You’re Not in a Band – until you’re in a Band!

Apologies for the distinct lack of posts over the last month or two.

Rest assured that we are working very, very hard to get to the next stage of what we’re hoping to achieve with the site. With that will come very regular blog posts and emails to subscribers and a lot, lot more usable information. Believe me, we have been busy (creating and launching the world’s greatest football gift – yes, nothing to do with music, but we felt like it!), but, in the New Year, we’ll bring our attention back to this site and it will be a massive priority for 2010 – we have some great plans and ideas that we hope will truly help you succeed in your efforts as a musician.

However, for now, I wanted to roll out a nugget of wisdom that I remember very clearly from the day that I heard it and which I have trotted out as a piece of second hand advice for many years as well.

Reason being is that there is a whole lot of truth in it, although it won’t take me that long to recount it here.

Oh, and the title of this post has given the game away anyway already!

So, what the hell do I mean by that statement – “You’re not in a band – until you’re in a band!”, and what positive effect can it have on your career?

Well, it means what it says. But, let’s go back to when I heard it – probably about seven years ago.

We were managing a band that were getting really ‘hot’ as the industry phrase says – meaning that they were playing gigs to a growing number of clearly very committed fans and their name kept being heard by people who worked at record companies, press and promotions people, agents and various bits of the media – magazines, radio and such. They were (and still are) a blisteringly good live band with a really unique sound and plenty of exciting performance elements. And they had a lot of good material – although, in hindsight, they possibly lacked that killer ‘11 out of 10′ song that we often bang on about (Subscribe at the box on the top right and read the ‘10 Key Steps…’ eBook if I’m not  making sense!).

Anyway, all the A&R men in the UK started to come to the shows and talk about offering the band a deal and we ended up being offered record deals by several of the major record companies and signing to one of them – this being the days before the possibility of the DIY approach and selling music over the internet – yes, really.

Shortly before the band were signed I was having a conversation with a very old friend of mine who had become an A&R man at a Major and he was telling me that he had decided he was going to ‘pass’ on the band. Although he liked them, he didn’t feel that they were ‘real’ or that they had an interesting enough ’story’. Now, I don’t agree even now that that was the case, and we can look at those two words which industry people will use about you a lot, but that will have to be another time. He went on to say that the reason they weren’t real was because they weren’t a ‘real band’.

These guys had already been playing together for three years – having met up up as soon as they went to college at the age of 18 and playing on and off with the same line-up all the way through those 3 years. We were managing them less than a year after they had left college and all of them had day-jobs. They lived together and had recorded an album at home in a very low-fi way and released it on a small indie and had begun to attract attention. They played regularly locally, maybe totalling, say twenty times a year.

And this was his point – they weren’t a real band as they were living by Plan B rules (they had jobs) and they weren’t living and breathing being in a band. I thought that they’d actually achieved a hell of a lot by that stage and had done a lot of DIY momentum building before it was the norm for every aspiring artist.

But, he did have a point.

They did all have a Plan B – their day jobs. One was a very much in-demand engineer who was offered jobs by Formula 1 teams but decided, in the end, to be a drummer. However, they were all looking at two possible outcomes – maybe the band would get a deal, they’d get a shot and maybe they’d make it….or, maybe, no chance would come and they’d have jobs to fall back on. Maybe if you have a Plan B, that ends up being Plan A and just that safety net prevents you from really reaching for the stars and making it happen.

That’s one part of the reason. I’m not suggesting that he was absolutely right, nor that you should jack in your job right now and be the aspiring rock star or hip-hop mogul 24/7. But then again, maybe if you live it, you’ll be more likely to make it.

Obviously, there are massive upsides to not having a day job – you’ll have more time to write, record, rehearse, build your web presence, network, hang-out, pester people and so on. And, naturally, you’ll be more committed because of that available time and because you’ve dropped your safety net.

And then there’s the aura that you create around you by being a full-time musician – the people that you deal with on a day to day basis (friends & family, but also those who move in the music industry circles) will take you to be a more serious proposition – because you have laid out your hand for all to see.

Is this going to make it easier for you to get signed or at least attract the attention of those people who can help you further your career, whether DIY or traditional – well, maybe. And it would seem to be the case just by logic. That extra time and more solid commitment ought to amount to something, right?

This also ties in with our thoughts on what we call the ‘Talent vs Drive’ curve, covered in part III of the ‘10 Key Steps….’ eBook. All well and good to have all that extra time on your hands if your self-belief has lead you to give up the distractions of the daily grind. But, you’ve still got to find the application and the drive to use that time profitably. I keenly believe that very few people have spectacular levels of talent and very often those with the most drive and determination are the ones who get to where they set out to reach. This is often true with musicians. Sure, talent is a jumping off point and has relevance but it is not, always, the defining factor.

Before I add my big caveat at the end (It’s not my fault if you give up your job, OK!), there’s another thing.

I’ve just finished reading Malcom Gladwell’s book, ‘Outliers’, in which he talks about the real causes behind the achievements of exceptional people. I won’t precis it here, but he discusses how the most successful people in many fields have put in 10,000 hours of practice or learning. He relates this to music by discussing the Beatles phenomenal achievement and relating it back to their extended stints in Hamburg learning their craft. Not only did they play close to 2000 hours of live shows before they were noticed (has any contemporary artist got close, even many years in to touring?), but they had also learnt how to deconstruct and play every R&B standard of the time as their shows then were mostly comprised of covers. That might have helped a little in developing their songwriting craft, don’t you think?

I’m a slightly stronger believer in the need for talent than Gladwell, but practice, and development of skills and learning from failure are key to becoming great. Can’t argue with that.

It’s weird that we expect our artists, by which I mean music artists / performers, to be at their creative peak in their teens and twenties. We don’t expect it of authors, sculptors and painters – the other creatives. We expect them to have time to learn and grow.

So, how does a musician get that practice and learn the skills? Well, start young for sure, and, like my A&R friend (now a very senior global label President!) said – be in a band ‘for real’.

Every show you play and every song you write and discard is a step nearer the place you need to reach.

Going back to that band we managed. I see them play now, probably 200 or more shows later, and they are unbelievably good. I always notice the guitarist. He was good at the start – an interesting style and plenty of talent. But now he is incredible. His playing is immeasurably better and just so much more natural and innate. But,he struts too, like he really means it. If they were the band then, 7 years ago, that they are now, they would have conquered the world. Whether they’d had an 11/10 song or not!

I hope that this makes some sense.

I’m not telling you to tell your boss to stick his job and live in a squat being the epitome of a 70’s rock god – really, I’m not. You still have to make it to earn that right and it really isn’t my place to put that emotional burden and financial strain on you (you might be free all day, but you’ll be skint!).

But, maybe, if you really are going to be the one to make it and if you really do have the desire and the drive, well maybe you need to be in a band, on the road, being the part 365 days of the year.

Like her or not, it seems that Lady GaGa put in the time to make it – all those videos surfacing online of her paying her dues,seem to prove it.

So, really, don’t walk out of work on my say-so, and, if you do, be sure of your talent and your will to succeed.

But whether you become the unemployed-by-choice wannabe rock star or not, realise that you need to put in a massive amount of effort to make it. That’s what this really means.  And these days, it’s not just musical practice, song-writing and performing – it’s all that web promotion and DIY self-marketing as well. It is a full-time job just getting noticed!

On the upside, there is now a way to be a self financing working musician – like my old favourite, Corey Smith, and my newest discovery, Pretty Lights. If they can find  the way to be full-time musicians without a record company and driving it all themselves, then maybe you can too.