I never really considered myself much of a hat person – still don’t – then why am I wearing so many hats?

When people ask me what I’m going to do if the ‘music thing’ doesn’t work out – I like to coyly respond – “I’ll probably just end myself.”   It’s not that they don’t believe in my abilities – they’re talking odds and statistics.   They know it’s a long shot and they just want to make sure I do too.  But because I deal in absolutes, I don’t see it as a long shot – I see it as a shot I have to make.  I don’t really get mad at people because they don’t understand.   I think there’s an image of the restless soul whimsically dancing on the line between fairy tales and childhood fantasy, valiantly trying to live out their artistic dreams before they realize there are real things in the real world like money, housing and food that will inevitably slap them in the face back into submission, after all, what would a starving artist be without the need for food!?

Let me tell you first hand that all that fantasy and magic and romance bursts into flames and rises up into the sky as a smoky fading black mass of what once was – the second you enter the business side of music.   Here’s why – the second you start skipping down the old yellow brick road with Toto and your acoustic guitar singing la la with the daisies dancing a moment goes by and you realize… what the hell am I doing and why am I doing it?  This is followed by another sharp thought only moments later – “I’m doing this because… ______” insert your reason(like a choose your own adventure!) Some people do it because they want to be famous – they want to go to their high school reunion and just…grin… or something.   Some people do it because they think they are God’s gift to you, the listener.  On behalf of God, you’re welcome.  As for me – I just don’t really know what else I would do…

I could do lots of things – but so can everyone.  It’s not what you can do or what you should do, you should and can do, just what you want to do…so why wouldn’t you? How could you deny, something that feels so right?

Back to the Oz metaphor because, why not?  So now I’m on the yellow brick road and I’m hellbent – now I know what I have to do and I know it aint going to be easy, why? Because it’s a hell of a long way to Oz.

You’ve written music – good for you.  Do you have shows booked? How about press writing about you? How about fans? How about 18 different social networks to promote yourself on? How about show posters? How about a blog? A website? Pictures? Cloak of invisibility in case things should get out of hand? Where the hell does this yellow brick road lead anyways and whose dog is this and why am I wearing a blue checkered dress?

These questions are the beginning of what I like to call – the longest education you’ll ever learn in the school of survival.   Musicians, Painters, Photographers, Actors, Writers – when they start off they usually have no money and no one helping them, so they do it themselves.   It’s no longer just writing pretty music and playing it and waiting for fans to swarm and swoon – it’s PR, Management, Entrepreneurship, Graphic Design, Web building, Networking, Booking, Writing, Finance etc. etc. etc. and how do are you going to elbow, bite and scratch your way out of the crowd just to be heard?

So just to give you an idea if you were wondering “what I do all day”, as a musician, I usually work from 10am till 10pm almost every day ensuring that I stay relevant and am constantly in a state of forward motion.  In the mean time, I do freelance jobs from graphic design to entertaining at private gigs to Djing – and it barely gets me by… Again, just want to re-iterate, this isn’t an angry rant, I’m just trying to inform.

When people ask me what I do after telling them I’m a musician(like, what ELSE do you do?) I like to joke that my father is an oil tycoon and that I’m obscenely wealthy and don’t need to work.   That joke is all the more ironic now because as I speak it, 6 feet below my face eagerly searching for a laugh is my big toe, jutting bare naked out into the air from a hole in my left shoe – one doesn’t really get more “pauper” than that, does one?  Now I just need a single crutch…