afford to take nice vacations every year that he loves to talk about and show pictures of, all from his gigs, he has no day job.

Okay, he plays a mixture of jazz tunes and instrumental versions of popular songs like the Beatles or Earth, Wind & Fire, etc., with some improv included. It's all instrumental, though, and he's making money.

He's very good, but I wouldn't say he's the best player ever, yet through his persistence and good business savvy he's been able to build a good local fan base who comes out to gigs and supports.

What you're experiencing might be true for you at your ability level on guitar, but don't try and put that off onto everyone else because their truth might be something much different than that.

Not trying to dilute your enthusiasm, but in all honesty, you have a ways to go before you could realistically expect to make any appreciable money as a musician. That's just a fact.

This is fun

[AllanAllen]

@allanallen You should say that's the reality for you, and maybe the people you roll with, at your ability level on guitar, etc, but don't try and put that off on everyone else because that is not the reality for everyone else, just for you where you are with it right now.

For example, I know a local cat who has been playing jazz gigs on the local scene for years. He's not rich but he owns a nice house, and a nice car, always has a pretty lady on his arm, has lots of local gigs, and can afford to take nice vacations every year that he loves to talk about and show pictures of, all from his gigs, he has no day job.

Okay, he plays a mixture of jazz tunes and instrumental versions of popular songs like the Beatles or Earth, Wind & Fire, etc., with some improv included. It's all instrumental, though, and he's making money.

He's very good, but I wouldn't say he's the best player ever, yet through his persistence and good business savvy he's been able to build a good local fan base who comes out to gigs and supports.

What you're experiencing might be true for you at your ability level on guitar, but don't try and put that off onto everyone else because their truth might be something much different than that.

Not trying to dilute your enthusiasm, but in all honesty, you have a ways to go before you could realistically expect to make any appreciable money as a musician. That's just a fact.

It appears I have said something to upset you? Ir-regardless, even your mystery player is making sacrifices you don't know about the keep the machine rolling. Nothing is all sunshine and roses.