I haven't written anything for a while, so here goes nothing. Basically, I'm a year out of music college and I'm still getting to grips with this Freelance Musician lark. This post is going to be about how I've been getting on so far.
The first thing is, although it's quite a fun and interesting job, it can be pretty hard. The easiest bit is the playing to be honest. Often this job is made more complicated by the logistics of the whole thing: starting the day in one place and finishing it somewhere completely different. Obviously there has been quite a lot of driving involved; I don't mind that so much, some don't like it, but I quite enjoy the late nights driving back from the middle of nowhere. It can make for some quite interesting stories sometimes. Experiences that you share with only late night lorry drivers and National Express coach drivers. Sometimes I wonder how people with normal jobs would cope if they had to drive for 4 hours to and from work and whether they'd be expected to perform as if they'd not been in the car for so long. I don't know.
Aside from the driving, there's setting up, packing away, carrying things, waiting around. The bits that people don't see. Secretly I quite like setting up and sound checking, but sometimes you're just not in the mood. Again, same with most people.
Not to say that it's constant of course. I get days off and stuff, but when you've been running flat out for a few weeks maybe a month on the trot, you get bored. It doesn't feel so glamorous when you do a set at Kendal Calling and the next day you're sitting in your pants in the flat catching up on all the TV you've missed over the weekend waiting for the next day where you pack the car and do it all again. I've never felt this more so than when I was in Spain for a week in April. When you're doing a gig every night of the week, you get back and it can feel like something's missing. You kick your heels and wonder what the next thing is.
A couple of name drops back there, but the same goes whether you're playing a festival set, or a background jazz gig, a show at a cool venue or a wedding in Cheshire or wherever. And again, I don't mind function gigs, I've always said that. I'm glad to be playing as I'm a pretty shit teacher. If you can earn money playing covers, that suits me better than teaching, everyone's different in that respect.
I've done some pretty exciting things since leaving college. Worked on some interesting projects, and equally found myself in some very weird situations where you just get your head down and get on with it. It is work at the end of the day. Sometimes, I think that it's important to remind yourself that it's a job because it can be quite confusing when you're on your third beer and you're laughing and joking around, but you're technically working. It's a perk, but yeah, sometimes you have to give the gig / project / arrangement the time and respect it deserves.
Going on from that, I've learnt that it's important to be professional and punctual and all the bollocks that everyone drills in to you when you start doing this full time. What they don't tell you is that it's important not to be a dick on gigs. Especially if you are spending an extended period of time with the same group of people. That could be on a tour, or a festival site for a weekend, maybe even just in a van for a day. Some of the nicest people that I know are musicians, I don't think that that's a coincidence. You can probably earn a living in music being a dick, but rest assured, word travels pretty fast and people will be disappointed if they see your name on an email sometimes.
I've rambled on for a bit, but I think that the most important thing is that I'm enjoying this. I wouldn't do anything else. Obviously, being a musician is notoriously unstable financially and emotionally, but I think that although there are times when you're waiting for the next gig to come or worrying about where the rent is going to come from, that stuff is balanced out by playing some really interesting music to people who really care about what you're doing. It really is the case that when you're up, you're up and when you're down, you're thinking about becoming a lorry driver because you like driving and you're up most of the night anyway. I wouldn't change it for the world. Maybe if you asked me again in 3 years time I might have a different answer; but for now, I'm having a really great summer with a variety of different situations and styles to play in. I'm not homeless yet.
Al
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