Carping about Cartage
While digging through my old e-mail recently, I came upon this snippy exchange between management and musicians regarding compensation for cartage. This is the sort of thing that really makes my blood boil–cartage is compensation paid to musicians who must load a lot of gear in and out of a venue. The philosophy behind this compensation is that it reimburses those who must come early, load in multiple trips of gear, and therefore need to drive to all jobs in large vehicles without possibility of taking public transit or carpooling.
Though it may seem like paying cartage reimbursement is a no-brainer for management, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been shorted this compensation while working on jobs, even when there is a policy in place under a contract negotiated with the American Federation of Musicians.
Those of us who receive cartage payment often get the evil eye from our colleagues (who mistakenly think that we’re getting more money per service when we’re only being compensated for having to drive solo in a car full of gear and arrive an hour early to load in). In many groups I work with, this reimbursement is viewed by management as a perk and looked at with dubiousness. It is therefore frequently on the chopping block when renegotiating contracts.
This is a segment of an e-mail exchange. After this exchange, those of us in this group began to be taxed on our reimbursement. This is not a normal occurrence in most groups I work with (mileage and cartage are generally viewed as reimbursement and are therefore not subjected to withholding by the employer–though we musicians have to report this money as income to the IRS), and a huge uproar broke out around this issue in this ensemble.
Though we cartage recipients were outraged, there are a lot more of them (the non-cartage recipients) than there are of us, and we often find ourselves alone in this battle, with management viewing us as an expensive annoyance and our colleagues viewing us as being awarded extra pay for doing the same job.
Is Cartage Compensation or Reimbursement?
After chatting with my more tax law-aware musician colleagues, I have been made aware that there are benefits to having taxes withheld on cartage, since this money must then be reported as self-employment income and is subjected to higher taxes as a result.
What do you think? Is cartage income or is it extra compensation?
Regardless of the above answer, you can see how hot under the collar musicians get when the subject is even broached. Here’s a bit of the exchange I dug up in my e-mail archive. I changed all the names of involved parties:
Hello ___________,
I am John Doe, the accountant for the Anonymous Center, and also the Random Symphony Orchestra. I am also familiar with some of your names having done the accounting for the No Name Chamber Orchestra for many years also . Please allow me to explain the change in handling cartage.
This has been a topic under discussion for many years now. We have been advising the Random Symphony about this situation off and on, but we decided it was time to take action now to protect the organization.
Basically, any payment made to an individual for which receipts are not turned into the organization has to be considered taxable income. This is also true of per diem money paid out. With the No Name Chamber Orchestra, this money also appeared on your year-end 1099s. Any per diems or drayage (as they call it), were also considered income, and it was filed with the government accordingly. You did indeed pay taxes on this income. Because the Random Symphony Orchestra correctly pays musician’s fees through payroll, the per diems and cartage should also be paid through payroll. An individual can not receive a W-2 and a 1099 from the same organization.
If musicians were to fill out expense reports for their personal expenses relating to business and submit them directly to the Random Symphony Orchestra for reimbursement, then it would not be considered income. Since the organization has no way of knowing whether or not any cartage money is actually spent or to what extent it is spent, we have to consider the entire amount taxable income. If you do have receipts, you can claim those business expenses on your year-end taxes to offset the income. The Random Symphony Orchestra does not handle expense reports for musicians.
As an hypothetical example, let’s look at per diems. An organization may give employees a $50 per diem for an out of town trip. Some people may indeed spend all or part of it, but others will save the money. Without knowing who spent what amount, i.e. without receipts turned in to verify that indeed the entire $50 was spent, we have to acknowledge the entire amount as income.
This is not an issue of mistrust or misuse. We wholeheartedly respect your professionalism, your integrity and your talents. This new policy is simply protecting the Random Symphony Orchestra from any government scrutiny as far as money paid to an individual.
I hope this explains the situation a little better. If anyone has any further questions, please call Frank Doe. If he can not help you, you may call me at the number below. I fully understand your concern, but please know, this is something that needs to be done to keep things in check. I appreciate you asking the question. I hope I have given you a satisfactory response.
