This is a post by Bill Harrison – playjazznow.com
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I’m a musician. You know – a man with no marketable skills. Civilians sometimes ask me what I do for a living; musicians I run into often ask me what kind of stuff I’ve been doing lately. These questions always leave me tongue-tied. What on earth DO I do to make ends meet? Sure, I play gigs, I teach, I run my jazz education website. I do Finale copy work… But what does it all amount to and how can I succinctly answer these quesions? After all, if you ask someone in “normal” life what they do they’ll say something like “I sell shoes” or “I teach fifth grade” or “I’m a bartender”. I have no such pithy response.
My wise friend Sarah says that we belong to the “artist class”; we’re not blue collar workers because most of us are highly educated and “professional” yet we’re not really white collar either since we don’t get a regular paycheck and most of us do not earn six figures (0r anything close to that!). So we occupy some subversive nether world; we have the freedom of a freelance schedule but the burdens of an irregular income, no paid vacations and having to fork over large wads of cash every month if we want to have health insurance.
When I examine the work I do as an instrumentalist I have to laugh. One night I’m playing Louie, Louie with a metaphorical paper bag over my head at someone’s wedding; the next night I’m playing a jazz festival. One week I’m subbing on Wicked and earning serious dollars; the next I’m looking for spare change under my rug to buy a cup of coffee. Unless one has a day gig or some kind of steady job (in an orchestra, say, or touring with a name act), this is our reality.
I earn about 20% of my income teaching. Again, though I really enjoy the process and most of my students, it can be very hit or miss. I’ll have a week where everyone shows up for their allotted time, followed by two where half my students cancel. There’s also a wide variance in both skill and talent level, not to mention the amount of practice time people put in from lesson to lesson.
So, I ask my fellow freelance musicians: What do you do for a living?
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Great post, Bill! Thanks as always for your insightful observations on life as a performing musician.
I live in fear of that question! At parties I’m always sure to ask others what they do first, and then ask a lot of questions about their answer. The hope is to keep them from getting around to asking me. There just something so overwhelming about trying to explain what I do, and why I’m playing Menopause: The Musical this weekend, and why it sucks, and how that fits in with the other (“serious”) things I do and… anyway, thanks for the post. Good to be reminded I’m not alone.
For a long time, I worked temp jobs through an agency during the day. That was a pretty consistent way to have some steady income while gigging. Then, the summer after my daughter was born, the temp jobs dried up for a number of weeks, and what would have been a flush time–since I had landed six weeks playing “Sideshow” in Skokie–turned into scraping by on just the income from the show.
It wasn’t too much longer until the demand for health insurance drove me to accept a full-time, permanent day job, and not too long after that I couldn’t keep gigging, especially not the drive to Rockford and back five or six nights in a row, or the week camping in some stranger’s home in South Bend.
My name is now off every contractor’s list, I don’t do casuals, nobody asks me downtown to CRC to record commercials. Every now and then since I’ve gotten a show for six to ten weeks (Bill and I have subbed for each other to make those work) or a call to play in Elgin or with CJP.
This is a long response to a simple question. How do I respond when people ask? I always say that I’m a musician. And that I work at Cars.com as User Experience Manager. And I trust that (and work hard to insure that) one day I’ll have enough success with Chicago Bass Ensemble to leave the land of the normally employed and be a musician again. In the meantime, I am lucky that I do enjoy my day job, and I am determined to make my own opportunities artistically.
You can picture me with a sort of grim and determined look at this point: not in a perfect place, but damnit, I’m going to work to enjoy it and improve it.
Musicians have no value in our modern society. People get paid for the value they bring to the marketplace. The question is: Why should musicians get paid? We don’t make anybody any money. Our good or service is worthless in the eyes of the modern marketplace. Goverment and religious organizations used to set policy in the world, now it is the Global Market Economy. Thats why I think the Arts suffer and will continue to do so. However, I think our value comes from a spiritual perspective. When we play a concert and somebody in the audience has tears in there eyes and has been touched deeply in their soul, there is no monetary equivalent to that. Best of luck to all musicians out there!!
Keep the Faith
John Grillo
Grillo, INC.
If I were to value my self-worth in monetary terms, I would be in bad shape. As a musician I sometimes get paid to write music (most of it is published, some of it is commissioned), play in three orchestras, teach private lessons, teach music appreciation at a community college, write program notes, review CDs, write magazine articles, and do occasional copy work and editorial work. I don’t get paid to write most of the music I write (I do it because I love to do it), play recitals (I practice as much as I can too), or play in my medieval/renaissance group I love. All in all, if I were not married and did not live a very frugal kind of life in a rural area where the cost of living is relatively low, I would not be living above the poverty level.
I fall into the Charles Ives school of musician. I practice every day, compose when I get a chance, and most of my thoughts lie in music-related topics. My day job? Lead web developer for a major laboratory. It is incredibly fun work and equally as rewarding as my former music career, and I of course tell people what I do for a living when they ask – with much pride. But outside of work, I am usually thinking about working on scales and bowing technique and playing Bach.
I think that everyone who may call him/herself “freelancing musician” is a lucky chap (or gal). I’ve been playing around in some amateur bands for some time now (never get any income for that though), but my “profession” is “IT guy”. I work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I have regular income, that’s true, my job is not bad (in terms of the money, people I work with, having insurence and stuff), but I’m pretty much fed up with it. And here’s the disadvantage if beeing full-time-full-paid guy – your employee requires you to be reliable, you cannot just take a 3 days off spontanously – everything needs to be planed, or you will loose some of your boss’ trust (as an employer). Moreover, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. is the best time of the day – totally wasted closed in the office. After you’re done, you’re so tired (and fed up with it), that you cannot ever rest properly. Having family (wife + daughter) it’s hard for me to practice (or rehearse) without the feeling of being “away from home”.
I know that freelancing is not safe way to live, but it gives you at least some freedom, which I really regret not to have. My dream is to become a freelancing music guy, but I’m stuck into that full time working husband/dad profile, so it’s unreachable for me. Appreciate your life, don’t be ashamed of it, it’a a beautiful job to have – you live my dream. 😉
I’m in a slightly different position than most of you because at 78 and still playing, I did the majority of my work in Detroit from 1952 until 1983 and then the Jazz business collapsed. Not only was I was never out of work for one night, but for 6 years worked 3 Gigs a day. 5 to 8 PM at the Attache Lounge, 9 to 2 AM at the Playboy Club and then after hitting the sack at 3 AM we got up at 5:30 for a live TV show on WXYZ – TV from 7 until 8:30. One of the things that helped me to maintain pride and dignity while doing all this work for $100 a day, which was a lot in those days, was not only was I working with a great trio, but, the guests we backed up every day on the show were Wes Montgomery, Wynton Kelly, Junior Mance, Milt Jackson, and the list goes on forever. We played Jazz and many other kinds of music at it’s highest level with respect from most of the people with whom we came into contact.