Is It Worth It...

Another question...this one came via Twitter from Ryan. I play in a rock group, Lovers and Liars and Ryan had been asking some questions about alot of things...Did we have an agent or manager? Did we like them?...alot of general questions about "Band stuff"...and then he sent me these next couple of questions that really made me sit back at my desk and wonder...

Is all of it worth it? The long road trips, all the money that gets spent, all the hard work? Cuz I mean that is what I want. Life in music.

Hmmmm....how do you answer that? Is a career in real estate worth it? What about a management career at a local restaurant? Or a teaching position at an elementary school?

I guess the idea of something being "worth it" depends on what your goals are, what your definition of success in that particular field is, what your driving motivations are...Are you looking for fame? Fortune? Notoriety? A comfortable living? The house in the suburbs with a couple of kids and a two car garage?

I think that if you apply these questions to life in general and not just to life in music you'll begin to see the bigger picture.

Whatever career field you pick, whatever life you design for yourself...you have to set some clear goals...some markers that in fact let you know if something is worth it...and if you don't hit those markers by a certain point, maybe it isn't worth it.

A few years ago I quit playing "full time" ...whatever that means...and took on personal training, as well as continuing to take the gigs that I wanted to play...but only the ones that I wanted. You see, I had gotten to a point that the direction my music career was headed wasn't worth it to me. I had played professionally for 7 or 8 years, had a college degree, was well respected by my peers, had a wonderful wife and a baby on the way....but i was MISERABLE with the gigs i was having to take on to keep the ship afloat. I prayed daily that I would wake up the next morning and HATE the drums...just so I could have some peace of mind...some confirmation that I needed to move into another field of work. But the love stayed, and so the drive inside of me stayed, and so I had to find a way to make it work.

I know I know...in every field you have to do some work that you don't care for...problem was, most of the work i was doing sucked. i hated it. So I decided to change things...in other words, my dreams weren't worth it if that was the path I had to take to achieve them...*GASP, HORROR, SOBS, CRIES OF AGONY*...You mean give up on your dreams?! That's not what I said...but if you're beating a dead duck, chances are that's not going to make it fly.

If you have a career in music, more times than not it will require some travel. If you're single, no biggie...if you're newly married and she understands what you do, no biggie...if you have a kid...well, things start to look differently. you start to evaluate just how much time you're having to spend out of town...how much am I getting paid for this? And how long are we gone? And why did I miss my son's first steps for this?

And if you have any type of career, especially if you start your own business venture, you're going to have to invest some money...no biggie if you're single, it's your money to spend. No biggie if you're newly married and she understands things, it's ya'lls money to spend...but when the kid comes and there's a family involved...again, things just begin to look differently.

The point I'm trying to make is that at sometime you're going to re-evaluate what it is you're trying to accomplish and you're going to have to ask the same questions that Ryan was asking me...Is it worth it? All of the time, the money, the hard work? Is the end result worth all that you've invested?

So here's the criteria I judge my career with now...like or leave it, it's just what I've come up with to help me make sure my life stays in some sort of manageable balance...

1) Is the monetary compensation enough for my family and I to comfortably live on?
2) Do I have the ability to say "No" to a gig?
3) Am I the one that gets a say so in when, where, and how much I get paid when I play?
4) Am I in enough control of my schedule that I can slot off times for family without interfering with any work or putting us in the poorhouse?
5) Do I like what I'm doing?
6) Does it look like the picture in my mind?
7) Is it allowing full use of my talents?

These are just a sample list...different situations sometimes have different questions, but these seem to be the core values that resonate with me in any given situation.

And about hard work...If you're working hard at something, it needs to be worth it. Anything I do I put 110% into it...painting my studio, practicing, training my clients, recording, playing a show with my band...you name it and I'm going to try to give it my all...otherwise, why are you there.

For years I didn't ask the right questions...and I regretted it...so now I always ask.

And yea, Ryan, it's worth it....if it looks like the picture I have in my mind (which it is more and more everyday) then yes, it's worth every bead of sweat, every penny invested, and every minute you're on the road.

Don't know if that's an answer, but it'll have to do...

The How and Why of it all...

