Episode 10 - (BONUS) - On making your own opportunities happen + the secret inspiration for this podcast!

Hi! This week is a little different - I am doing a short recap of what we covered so far and giving a quick update about the next season for this podcast. Today I chat a little bit about my own thoughts as a working musician, while fresh on back to back tours in Europe and the USA. This podcast was inspired by a quote made by Caroline Rose which I do read to you all. Thanks for tuning in to Season 1! Season 2 will be out as soon as possible :). If you have any questions, comments, concerns you can email me at whatittakestobearockstar@gmail.com. Thanks!

You can watch this episode on Youtube.

Check out UMAW here.

Check out Caroline Rose here.

Check out my tour dates with Gustaf here!

Chapters

• 0:43 Intro & Announcements
• 2:59 Making your own opportunities
• 5:43 “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”
• 8:56 The secret inspiration for this podcast!
• 14:18 Why not just get a real job?!?!
• 17:13 SORRY Cables

Transcript

Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of What It Takes To Be A Rockstar.

I'm your host, Mel, and I'm so happy that you're here.

All right, welcome back to another week of What It Takes To Be A Rockstar.

If you're watching this, I am in a backyard in LA.

If you're listening to this, you might hear some wind.

I'm on tour still.

Now I'm on tour with a different band.

I'm on tour with a band I play drums in called Gustaf.

And we did a crazy journey, three of us who were playing on the theater tour.

We did a 25 and a half hour long trip from Frankfurt, Germany.

Stopped in New York for like five hours, but we didn't leave the airport.

We were in JFK passing off equipment.

We had some friends bring equipment and take equipment from us because I switched from bass to drums.

So I need my drum stuff.

Big long story, but we all got our things and went on another plane ride.

And yeah, total trip from Germany to LA took 25 and a half hours.

I'm still pretty jet lagged, but I'm getting over it all and starting to feel more human.

This week is a little different.

This is episode 10.

Thank you to everyone who has been tuning in to all the episodes, giving feedback.

My goal for this podcast was to get to 10 episodes.

And we're here, but I wanted to see how it felt to do it.

And if I liked doing it, and I do like doing it, the issue is when I'm touring a lot, it's hard to do it.

So after this episode, I'm going to take a little bit of a break, finish up this tour, and then when I go home, I'm going to record more episodes and have season two come out.

Hopefully in the next six to eight weeks, I'm hoping.

And I'm so sorry, because I know as a listener, that is frustrating to start getting into something and then it starts, you know, being weird with the schedule.

But I wanted to be consistent at least for ten weeks in a row, and I managed to do that.

So this week, what I want to do, and I might do this in pieces, because I do, I am coming, going, I'm leaving to drive ten hours today.

What I want to do is just do a little bit of a recap of what we talked about and just give a little bit of my insight towards it.

I'm going to do an episode where I give even more, but I just, for now, I wanted to just do a little recap of everything that we talked about, and common themes between all the musicians that I talked with.

It was so great hearing everyone's stories.

I really loved hearing where everyone came from and where they're going with it, and hearing people on different levels and different parts of their journeys.

The one thing that I really want to point out about everyone that was on my podcast was that they all made their own opportunities happen.

So as a touring musician, I've heard a lot from people like, oh my God, I wish I could do what you do.

But no one has called my phone and asked me to do a tour or something.

And or like no one's ever given me the opportunity.

But everyone that I interviewed on this podcast gave themselves an opportunity.

They woke up and they said, I'm going to go on tour or they woke up and were like, I'm going to play a show, I'm going to be a musician, I'm going to book a show, I'm going to make something happen.

And yes, there were stories like Emma, she got invited to be on the tour with Sir Chloe.

And that is awesome.

And yeah, that doesn't always happen, but that was because of her studying music in college and being roommates with the guy and him knowing her character and what she does.

So yeah, there are moments where they do, things do happen for people like I did.

One time I was on a plane and I heard this guy ran into one of his old friends.

He hasn't seen him in a really long time.

