economics, reputation, and the musical life

At this point the pandemic has produced a closed circle of thoughts in this worker, beginning March 15, 2020: Get me out of here, gee but it’s great to be back home, I wonder what it would be like to venture out again, let’s give it a try, oh God I’m sick and coughing get me home, home is pleasant, home is a little too pleasant, home is boring, I miss playing music and connecting with strangers, get me out of here. A thing I should probably be ashamed to admit is that, during lockdown, I missed doing interviews and gabbing about myself. It does offer potential rewards beyond ego-stroking. Having to explain your own motives can sharpen your thinking, and the perspective of sympathetic non-musicians on your work, past and present, can be illuminating.

I just wrapped up a long interview with a distinguished elder of music journalism, and you can read the results a few weeks down the line. By long I mean: somewhere near five hours on Zoom, plus an hour or so of emailing. An investment on both ends but mostly his. The gentleman was not only distinguished and sympathetic, he was informed and quick-witted. We enjoyed each other’s company, I think. It interests me, looking back on the chat, that the line between us sometimes went fuzzy on the subject of money. “How much did you spend on this record?” “How much of your income comes from road work?” “How did you attract so many high-reputation players to the new record - did they lower their rates for you?” And various questions regarding my career “trajectory” that also had an economic hue — like the presumption that rational, self-interested forward thinking is involved in imagining and planning future music projects. Sort of? Not exactly? Still, that’s an entirely reasonable assumption, and all of these questions are, if a little pointed, also reasonable to ask.

I get the feeling in talking to non-musicians that figuring out where to land, on the spectrum between music-making as an occupation as economically grounded as any other and music-making as a priestly, passion-centered calling that plays out in a realm above grubby calculating self-interest, isn’t at all simple or intuitive. Evidently inclining to the second view is a Finnish popular music academic I had a recent and somewhat testy exchange with. “I’m very skeptical of claims that incentives spur creativity,” he wrote me, in response to a question about how twentieth-century broadcasting has influenced songwriters’ work. “Is he nuts?” I thought. How many areas of life aren’t influenced, even primarily influenced, by economic incentives? It does strip the joy out of music appreciation to focus on who paid Beethoven to do what, or on the apparent injustice of people as highly skilled as J.D. Crowe doing straight jobs while no-account jackasses like fill-in-the-blank eat catered food in private planes. However, you can get fruitlessly lost in these thoughts without access to specific data which, generally speaking, the music business works hard to keep out of our grasp — hence the sorts of questions I listed above, as asked me by my gentleman. “How many records do you sell on average?” he actually asked me, and I actually answered. I may come to regret this.

Once, at a Cannibal Corpse show, I found myself looking at the doughy forty-somethings doing their Cookie Monster yowling and thinking about what they got paid and whether an easier line of work was perhaps not available for the sum. I estimated the audience size and the artist net after expenses such as promoter percentage and agency commission, multiplied by 100 (the number of shows in a year), and divided by five, which I think was the number of people on stage. “$70,000 per annum, before taxes!” I thought. It was more pleasant doing this mental math than listening to the music. But as soon as I escaped the racket and stepped onto the sidewalk, it hit me how ill-grounded my math was, and how equally likely it was that at least one of the guys on stage earned three times as much as I had estimated — or half. The privacy of contracts and private patronage are just two factors that keep us from knowing.

I have one son who is above-averagely rational, good at math, and interested in money. This grants me an ongoing connection with a mindset that looks at music as a rational, economic endeavor, and in doing so sometimes hits a wall. I have another son who plays music professionally with an up-and-coming group, making very little money at it. “Why is he doing that?” son A asks me about son B. Not long ago we had a conversation about the layout of the current American music-biz landscape — touring, promotion, intellectual property rights — and the incentives and carve-outs of the various actors — club owners, festival promoters, management, booking agencies. We talked about how son B’s low wages were justified (temporarily) by realism about what the others in the band were earning (very little) and also about what the band’s future prospects looked like (very good). “I’ve learned more about this business in the last 10 minutes of conversation than I’ve learned in the last 30 years,” said A. Well, I don’t have anything like a scholarly perspective, but I have a good grasp on the frame, based on how it feels from inside it.