Sincerely……..
Bill Doe
Service Accounting Manager
Anonymous Center
The e-mail outcry was instantaneous. This one (from a percussionist) sums up my thoughts on the issue quite nicely:
Dear Bill Doe:
I don’t get it. As far as I see it, cartage payment is indeed reimbursement: reimbursement for expenses involved in moving large heavy equipment. Some musicians have these expenses, and some don’t. Those that do have these expenses are reimbursed for those expenses. On the other hand, all musicians receive compensation for playing their instruments. What am I missing?
These outcries fell on indifferent ears. Our personnel manager e-mailed us with this message soon after the original one from Bill Doe:
Hello All,
I wanted to let you know that there is a new policy in place for cartage payment starting the beginning of 2006. Our accountants at Anonymous Center Accounting are going to be including your cartage in your payroll. This issue on how cartage has been paid in the past has been going back and forth for some time now. It has been determined by them that it is a form of compensation. The rule states:
“Anything that is paid to an employee that is not a reimbursement is considered compensation.”
So, in this check and in the future you will see cartage included as earnings.
Any questions please feel free to talk to me about it, although I might have to go back to the accountants, as I am not an expert on this subject.
Thanks,
Frank Doe
Notice that “Frank Doe” refers to cartage as compensation Is this accurate?
Many heated e-mail exchanges followed from both musicians and management, yet the policy remained in place until I quit this ensemble, and it probably still is in place.
One more thing–no musicians in this ensemble receive any mileage compensation either, even though tout-of-town talent makes up a significant percentage of the ensemble. Lovely huh? I quit soon after.
Your Thoughts?
What do you think of cartage payments (especially those of you who don’t receive them)? Are they reimbursement or extra compensation (you know what I think)? Was the management reasonable in this exchange? Do we deserve cartage at all?
Welcome to the world of freelance orchestral playing!
Summer festivals – a good deal?
Adaptistration blogger and Inside the Arts mastermind Drew McManus recently put out a post about summer music festivals that really caught my eye. In this post (dated 6/27/08), Drew writes:
Unlike regular season positions, music festivals have an added bonus by offering their exclusive location as an added incentive to performance and travel pay. Add to that varying levels of accommodations (from “you’re on your own” to gratis top-of-the-line private housing), travel pay, and proximity to major airports and you have all the elements for the basic formula many musicians consider when looking for summer work. Consequently, festivals located in idyllic locations typically have some leeway over those needing to leverage monetary compensation and travel pay to a larger degree.
Trading location for pay is an established fixture in the among both part-time and full-time orchestra rank-and-file, though (as discussed later in this post), I often question the sensibility of this trade-off. More on that later.
Drew continues:
Unfortunately, the sharp increase in gas prices has thrown that delicate balance out of whack. Not only is it far more expensive for musicians (not to mention seasonal staffers and patrons) to drive to music festivals but musicians are having a much more difficult time flying with instruments due to increased airline fees. As an example, if a Chicago based musician wanted to play in the Colorado Music Festival the estimated fuel cost is nearly $400, a 47% increase compared to last summer.
This post touches upon one of my gravest concerns for musicians looking to earn a living as orchestral performers. In my post earlier this year (reprinted in Los Angeles’ Overture Magazine) The Real Cost of Driving to Gigs for the Freelance Musician, I demonstrated how one’s seeming profit is drastically eaten away by fuel costs and other travel expenses.
Taking musician summer festival compensation on even a cursory run through Drew’s Gig After Gas Online Calculator makes most summer gigs (outside of a select few festivals) seem like a dubious proposition for generating a profit.
If we musicians make no money doing festivals, why do we do it? I have played a lot of orchestra festivls over the years. Some have been awesome, some have been grim, but few of them have been dull, and in hindsight, I don’t regret doing any of them!
