In this issue:  Band in a Book: Banks of The Ohio | Key Signatures & The Four String Exercise | Gotta Manage this Gig without Losing My Soul! | Life on the Road: The Urban Cowboy Band - Part 2

Gotta Manage this Gig without Losing My Soul!

by S. K. Wallace

"Real Musicians have Day Jobs!" At least, it is the assertion of that eternal bastion of wisdom: the American bumper sticker. Of course, such a generalization is not entirely true, but many of us have to supplement (or maybe make up for an entire lack of) our rockstar incomes with less than desirable gigs: daytime or otherwise, perhaps music-related, but often not.

My current daytime gig has qualities that resemble all too closely a cop working crowd control, a prison warden, a zookeeper, among other things… (Bingo! You guessed it! I'm a public schoolteacher.) After days and weeks of overcrowded classes pushing 40 students apiece in a room built for no more than 20, with desks for 14, not enough textbooks for everybody weeks into the semester, and some other "interesting" circumstances I never bargained for, I rake up the newly fallen blanket of paperwads and spitballs at the end of the day. I wonder, "What did I just step in?" I can't help thinking, "I've gotta figure out how to manage this gig without losing my soul!"

If you've got it made in your career and have truly "arrived" with things all figured out, bravo and congratulations! [Please send me your secret, or, as a last resort, just write a book, go on "Oprah," and I'll catch you when the public school district (that can't get enough books or desks) hires you down here as a highly-paid motivational speaker plugging your new made-for-cable-TV movie. (Yes. That really happened a few weeks ago. S.K. is not making it up.)] More likely, though, from the minor irritants to the overwhelming obstacles and outrageous absurdities, there are things we'd rather not be dealing with on a daily basis and situations and people that sap our energy and leave us exhausted and utterly spent at the end of the day. From my corporate commando days as an industrial chemist, I remember a colleague's anguished statement during a particularly brutal merger, "I live in terror of losing a job I despise."

(Wow. Pause, and think on that.)

There is something terribly wrong when we're pushed beyond the point of mustering the effort to crack open the case, tune, plug in an amp, and do something that, hopefully, restores our souls and renews our minds. I reflect on the time I heard Gerald Veasley say, "Is playing worth getting up fifteen minutes early? You'll get up early to go to work at a job with people you don't like, but you won't spend a half-hour with the bass you adore!"

Neglecting one's musical soul isn't limited to the corporate world either. We musicians often find ourselves making a living in some form of music education, teaching in the classroom or in private lessons. Unless you've reached a magnificent state where you can pick and choose your students via a formal application and/or audition process, you might find yourself teaching a few (or more) tone-deaf, albeit extremely well-intended, individuals who never quite seem to be progressing anywhere no matter how hard they (and you) try.

Then there's always the no-show and/or the "no-pay." How 'bout that kid who never brings his music (or, sometimes, not even his instrument!) or worse, yet, the kid who doesn't even want to take lessons in the first place? After hours, when I've loaded all the instruments and gear into the car, am feeling the tendonitis set up in my left wrist, and am thinking, how many completely tasteless and patently wrong ways can "Autumn Leaves" or "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" be [literally and figuratively] executed? Well, two things: First, at least I am still doing something music-related and maintaining my chops and general fitness by playing while teaching even if I'm not practicing and playing for myself. Finally, there's this wise, but cynical, advice from one of my former teachers: "The bad students' money spends just as well as the good ones'." [Hmm. I hope he didn't come up with that one while I was his student.]

What about the paid performing gig we feel like we "have" to take but is unpleasant due to style, venue, audience, personnel, management, or any or all of the above? In a personal conversation, a respected bass master commented on a past gig where a particularly negative dynamic seemed to set up in the band every time they played a rather poorly attended club. He said, "You don't know... that one couple you're playing for may have spent a lot of money on a babysitter for that evening out... maybe a real personal sacrifice... You owe it to them to play your very best, if only for just one couple. The rest of the band didn't see it that way; they had a really bad attitude. I had to eventually leave that gig, because it was stealing my soul."

Whatever you have to do (or have to stop doing), don't let the gig steal your soul!

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About the author

S. K. Wallace is a freelance writer, musician, artist, and educator who plays bass and teaches violin/fiddle and guitar. Her previous articles have appeared in the August 2004, June, August, October, December 2005, and February, April, June 2006 editions of Bass Sessions®. She may be contacted at SKWBassist@aol.com.