One evening not to long ago I was driving home from a gig and I decided to take stock of how the night had gone. It was a nice restaurant in town, outside but the weather was just right, and we had a decent sized crowd. So I began to critique my playing…how I played this groove really well, incorporated that new sticking I’d been working on into several places, needed to work on my up tempo samba…then it hit me. There had been three other musicians onstage with me and all I remembered about the gig was what I had done, how I had sounded. As I dug a little deeper I discovered that I couldn’t remember one musical moment between me and another one of the players, or for that matter anything they had played at all. I could only remember what I had done. Then I felt it…remorse. I mean, I wasn’t going into depression over it, but it kinda’ve felt like I had missed seeing my best friend when he had come through town. It annoyed me, like fiberglass under the skin. I had had a well educated conversation going on around me and I had chosen to yell and scream (figuratively) to get my own voice heard.
I began to ask myself ,”Self, how could this happen? Why did you let this happen?”. I turned those questions around in my head for a while and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. The answer to my question was actually found within those two questions (yea yea, so I got philosophical on myself). I saw that two words in those questions could be used to explain it…the “how” and the “why” of it all. What I mean is, we as musicians (yes, drummers are musicians too…reminds me of a time I was on a flight with a band and the onboard magazine had a bunch of drummer jokes on the last page and the band proceeded to tell them to me, one at a time, for the next few hours…it was a really long flight…), need to not only analyze and understand how a person plays something but also why they play it. Was it a reaction to a soloist, a prompt for the chorus, or simply an effort to create a musical rhythmic background for the rest of the group?
The “how” really has to do with the mechanics of playing (the stuff us nerdy guys who love to practice spend off nights doing…). We as drummers spend countless hours listening to and picking apart what our favorite players are doing. We watch instructional videos to learn the correct stickings and proper technique. Then, for sheer love and enjoyment, we practice them and try to incorporate them into our vocabulary. A lot of private lessons are geared towards the “how” of drumming and this isn’t a bad thing. It is absolutely necessary to be comfortable and well versed on your instrument and in the knowledge of styles needed to perform our job correctly. But then there’s the “why”…
The “how” is a much easier question to answer because it’s set in stone. If one was to ask Steve Gadd to explain the groove on “Fifty-Ways to Leave Your Lover” or “Late in the Evening”, he could not only explain it and show you how, he could write it out, as he’s had to do countless times already. There is a specific sticking he used as well as an exact volume and area on the drums that he played to get those very distinct grooves and sounds. But why did it work so well? Sure, he could tell you his opinion of why it worked, but the fact is that if another drummer had recorded those same songs, they would have played them very differently (I’m praying I won’t be struck with lightning for even suggesting someone else could have recorded those songs near as well as he did). The reason is because every drummer has a different “why” to each situation, and the only wrong one is the one that’s not about the music but about the player and their agenda.
I was sick a while back and visited a new, very young doc who looked to be fresh out of med school. During my exam he used all of his new, fancy and impressive words to tell me what was wrong and I left his office extremely confused. Was it terminal? Would I ever be the same? What were these prescriptions for and why did they smell funny? He had been taught how to use his big words, but he had neither the experience nor the practical knowledge of why he would use them. On the other hand, my older family doc had learned how and why to use his twenty dollar words (as I call them). I always left his office with a complete understanding of the situation. He knew that doctor talk was supposed to be used with doctors and not with drummers. He never sought to impress me with his knowledge of medical terminology because he knew that wouldn’t be appropriate for solving the problem at hand.
To fully comprehend why a musician plays certain things we must immerse ourselves in the music, and that means listening. I’m ashamed to say that it’s only been in the past few years that I’ve come to the complete understanding of the importance of listening. The only catch is we can’t listen like drummers. The next opportunity you get, put on your favorite album, whether it’s jazz, rock, blues, or anywhere in between, and instead of listening for the drums, listen to everything BUT the drums. It’s hard at first. You’ll have to resist the temptation to air drum that massive fill into the chorus but trust me, the cold sweats will eventually subside and you’ll begin to hear a world of other things. Pick apart every instrument and be aware of what they’re doing. Then, slowly bring the drums back into the picture and begin to see why the placement of the bass drum works so well or why that massive fill was appropriate. Was it a response to the soloist or a cue for the bridge?

The great thing about answering the “why” of the music is that virtually any opinion about why a player played a particular part is right. There are no wrong answers as long as your answer is derived from the music itself!