Still, it is valuable to take a few moments and break down some of the pros and cons of these summer activities. Here are a few of the major reasons why musicians play summer festivals:
1. Paid Vacation – Musicians (especially freelance musicians) often have neither the time nor the discretionary income to take an honest-to-goodness vacation, and a summer festival is therefore the closest thing that many musical folks get to taking time off. Better a working vacation than no vacation, right? More on that later…
2. Working in Paradise – As Drew discusses in his post, getting a chance to make music in a pretty place is one of the driving force behind taking summer festival work. Non-musicians may not understand this compulsion, but playing a concert in the crisp mountain air, an exotic locale, or (as I do each summer) in wacky boathouses and barns in the middle of Lake Michigan is a feeling that just can’t be replicated.
3. Filling Slow Months – Music doesn’t really….well…. pay that well! Freelance musicians and orchestral musicians in orchestras without a summer season often find themselves besotted with work in the chilly months, only to be completely and utterly unemployed in the warm months. While work may disappear for them, those pesky bills keep coming! Taking some summer work (even low-paying work) is therefore preferable to no work.
4. Recharging Creative Juices – Many musicians grow weary of the monotony of their regular work, and taking off for a few weeks in the summer allows for meeting new friends, playing under different conductors, learning new repertoire, and getting a few weeks of fresh faces and places can be like a B12 shot of creative juices, keeping a musician inspired for the entire year to come.
5. Social Reasons – Musicians tend to be social creatures, and many folks simply view festivals as a time to party down. The meager pay offered by many festivals is not so grim if viewed as beer and pizza money rather than mortgage and health care money, and many orchestra festivals become shaggy hippie affairs as musicians stay out all night partying at local joints, doing hikes, and spending time on the water.
Pros and Cons to Summer Festival Work
1. Two services a day… is that really a vacation? – I have played many summer festivals in beautiful locations, only to find myself locked in a rehearsal room morning, noon, and night. The problem with summer festivals is that they keep wanting you to do some dang work when you’re there. While you may be there for a vacation, your employers think of you more like summer staff, and even if they don’t the audience certainly does! You’re there to take care of business, and your personal enjoyment typically comes second to the job.
2. Very few days off – I played a festival in a gorgeous West Coast location many years ago. I was there for three weeks, and I got (drum roll) two whole days off! I had two services a day for nearly every other day I was out there. This, friends, is typical. How many mountains can you climb in two days? How many rivers can you canoe? Again, you’re not actually going there for vacation (right?), but having an idea of how much down time you get while at a festival is a smart.
3. Colossally bad pay – Now, not all summer festivals pay poorly. In fact, most of the gigs I’ve done in the summer have payed close to what I typically make for equivalent work in Chicago. But many festivals pay astonishingly poorly, with little to no travel compensation and a pitiful per-service rate.
Here’s an example of the latter. While this festival was quite enjoyable, even a cursory glance at the following number will have you doubting the wisdom of doing such a festival. As you can see, I lost so much money doing this festival that I could have easily taken my wife and I on a great vacation:
Per-Service Compensation: $26
Number of Services Per Day: 2
Days Worked Per Week: 6
Festival Length: 3 weeks
Total Days Off: 2
Travel Pay: $500
Distance I Traveled (Round-Trip): 5200 miles
My Mileage Costs According to 2007 Federal Compensation Rates (50.5 cents/mile): $2,626
Actual Travel Costs According to the Gig After Gas Online Calculator (71.9 cents/mile): $3,738.80
My total per-service compensation for the festival: $1,134
My total compensation including travel pay: $1,634
My net loss according to the federal mileage rate: $992 loss
My net loss according to the Gig After Gas rate: $2,104.80
Weighing the pros and cons
As I said earlier, I have played a huge number of summer festivals. Some have lined my pocket with a little cash and some have put me deeply in debt. Not being made out of money, I’ve jettisoned the latter and embraced the former, though some of my best memories come from those crazy low-paying orchestral festivals I used to do.
Is it worth it? Well, define “worth it.” I tend to be the kind of person who looks at these things as paid vacation, despite the long hours often spent. I like the change of pace, the unfamiliar colleagues, and I find that summer festivals give me creative energy and help to keep me inspired. For these reasons, I embrace them and don’t ponder the financial nuts and bolts very much.
I generally don’t look at the festivals I’ve done as income generators (though I do come home with a profit from the ones I do these days). I could easily make more money staying at home and teaching, but I enjoy the change of atmosphere and break in routine.