Since the era of feudalism ended, and the Schumanns and Brahmses were thrown into the marketplace to fend for themselves, fame and wealth have entered into the musical life as potential outcomes and therefore as potential goals. Obviously, the sort of fame that keeps you from walking into a diner, and the kind of wealth that lets you buy an apartment in Manhattan, don’t enter into the lives of over 99% of musical workers. But the fraction of us who do achieve that much economic power creates a Jupiter-like distortion of the field. In our present-day field: young craftspeople like my son make crazy sacrifices with no assured end; businesses, well aware of the “passion” narrative (“I’m in it for the sheer love of it, wheeee!”) and the related willingness to work cheap or even pay to work, routinely demand those crazy sacrifices; music fans routinely apply economic presuppositions to their evaluations of singers, writers, and bands. How is it that less-famous person X comes to interact professionally with famous person Y? If you’re as good as you seem, why aren’t you more famous? You can’t possibly be wealthy, so how specifically do you go about making a living year after year, and how do you make sure that everything won’t collapse in the next one? There’s a good deal of confusion threaded into questions like these.

In a better world, all of our music would be taken in without anyone asking these questions ceaselessly, or idly musing as I did during the Cannibal Corpse show, which, though only 45 minutes long, seemed to go the length of a Blue Note box set. That world wouldn’t be better for the millions of listeners who get added pleasure from knowing that their partisanship puts them inside a social phenomenon that magnetizes a large and fervent paying crowd to a revered, iconic entertainer. Just better for mopes like me who would much prefer a line of communication with listeners unfettered by distracting calculations. We’re sincerely trying to create a calculation-free zone here — in today’s money-mad world, that’s a great value that music offers, an escape room, a place of sensual delight or sacred contemplation.

That, as it happens, is the selfsame zone that we create for ourselves, here inside our collegial frame. “Come to the picking party tonight,” a friend texted me last year, “Mike Judge is going to stop by, as well as one of the Foo Fighters.” “I can come,” I texted back, “but I don’t care who else comes as long as they can play okay.” I think I wrote that out loud, so to speak, to remind myself that, although the name-dropping added some prospective tension to the situation as I imagined the party ahead, I shouldn’t be thinking about it. There’s an official in-group philosophy: whatever handicap your economic power and reputation grant you in non-musical life, that ends as soon as the music starts. At that point, all that matters is the singing and playing — the communicating with one another. Moreover, the official decorum in groups that integrate non-famous and famous musicians is that either a) we treat each other with ordinary human consideration, conversing naturally and non-strategically, or b) the famous ones go even farther, self-awarely extending a tad more consideration to the non-famous, expressing kind interest in their lives and thoughts and so forth. When these unwritten rules are breached, and people start throwing their weight around and acting weird, the party is over.

I’m in a position to notice the little courtesies of my economic betters, since there are so many of them. When I’m backstage bantering with a better known artist, or picking the bluegrass with someone of eminence (whether they’re bluegrassers or not), it unfailingly gives me a wonderful feeling when they ask about my family or invite a musical opinion. Thank you, sire, the children are prospering! Music-making tends to create a special zone outside of social reality, within which we’re not segregated by income or public reputation; we fall into our roles as members of the same guild, approximate peers. I try, with God knows what level of success, to behave in a natural human way back to them. Last weekend my friend and I bumped into a lady at a coffeeshop whose music I’ve loved since the late 1980s. Since it was the night of the Grammys, we small-talked about how it was hard to get snacks at the Staples Center, then talked for a moment about our common love of dogs. When I walked away, I thought about how strange and great it was to be a musician, a field in which two sixty-year-olds who have never met can greet one another amicably and palaver like college chums. Neither of us said, “What was your nomination for? Didja win?” And I didn’t say, “Holy fuck, is it good to meet you — why, I have a long imaginary relationship with you!” We talked about dogs and snacks.