And he ran into him and he said, Oh my gosh, I put a video up on TikTok and Jason Mraz saw my video.

And then he took me on tour and I've never been on tour before.

It was so cool.

It was amazing.

It was kind of like this like dream scenario that I think a lot of musicians, like when they're starting out, they think that's what's going to happen.

Kind of like they're just going to, you know, Jason Mraz is going to call them one day and say, Oh, I saw your video.

It was awesome.

But what I want to point out is that that guy spent years learning guitar.

He spent years writing songs, learning how to write lyrics.

Like I looked up his stuff.

He was like a really good lyricist.

He wrote the songs.

He put out the videos for the songs.

And then that ultimately led him to getting this offer for this Jason Mraz tour.

Which sounds lucky, but the groundwork that gets to even being lucky is a huge foundation.

And I think a lot of people, and honestly, a lot of people do do that work too, and they don't get the chance to do music because it is a very saturated thing.

It really is.

But what I want to say is everyone that I know that is still doing music is simply doing music because they never stop doing music.

And they've just gotten better and better and better and better.

And they tried new things.

Like I watched a David Bowie documentary once on an airplane one time, and I think he tried like 12 or 13 different kinds of bands and acts and stuff before, you know, he started to find something that worked, that clicked, whatever, that started getting attention.

So, but a lot of people, they don't, they just want to write what they want to write, too, and like be who they are also and not have to like cater to anyone.

And I think a lot of musicians go through that journey where they say, I don't want to write something that's going to click for other people.

Like, I just enjoy playing music, so I'm just going to do that.

And like a lot of people fall, quote unquote, fall off of doing music because they find that they just want to be artistic in the way that they want to be artistic too.

And I'm not saying there's not a way to do both.

But there is, there is that element to it too.

Like you're quote unquote creating a product for people to listen to.

And in order to make money off of music, you need to have a lot of people interested in listening to that.

Or you have the coolest merch ever, and people want your t-shirts or your record because it looks cool.

So yeah, I wanted to point that out that I heard this quote that luck equals an opportunity plus preparedness.

So when people say you're so lucky to be able to do what you're doing, I think that's a narrative that a lot of musicians who worked really freaking hard for 20 years for free essentially, and then finally something starts happening for them, and they go, oh my God, I'm just so lucky.

And it's like, are you?

Or did you just work for 20 years to get a little bit of traction going?

So yeah, I wanted to talk about that.

And I also want to talk about a quote that made me start this podcast.

So Caroline Rose, they're a really great singer, songwriter, and they came home from tour, I think last year, and I'll get the quote up, and posted a PSA on their Instagram 23 weeks ago, as of the day I'm recording this.

And here's the quote, and this is what made me think to start doing, doing this podcast honestly, sorry for the wind.

So it says, coming home from an eight week tour today, a powdery dust and filled with love and pride for my band and crew, all the fans who buy tickets and merch, as well as every other working class musician out there.

I find it mostly hilarious that the general public think we have cushy lives out on the road, that we're living out some sort of 20th century rock star fantasy sleeping with groupies and blowing lines of coke every night.

The reality is we are the backbone of an entire industry, the workers, we get sick.

We operate on five hours of sleep with oftentimes one meal a day.

We drive thousands of miles.

We change tires.

We get stuck at the airport.

We are certified YouTube mechanics.

We're salespeople.

We are marketers on social media.

We dedicate our lives to honing our craft, all without the benefits of a salaried job like health care or retirement plans.

We have more in common with truckers and plumbers than we do with the record label exec who sums up the depth of our artistry into a series of statistics or the suits of the corporations profiting from our work and hoarding all of the money for themselves and their shareholders.

Today is harder than ever to make a career as a working musician, and in parentheses, and I would consider myself a success story between rising costs, the effects of a global pandemic, legalization of AI use, independent venues getting eaten up by the monopoly live nation, snake oil label and publishing deals, egregious ticketing fees from which we receive no share, merch cuts from venues and corporate profiteering eating away at our royalty rates.