Justin Locke: Art of the Crazy Gig Story
Justin Locke has gracefully made the move from the hardscrabble world of freelance music into his current occupation as corporate speaker and author, and he’s got enough tales from his time in this often wacky business to keep you entertained for days. We interviewed Justin on the Contrabass Conversations podcast, which was extremely fun–check it out if you haven’t before!
Here’s a video of Justin sharing stories from his book Real Men Don’t Rehearse (available through his website):
I’ve got reams of tales of my own (many of which can be found under my Articles page), and I’ve put my more serious thoughts about where this business is headed together in my book Road Warrior Without an Expense Account. I’m currently working on a much more lighthearted book. It’s already at 300 paperback pages (!), so expect a nice chunky read when it arrives.
Best of the Blog
It’s been a great year of blogging for me personally, and I’m really excited to have reached the phase of development for both Contrabass Conversations and doublebassblog.org that I’m at currently. We’ve got a large daily readership (we were pushing 2000 daily page views for these sites plus Arts Addict during the spring) and a dedicated and engaged community for the podcast.
I really enjoy writing, and having the opportunity to both compose longer-form posts (an index of these appears on our Articles page) and make the move into writing books (both with Road Warrior Without an Expense Account and the new book of crazy gig stories I’m currently working on) is extremely satisfying.
These are some of my favorite recent posts. I hope you find a few thing that you may have overlooked in previous months. You can always use the page navigation at the bottom of each blog page to sail forward or backward in time, use the calendar in the sidebar, or check out our sitemap. Enjoy!
By the way, all these posts come from April, May, and June of this year. Geez–I write a lot! I don’t really notice until I line them up back to back…and these are only a fraction of all the posts written during this time!
The Tale of the White Jacket – I think that all men in classical music look at the concert attire worn by our female colleagues with a little bit of envy from time to time. Not that we men all want to wear heels and make-up (though some of us probably do….not that there’s anything wrong with that!), but putting on a tuxedo shirt, tails, and a tight bow tie is not exactly the most comfortable way to play a musical instrument. Though we men get to dress in comfort in many pit situations, wearing black just like the women, most of the time we’re confined to some jacket and tie combination–even in the summer! (more)
The Art of Slowing Down – Summer is when I really developed my blog in the first place, and in subsequent summers I did most of the redesigning and behind-the-scenes work. It’s also a great time to do some writing and restore those creative energies, renewing my enthusiasm for another year of teaching, performing, and writing. While I have a good time simply blogging in my kitchen (like I’m doing now!), drinking coffee and hanging out with the cats, I’ve been able to play chamber music with a dynamite group of musicians up in Door County these past several years….(more)
Ripping Off Your Teachers – When I was getting started as a freelance musician at the tail end of my masters degree, I was quaking in my boots about my future prospects. After all, I was regularly buying CDs at Borders and Barnes and Noble from former Northwestern doctoral music students. If the best they could do was retail bookstore work after getting a doctoral degree, what were my prospects going to look like? got a call for at the…. well, I’l call it the Jimbobo School of Music for the purposes of this post. I’m sad to say that this “school of music” still exists here in metro Chicago, and it’s a truly rotten operation—the perfect representation of everything that’s wrong with the private lesson “music school” system. (more)
Blogging on the Beach – I am currently at the northern tip of the Door County peninsula on the Lake Michigan side, hanging out in the the wild and rarely visited Newport State Park. Though many of the other parks up here in Door County are packed with Illinois tourists escaping the smog and stress of Chicago, this park is pretty far off the beaten path, and I am one of only a few cars parked here. I’ve got a great view of the beach, joined at the moment only by the seagulls and the mosquitos (note to self–buy better bug spray). Man, if only I could live this kind of lifestyle year-round! (more)
Twelve Survival Tips for Freelance Musicians – Over time, professional freelancers develop a set of skills quite peculiar to the profession, alternately taking on the role of long-haul trucker, delivery man, cabbie, and crisis control expert. Though they share the same basic musical skills as their more stably employed colleagues, freelancers are constantly faced with foreign environments and unfamiliar faces, and are required to execute their musical craft amid a dizzying array of unusual and often bizarre circumstances. (more)
