Saturday, I will be playing to my largest audience yet. 3-4000 people. And it might be enough to open a lot of doors to opportunities and exposure I never had before. If I hadn’t played so many shows before, this one would be super exciting. Don’t get me wrong. It’s going to be spectacular and I am excited, but it’s just another gig. These people didn’t pay to see me. I’m just opening the show. But it will be the launch-pad for much greater success, to be sure.
I’ve had some decent opportunities in the past. But every time these had been undermined by other people near to me, which ultimately I am responsible for, if only for letting them into the camp in the first place…except this first time: I still have trouble shouldering the responsibility for my parents who didn’t want me to be a musician, swore an oath to never buy me an electric guitar, and cut the line between me and a record exec who wanted to sign me and release my recordings when I was 11.
But now, I have some wonderful people in my camp. Several amazing people promote my music through the web. I live in a nice place where I have my own studio, my own gym which is customized to train a singer’s muscles, my own rehearsal studio and workshop to make repairs and modifications to equipment I need. I have an album ready to be released that is my best work yet.
This is a long way from playing songs on the street, busking for change or playing coffee shops and book stores, interrupting what people went to those places for with my music hoping to make a few bucks. It is far removed from the clubs that pay nothing but herd bands on and off he stage like cattle who think that because there are so many bands that want to play that the club is entitled to not pay anyone for their effort, their art, their hard work.
Things are looking good. Such a long time coming!