This is the reality and until people know what it looks like, we're not going to receive any sympathy or help.

Musicians and it goes, if you haven't joined the union, it's time to do so.

And what they're talking about is UMAW, which is an organization.

I don't think it's exactly a union because musicians technically can't unionize because we are 1099 contractors.

But they're an amazing organization that I am planning on getting in touch with and talking with because they are having a lot of musicians tell their stories too.

And if you're a fan, keep being a fan and supporting us.

I'm getting all email writing this because it means more than anything that people buy tickets suffering through the horrifying ticket master fees owned by Live Nation.

Continue to support independent bands and venues.

They are everything.

Next time you go to an indie music venue, know that it's been and continues to be extremely difficult for the staff to keep the doors open.

Every day they face pressure to sell out to Live Nation, but continue to eat up venues struggling to maintain operating costs.

I digress.

All this is to say, long live the working class musician and long live the fans who support us.

So that quote, reading that one day, I was like, it's true.

Our lives are super, they're amazing, they're incredible.

We get to do a lot of amazing things, but it's at this underground cost that a lot of people don't talk about, and that's why I'm talking about it, and it's not to complain, it's just to shed light on the whole story.

Because I know when I see a band playing and they're giving it their all, what they possibly just went through, like they might have just got off a plane, like they might have just got off a plane, they might have just drove 10 hours, and so many people I know just literally can't do that.

It's not even in the cards to do something like that.

Not even a lot of people will go on a 10-hour car ride trip, and they're completely cooked after that.

And then you have these people performing at very high levels.

With aches and pains and feeling like crap and whatever.

And so I just wanted to share how strong people are to be doing this, and also what little money they might be making from doing that.

You think, oh, they're up there playing for thousands of people, they must be killing it, but not all the time.

It really varies on how their deals are set up, or if they're a DIY band or not.

It really all varies across the board.

So yeah, I wanted to share about that.

And I want to talk about, I'm bringing this all up and it's like, yeah, people do it so that they live this dream life that they've been wanting to live.

They're living in a fantasy land, why not just get a real job?

But I want to remind you that music is so important.

It's a healer for so many people, for the musician, for the artist, it's just like this magical, magical gift.

And of course, other artists too.

And a million other things in the world are too.

But your favorite band that is huge, like started as a seed and an idea, and like, you know, was that shitty local band at some point, that just grew to get better and bigger.

And like every band that starts has that potential.

Like there's a lot of factors that go into like how far a band goes.

But just because they might be struggling now doesn't mean they might not be like the band that makes like the song that helps.

Like so many people get through, you know, grief or, you know, a hard time or something.

It's just like music is everywhere all the time.

And there's like such a beautiful thing.

And I don't think musicians, especially in the US, because in other countries they, it feels like they respect the musician path a little more and take care of their musicians more.

And I'm not sure how it is in all the different countries.

Like I want to talk to a lot of people about it from all different places.

But like, I just feel like it can be respected.

It should be respected more than it is in the US because music is just like such a gift.

And yeah.

And so I just wanted to talk to that.

If you're like, get a real job.

And side note, almost 95% of the people I talked to on this podcast have a real job, or not a real job, but they have to work.

Like that's a huge point of this too, is like most everyone I know, they're working two, three jobs when they're off tour to make ends meet.

So they're probably working 50 more hours than the normal person.

And then after being on tour for like weeks and weeks.

So anyway, I digress.

There's a lot more I could say about this right now, but I have to go and I just wanted to get out this last episode and let everyone know that I'm planning on having way more guests.

I've been talking to a lot of people.

I just have to be home in a quiet place to do it.

But thank you for tuning in, and I will be back as soon as possible.

I also want to thank Sorry Cables for sponsoring this podcast.

I truly love Sorry Cables.

I love their company.

They're amazing people.

They make amazing cables.

And thank you for being a part of this podcast and for supporting musicians so much.

Check them out, sorrycables.com.