Instrumental Junkies Part 2: Musical Scavengers – I was recently playing in a massive venue in Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center, with 5000 seats and a stage large enough to hold a 747 jet. I paid my parking fee, pulled in and unloaded, wheeling my bass and stool in my tuxedo through throngs of conventioneers in button-down shirts and sport jackets. As I passed through the crowds into the dilapidated and expansive convention center, people gazed at me as if I had a third eye on my forehead. “What’s that?” – “Where ya goin’ with that thing?” and the ubiquitous “betcha wish you played the piccolo!” line, one that I seem to hear every single time I take my bass out of the house. (more)
Here Comes the Bride – A colleague of mine got a call to play a wedding recently with a rather strange request. The bride wanted “Here Comes the Bride” played at the ceremony….but she specifically requested that the double bass play the melody! “Uh, okay…” my colleague replied. “So you must have… played the bass in high school, then?” “No,” said the bride. “Uh…. okay…..” It’s not that we bassists can’t play Here Comes the Bride, of course. But why the bass? It’s like having the tuba play revelry or taps at a military ceremony. Kind of cool but kind of… well…. unusual. (more)
Top Ten Ways That College Debt Screws Up Your Life…and How to Avoid It! – Achieving success in the classical music world (I’m defining success rather narrowly here) often requires a musician to audition for a select handful of schools that have a specific teacher on faculty with a reputation for turning out “successful” students. Unlike disciplines like engineering, business, or computer science, there are frequently only a few schools that have a consistent track record of placement for a specific instrument. Want a job? You’d better think seriously about fighting for a spot at one of those schools… even if that school costs $40,000 (or more) plus room and board each year. (more)
Instrumental Junkies: Overview – This is both a completely exhausting and strangely addictive lifestyle, and every time I try to divorce myself from it I keep getting pulled back into it. Sometimes I hate it, especially when I’m driving home from a $75 gig in a snowstorm, but when faced with a week off or a week of crappy gigging, I usually opt for the crappy gigging, even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of financial sense. Simply put, playing the bass makes me feel…well, useful. While outsiders may seem a week off from playing as a cause for celebration (after all, how many people in regular joe jobs daydream of the flexible schedule of the musician?), when this week off is a result of there simply not being enough work rather than an intentional vacation I feel myself getting antsy and feeling more than a little bit like a bum. (more)
Mac versus PC part 3: podcasting – After a few weeks spent adjusting to this new operating system and the new applications available to me, I’v discovered that I can massively cut down on the number of small but annoying tasks that always plagued my Windows podcasting workflow. This experience is strikingly similar to what I outlined for my blog workflow transition in part 2 of this series. Even though I’m basically doing the same tasks for blogging and podcasting on my new Mac set-up as I was doing on my old Windows set-up, the more seamless integration of programs and user-friendliness of the major applications has sped up my process considerably, leaving me more time to actually create content rather than futz with settings and file transfers. (more)
The Babbling Conductor – Though I am thinking of one conductor in particular for this exmple, I’ve seen this kind of phenomenon happen in many orchestras, and I believe that the behavior of the musicians described in the following paragraphs (I’m making you curious, right?) is a natural orchestral musician response to long-winded conductors. Is this a fair response? Immature? Jocular good fun? That’s for you to decide–but it is a very common occurrence in the orchestra! I actually think that a verbose conductor can be a real asset to a performance, and that it often really enhances the audience experience in the abstract; in reality, however, I become one of the squirrelly musicians I’m describing. I just can’t help myself. want to play when I’m on a gig, and any extra talk keeps me from doing the job that I was hired to do….even though I realize that this is a valuable part of the performance and something that should happen. (more)
