Took a survey from the Future of Music people; they wanted to know how us independent (i.e., non-record company controlled) musicians were doing in the New and Modern World. This independent musician is not doing well, thank you. How much money have I made in royalties from radio stations playing my songs? None. From movie and TV placements of my songs? None. From ringtones? None. (Nice idea though.) From record sales? From the new album, not enough—yet—to make back production costs. (That’s true of most of the Big Boys, too, but my production costs have a lot fewer digits than theirs.) From online sales? Some, but not enough for CDBaby to send me a check. From performances? Twice as much as last year, but still not enough to make even one mortgage payment. From session work? I have actually done some, but it was as a favor to friends, and no, I never got paid or asked to be. From teaching music? None. (That New and Modern World wants you to have a degree in that stuff—and one in teaching, too—before they’ll let you teach.) Blog? Yes, I have one of those—and 62 people from Latvia read it and I don’t know why. And no, I’ve never made any money off that, either.

The question is regularly asked on writers’ sites, “Would you still be writing if there was no money in it?” I can answer that question easily, because there is no money in it and I’m still doing it.

Money isn’t everything, of course. (It just helps with the food, shelter, &c.) I decided some time ago I couldn’t live without writing, and so I write; the stuff has to get exposed to people somehow, because there’s no other way to tell whether it’s good or not—and I end up performing it because no one else will. Everything else developed from there. I recorded an album to get the stuff more exposure (and now have three of them); I formed my own record company and publishing company because no one else was interested, and just might know enough now to be able to help somebody else. And the blog was just to keep track of what I was doing—and maybe to hope that someone reading it might have a shorter journey by not having to make the same mistakes I did. (It’s also great practice writing.)

So fortune eludes me, fame I may already have some of, and both are extraneous to the need to write and to get better at it. It does mean that I have to have a job doing something else to take care of the food, shelter, &c. And three years into the economic collapse, I have no idea what that is. It is apparently not what I’ve done in the past. At this point, I’ve got five city-manager applications in the pipeline, and I’m not seriously expecting to hear good things from any of them (though I’ll know for sure by the end of the month). After I’ve gotten rejection letters from all of them, I think it’ll be time to go do something else. What? No idea. I guess that’s part of the journey, too.

All the foregoing discouraging words are at least in part a reflection of the general discouragement that’s going on worldwide. And the more people get upset, and the more upset they get, the nastier they get about it, it seems; it’s a little like watching a progressive epidemic of rabies. I suppose that’s the general theme I’m ending up with in the “Samba with the Llamas” song: yup, things look bad; nope, they do not make sense (that’s why the lyrics are essentially nonsense with political overtones); all you may be able to do is stay away from it so as not to get infected. And you might as well dance. No, it’s not a solution—but as the Hindu deity Ganesha (the elephant-headed guy) maintained, if dancing doesn’t make the situation better, at least it makes you feel better. Myself, I don’t dance—but I’d be happy to write and play the dance music. And I’ll feel better.

Joe