Don't worry, I'm not going to quit playing music! (Which, strangely enough, means that I'm "Keeping my Day Job".)
No,
this is a shift in my habits of thought; sort of a self-help, Anthony
Robbins/Deepak Chopra motivational thing brought about by recent
developments in Kerrville, Fredericksburg, Houston, Oklahoma, and on
the road between them all. It feels very much like a change of
direction, but it's more like a huge acceleration in the direction I've
been traveling all my life.
The Road I've Been On
The
first underlying principle is this; when I'm completely occupied with
the trivial, I can't possibly focus on my long-range goals.
Sounds
obvious, right? The challenge is to put something like a van-repair
bill into the "Trivial" category. After all, if I can't make it to the
show, everything stops, and I'm back to "Would you like fries with
that?". This is big. It's in my face, and I had better do something
about it NOW. It also tends to happen a good bit, and I don't make the
kind of money I did when I was a welder, or a Radio Station manager.
Here's
where my attitude comes in to play. I have to decide who Tony Barker
is - do I define myself as "a guy with a problem", or am I a musician
that's not going to let anything stop him? Am I going to assess the
situation, evaluate my resources, and deal with it, or is this going to
be that one thing that finally breaks me? The answer - and even some
of my ability to deal with it - lies in my mental habits.
I am
fortunate in that I have a friend that's a great mechanic. He helps me
out on a regular basis by charging me less than his regular rate, and
allowing me to "pay out" the labor (God bless you, David). He does
this because he's a great guy, but also because he knows that I won't
always be ass-scratchin' broke. How does he know it? Because I knew
it first. He is a great guy, but he's not going to make this kind of
effort for someone that's constantly whining on a barstool about his
rotten luck, how somebody else is to blame, and how the auto
manufacturer is such a rotten, no-good....
Don't get me wrong, I
do my share of whining (just ask David!). It's just that because of my
early training, and some interesting reading (Google Robbins and
Chopra), I blow off steam, and then get back to work. It's a habit I
got from my mom and dad, and I believe it's the difference between
getting sympathy and getting help.
"You want sympathy?"
Here's
a quote from my dad, "You want sympathy? It's in the dictionary
between 'shit" and 'syphllis'." Sounds harsh, doesn't it? Kinda
funny, but brutal. That was a hallmark of my dad. Even when the
recipe called for big, nasty servings of The Truth, he managed to
sweeten it with enough comedy to make it palatable. (God bless him,
too.) As kids, my brother and I weren't allowed to have "problems".
He said it was a dirty word, and we weren't permitted to use it.
Challenges, opportunities, we could have those all day. (In fact, if
we ran out, he'd find some for us. He was real helpful like that.)
The
lesson was that when we presented him with [the "P" word], that meant
that we were done thinking - that we had given up. It was now up to
him to deal with the loose bicycle chain, the bully down the street, or
how you could possibly divide 9X by three. Once we had demonstrated
that we were still in the game, we had all the help we needed, but he
wasn't about to unleash a couple of quitters on society with his name
on 'em! (This is a strategy that goes over extremely well in the
workplace, and in fact it's why he made the effort. "Your boss doesn't
want to solve your problems, that's what you were hired for!")
The Change
This
basic idea - that what happens to me is up to me - has sustained me
through some pretty tough times. Like all of us, I've had the rug
jerked out from under me a few times, and I was so proud of my ability
to get back up that I never noticed that I was in the same place when I
did get back on my feet. Then a cool thing happened to me that brought
home some of the same lessons I'd had before, and it started this chain
of events that is still unfolding in amazing ways.
Tammy and I
were working the Stage Crew for the Kerrvile Wine and Music Festival.
My guitar Hero Monte Montgomery was headlining (I have a GREAT story
about how cool he was when things were going VERY badly for him, but
I'll save that for another blog post), and after the show he let me
play his guitar! I have played expensive instruments before, but I
could never figure out why someone would spend thousands of dollars on
a guitar. Now, I do have a craftsman's appreciation for a well-made
tool, but I had always been left with the impression that the main
value of all that value was to brag about how much money you spent on
your instrument.
This was different. I instantly played so far
above my ordinary abilities that it seemed like I was transported to
the level of Monte himself. Notes seemed to leap out of the
instrument; sounds that were only in my head came pouring out. Going
back to my own guitar was a tragedy that I'm still not over.
From
that moment, I have put in my head the idea of acquiring a Monte
Montgomery Signature Edition Alvarez Yaori guitar, model number MMY-2.
It's an actual goal, and I am going after it. My hippie friends call
it "putting it out there in the universe". My motivational speaking,
self-help teachers call it "visualization". My pastor (who is also a
bad-ass guitarist) calls it "putting my prayer request before God". I
feel that it is all of the above, and furthermore, I feel this; the van
is now in the background. I'll pay David the hundred bucks I still owe
him, then get after the main task - being a guy that owns a really nice
guitar.
This involves some shifts in my thinking - a different
approach to gigs, getting back into the studio, actually changing my
mind - from what it was doing, and into doing something else. I
started working towards my new goal, and then another wild set of
circumstances comes up - the Windows On Texas Showcase in
Fredericksburg. Among the many, many cool things that happened there,
one lesson became crystal clear; in order to step up and become a
Serious Player in the Texas Music Game, I'm going to have to ante up,
big time. Promoters, publicists, record labels, they all have a GIANT
stack of CD's on their desks made by artists that are looking for the
same thing that I am, and one way to get noticed is to buy attention.
This is not a new thought for me - one of the songs that will be on the
next CD is called...
Life's A Game. It's a Dollar a Point. Go.
It's
like buying a house; the bank wants a down payment - not because they
need the money (well, not normally), but because they want to know that
you can come up with it. They need to know that you're capable of
earning and keeping a couple of thousand dollars, and they need to know
that you're invested in the deal. The game is rigged - no surprise
there. I've always known that you can buy a hit - look at the history
of Payola scandals in Radio - l just thought that if I worked hard
enough, I could get around a lot of that. To a certain extent, I have,
and will continue to do so, but at some point I'll HAVE to surround
myself with a team of professionals. This adds a new dimension to the
Guitar goal - now the number that I'm chasing is closer to fifteen or
twenty thousand dollars. I heard Jack Ingram speak at a conference in
Houston, and he said that he's now opening for Big Name folks and
playing for 20,000 people, because of his team. He said that when, God
willing, he's the headliner for that size venue, it won't be because
he's any better, it'll be because his team of promoters, publicists,
and other professionals have all done their jobs well.
So. Twenty thousand dollars. This ought to be interesting...
- Tony Barker. 11:19 AM
This
blog is, for the most part, a true and accurate account of my journey
in the music business. I do, however, reserve the right to expand and
expound, and otherwise make stuff up completely. Your mileage may vary.
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