How Taking Less Work Has Led to More Work for Me – As I spend more of my time focusing on local activities (playing, teaching, etc.) and less on driving all over the country, I’ve gotten a chance to really take in this remarkable city that I live in. What a fascinating and multifaceted place metro Chicago is! I’m currently sitting on the Midway Pleasance, gazing up at the awe-inspiring neo-gothic architecture of the University of Chicago (though it was constructed around 1900, it looks like someone ripped out a medieval European city and plopped it smack-dab in the middle of Chicago. (more)
Mac versus PC part 2: blogging – One of the main tasks I use my laptop for is blogging, and the workflow on the Mac was of primary importance to me. Though I spent the first few years of my blog ging career on a PC, I knew that over 50% of all bloggers use a Mac, and therefore I figured that there had to be some benefit. I’ve found the transition from the PC to the Mac to be an overall positive experience, though there are a few things that I miss from the PC. I am not interested in running Windows on this Mac in any form (whether through Boot Camp or Parallels), so though I know that I could install Windows and get these programs, I’m trying to find a suitable Mac replacement for these components of my blogging experience. (more)
Standing versus Sitting for the Double Bassist – Ahh, those lovely and divisive double bass issues like standing–fodder for eternal and impassioned debate on both sides of the fence. Deciding whether or not to stand while playing the instrument (or to do both depending on the context) is a pivotal decision for every single bassist, and it is the source of much controversy and confusion. Honestly, I should have my head examined for even considering tackling this thorny topic. I’m sure that even pointing out these various differences will cause a good deal of heated debate and disagreement (notice that I avoid mentioning the stance I actually use). What on Earth am I thinking? Who knows…but here it goes! (more)
Mac versus PC part 1: overview – Only a few days after writing about how everyone mocks my Acer laptop, I moved over to a shiny new MacBook with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2 gigs of RAM, with Leopard, iLife ‘08, and the regular accoutrement of Mac applications. As a former Mac user who switched over to the PC just as OSX was on the horizon, coming back to this platform is like coming back home, but to a sleek, 21st-century home outfitted with the latest gadgets. (more)
Disturbing Trends in Adjunct Faculty Employment – A recent article in the Chicago Reader (May 1, 2008 Vol. 37, No. 32) titled And All I Got Was This Lousy PhD jumped off the page as I was perusing the paper recently, and for good reason–this piece by Deanna Issacs confirms many of my frustrations and concerns regarding trends in hiring practices at many universities. I’ve written two articles on this very topic which may interest readers (the former was published in 2007 in Adjunct Nation Magazine, and the latter is part of my upcoming book Road Warrior Without an Expense Account)….(more)
In Search of the Perfect Bow – Most string players own several different bows during the course of their playing career, usually starting on a fiberglass or inexpensive wooden bow in early years of study and upgrading many times on the journey toward professional-level playing. Like strings, rosin, and other key pieces of gear, bows are a very personal and subjective item, and many string players spend their entire lives in search of the perfect bow. (more)
How Long Should a Private Lesson Last? – I’ve always been fascinated by the wide variance in lesson durations among various teachers. Many of my piano teacher colleagues hold lessons for preschoolers that last only 15 minutes, while some legendary pedagogues teach lessons that last six, seven, or even eight hours. I’ve even met some teachers who teach a student until the late hours, then give them a place to sleep, feed them breakfast, and resume the lesson for another multi-hour stretch! (more)
Everybody Mocks My Windows Computer! – As a blogger, podcaster, and all-around new media guy, I have found that most people assume that I am on a Mac. I frequently have people ask me if I’ve installed Leopard yet, how to perform a specific task in iMovie, or tips on assembling podcasts in GarageBand. This is a pretty reasonable assumption–a majority of mew media types seem to be on a Mac these days, and for good reason! Integrating audio, video, pictures, and blogging into one’s workflow is just…well, easier on a Mac. (more)
Bye Bye Basses – Hydraulic stages are both a blessing and a curse! I’ve played on them in a variety of venues, and while they’re usually a blessing for stage and pit logistics in multi-use halls, they can yield some amusing (and potentially disastrous) unintended results.I have played performances with a variety of groups in Milwaukee’s Uihlein Hall over the years, but most of these performances have been with the Milwaukee Ballet. This hall has a hydraulic stage, which is raised for full symphonic performances and lowered in the front for ballet and opera performances. (more)
