Question 1:
What would advice would you give your younger self about pursuing music?
1] Practice,
practice, and then practice some more.
2] Study
music business as well as music.
3] Start a
database of everyone you meet: fans, musicians, music business people, anyone
remotely connected to you and your music. You will be amazed ten years later
who ends up helping you. I got my first distribution deal because a friend from
college chatted up a music distributor on a flight to Los Angeles.
4] It’s not
all about you—be a fan of other musicians and help them out on their journey.
Question 2:
As a vocalist, I’ve always been confused and fascinated when singers such as Beyoncé,
Katy Perry, Bob Dylan, etc. refer to “selling their souls”, to the music
industry. Since you’ve been through the industry, what really does that mean?
And as a vocalist, if I ever did get a record deal, is that something I’d have
to face?
I think it means that they gave up
something very important to them in order to further their career. Sometimes
they had to compromise their music and not do what they really wanted to do
musically, sometimes they had to ignore their personal lives to tour and record
and move ahead, and in the worst cases they actually had to offer sexual favors
in order to get the deal—this happened to a friend of mine.
Artists now are much more
business-savvy and informed than they were when I was a young artist, so they have a decent idea of what’s in store when they pursue a music career. The Me Too movement has
made it more difficult for music business people to sexually exploit artists.
But artists need to stay aware and informed-- read everything you can about the music
business as well as reading about the journeys of other artists and how they
made strides and overcame obstacles early on. Also, learning time management and
stress management techniques is critical, so you don’t burn out or feel like you've lost your soul.
Question 3:
What is probably the best decade of music, (60’s, 70’s, 80’s, so on,), to refer
to as an artist? Or to get inspiration from?
I like the
50s, 60s and 70s: The 50s beatniks
brought poetry to music in the 60s, and the hippie movement of the 60s brought
an experimental atmosphere to music: tempo and key changes in songs were
accepted, unusual chord progressions and melodies were welcomed. This combined
with the great melodies from the Beatles and the Motown artists and writers and
many others made for some wonderful music. In the late 60s and throughout the
70s the singer-songwriter movement brought deeper lyrics from artists like Joni
Mitchell and Jackson Browne.