More name-dropping — not all these encounters go so well, on my end. Last year there was a multi-act tribute to the late John Prine, and Emmylou Harris was on stage just after me. She and I have brief interactions every 15 years or so, and I always ruin them somehow. This time, I walked off stage and she said, “That was really good.” Isn’t that a nice remark? Who cares if it’s even completely sincere, it’s a nice gesture; but all I could do was to hastily mumble, “Yeah, it’s a great song,” deflecting her compliment with feigned carelessness. Yeah, yeah, Emmylou, shows what you know, the song was good not me. Fifteen years ago I said something very similar to her, and fifteen years before that, I won’t even go into…

Forget hierarchies. Think instead about the make-believe-land of equality. I’d like to invite people who don’t make music into the musicians’ created zone of economic not-mattering. It clears up a lot. What is Bruce Springsteen doing, fraternizing with Joe Grushecky? How does Joe acclimate to such validation from Bruce, and by the way, doesn’t Bruce understand that this is just a fellow we go see at bars and chat with after the set? In order to make good music, we put all those anxieties aside, at least while we’re in the room with one another trying to make it happen. If you put music at or near the top of your list of values, then the not-mattering, the peer-to-peer mentality, is more of a reality than the income and reputational differentials, which could change, even reverse, in a very short time. The music outlasts the people.

I’m putting out this record in April where there are a lot of Springsteens to my Grushecky! How did I get them to be on the record, and what did I pay them? 1. I called them and asked, 2. as little as I thought I could get away with. No mystery there. Their participation might imply — probably does imply — some appreciation of my skill (a validation that means a lot to me). No doubt they didn’t mind being paid either. Despite what academics might think, music doesn’t just glide along on magic, goodwill, and charity.

My unasked-for advice to you, dear listener, with regard to the spectrum I mentioned, is to avoid the tail-ends in order to get the clearest take on what’s happening within music. Money matters, a bit. It’s good at setting things into motion. Getting Emmylou Harris on a boat, getting people to sit for three hours without a snack. I certainly need money just to get off the couch and go to work, and my sweet son is going to need quite a lot more if he’s to have a family like I did, and get off of a filthy futon in Queens. Not that there aren’t many things I’d happily do with zero financial incentive. In fact the list is very, very long. Drive to Woodstock to have coffee with Annette Peacock. Fly to Vienna to talk for an hour with Gerhard Kubik. Sing for 14 hours straight at a charity fundraiser for homeless people. That’s the problem, though — do one or two of those things and before you know it you’re so deep in the red you have to pray for 10 corporate whoring opportunities just to dig yourself out.

The money someone will pay you to perform, to be blunt about it, is a useful indicator of — not what you’re “worth,” perish the silly thought, but how many people within about 60 miles of that place are interested in your act and how much they’ll pay to see it. That more people are more interested in seeing other people’s shows is a fact I’ve gradually gotten comfortable with, mostly because it’s out of my control. But if I’m making considerably more or less money than last year, that is a fact that interests me very much. What here needs adjusting? I want my life and work to be on a progressive path, and on the path, I’m competing only with myself.

Once I’ve started playing, I’m not thinking about what I’m being paid — and I hope you’re not either. I also hope that, after the show’s over, you continue not thinking about it. I hope you don’t fret about my meager income or the alleged injustice of my not being better known. It doesn’t take much reflection to understand, as I believe most musicians do, even the rich and famous ones, that status and income don’t correlate — at all — to talent or worth. I’m not saying that self-interestedly, because of my rank (honest!). Do you think the best restaurant at the airport is the one with the longest line? That Harlan Coben writes the best books and Herman Melville wrote some of the worst? Be serious. When I was a kid, I idolized a lot of people who drove around and played for small groups in small rooms. Now I’m one of them — surprise! (If my next release sells 8 million, by the way, I’m buying a ranch in Santa Monica and revising all these opinions.)

It’s hard to sort through some of these issues. Keeping some prestige and mystique around oneself is useful. Easier just to dodge the econ talk politely. Dye your hair black, jump on stage, show your incredible hysterical love for music, crawl off to the promoter and sign your W9, take your miserable check, and be on your merry way. But since I get these repeated questions from journalists, whether delicately or pointedly, and since money’s on all our minds, so much as to cloud thinking, I wanted to give my…two cents? Aren’t my thoughts worth more? Anyway, I invite you to let music carry you off into higher realms where princes are eye to eye with paupers.