Influx of Music School Funding – With ever-diminishing opportunities for music performance careers, why have so many individuals, universities, and foundations contributed funding for these ambitious new developments? Don’t get me wrong–I think that these are wonderful developments. I’ve spent all of my college years at aging and ill-equipped facilities, with ratty practice rooms, scant ensemble rehearsal rooms, terrible soundproofing, and no elevators. (more)
How Solo Part Assignments Change Your Playing – As a performer of an instrument traditionally used in multi-member orchestral sections, much of my energy and focus in rehearsals and performances is spent achieving unanimity of blend, pitch, timing, and tone with my double bass colleagues. My goal is to first amalgamate with my section mates, then to weave this cohesive sonic product with the rest of the ensemble. I love this process–this, in fact, is one of the main reasons why I play music! To me, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as being part of a well-oiled double bass machine. (more)
The Real Cost of Driving to Gigs for the Freelance Musician – A recent feature in the Chicago Tribune (Sunday, April 13, 2008 by Jim Mateja) about the actual operating costs per mile for a variety of different vehicles caught my eye–not surprising considering how much I’ve written on commuting and its effect of the livelihood of a musician. The price of gas rose 31.5 percent in 2007, which means that the average consumer (driving 10,000 miles a year) will spend between $5,510 and $9,095 to operate a 2008 model car. This figure is based on gas, oil, tires, and maintenance–parking or tolls are not included in these calculations. (more)
The Art of Slowing Down
Though this post’s title could easily be tied to a post about slow practice or something like that (which would make a good future blog post!), I’m actually referring here to the deliciously laid-back summer schedules that I’ve managed to get away with for much of my freelance career. While I have certainly had my fair share of hectic gigs in the warmer months, the past four summers (and large chunks of summers before that) have afforded me considerable opportunity for kicking back, reading some books, and just enjoying a slower lifestyle.
Summer is when I really developed my blog in the first place, and in subsequent summers I did most of the redesigning and behind-the-scenes work. It’s also a great time to do some writing and restore those creative energies, renewing my enthusiasm for another year of teaching, performing, and writing.
While I have a good time simply blogging in my kitchen (like I’m doing now!), drinking coffee and hanging out with the cats, I’ve been able to play chamber music with a dynamite group of musicians up in Door County these past several years. With more shoreline than any other county in the United States, this place is a sea lover’s dream, and the gentle breezes and pleasant solitude are the antithesis of my busy Chicago lifestyle.
Head north, take a boat….
My parents have been able to come up and spend some time in Door County these past several summers while I’ve been up here, which has been a lot of fun. My dad in particular enjoys this nautical setting (he maintains a blog on kayaking called Kayaking the Lakes of South Dakota). This summer, we took a trip up to Washington Island (requiring a ferry ride from the tip of the Door peninsula), then boarded an even smaller boat and crossed the channel to Rock Island.
Rock Island is the last island in northern Wisconsin before crossing the Michigan state line, and though it is now a state park, at one time it was owned by Chicago business tycoon Chester Thordarson. Here’s a shot of Thordarson’s old boathouse:
All the buildings were constructed with deference to Thordarson’s Icelandic heritage, and it’s quite a sight to see these grand structures on this remote island. Even in June, this part of Wisconsin can be quite cold. Temperatures hovered in the low fifties, making me shudder as I contemplated how this placed looks in December or January. People drive across the Lake Michigan ice to reach this place in the winter, and though the thought of taking a vehicle across the lake seems insane in Chicago, it makes a lot of sense up here.
After getting off the boat and hiking for a half-hour, we ended up at a lighthouse on the north end of the island, where we were greeted by a lighthouse caretaker and given a tour of the building. This lighthouse’s keeper must have had a lonely existence in this remote place on the continent.
This sign hung in Thordarsen’s bar room many years ago. I like the sentiments on it:
This bar is dedicated to those merry old souls of other days who again will make drinking a pleasure… who achieve contentment, enjoy what they drink, prove able to carry it… and remain GENTLEMEN
Sounds like Thordarsen had grown tired of bawdy drunken guests, eh?
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