Mid-Life Crisis…. Seriously
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Today we had a leadership meeting followed by a company wide dinner celebrating our accomplishments from the past year. After the dinner, I had plans to meet the Director of Education for the company to have a cigar, a drink, and an in depth conversation for the plans for my store for the next year.
The restaurant we were at had hard rules against smoking outdoors so we headed two doors down to a “bar” I used to go to with a smoking deck. I was surprised to find that the bar had a $10 cover charge and had jazz bands twice a day, every day of the week. Now the place could only fit 50 people, meaning that the band was making $500 max between the 4, or $125 per person.
The lead for the band was a guitarist named Rick Whitehead, who actually taught a few jazz classes when I was in college…https://www.su.edu/faculty-staff/faculty/richard-whitehead/
This guy is working his ass off to make $125 a night, or less than I make selling s fucking CLP825.
I’m not trying to diminish the work that I do, I’m proud of the difference that the education and the instruments that I sell make in our students lives, and I work my ass off each and every day, but I do find it ridiculous that this incredible musician makes less in a weekend than I do. I’m trying to find a way to use my influence and my connections to help musicians like Rick make a living. This guy could be headlining at Blues Alley but he’s playing at a 50 person max bar in Maryland instead. I don’t know where my instincts are taking me yet, and in the meantime would appreciate any ideas on how to help these musicians.
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As I play the various juke joints in town for the last 10 years, I've come to know many fellow musicians. Most of them are like me and have a regular career paying the bills and this is all just a hobby. But there are a handful of guys who make their living doing this. Very few though, and generally, these guys are the talent of us and obviously their passion for this is stronger than mine because I see their economic condition that they seem ok with where I just shake my head. Heck, I am fine with 2 gigs a month and these guys are out there playing 4 times a week. I just keep shaking my head thinking of all that work for little pay. Not just the performing part, all the stuff before and after is the real work, and that is why God invented the roadie for those who have the means. It's work that had me tell the band after our last gig around Christmas, that I need a break and these last couple months have been just fine for me. We just all started back again but had to refill our bass player and are now practicing with him our tunes to catch him up. I don't know LD, I feel ya, but these guys I know seem perfectly happy doing what they're doing for chicken scratch.
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A wonderful pastime but a terrible profession.
IOW, the complete opposite of management.
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When my son lived in Baton Rouge, I think he belonged to AFM. They do have an interesting initiative for union and nonunion musicians...
https://www.afm.org/what-we-are-doing/current-campaigns/fair-trade-music/
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@Horace said in Mid-Life Crisis…. Seriously:
Yeah, but the stories about people who chase their dreams, they are so compelling.
Based on decades of TV programming that I have watched, the worthwhile dreams are:
- Singing, dancing, performance arts
- Sports
- Fashion design, jewelry design
- Cooking, becoming a chef
- Starting your own business, typically some sort of talent management agency, advertising agency, event planning/coordination, restaurant/bar
- Starting/preserving a community center
- Building your own house
The typical not-dreams are:
Most professions that require professional board or state certification (doctor, nurse, lawyer, public accountant, engineer, plumbing/electrical contractor/journeyman, public school teacher, etc.), general contractor/construction (build houses for others), financial auditors, claims adjusters, safety inspectors, most types of technicians.Edit to add: need to qualify the "doctor" bit ... it's typically a dream of the protagonists' parents, but not-dream of the protagonists.
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Someday some clever writer will create a show with a doctor protagonist. Or maybe an entire hospital filled with doctor protagonists. There could be good-looking male doctors, and good-looking female doctors, and they could have complicated romantic entanglements. While they solve medical mysteries.
