Making Records

Right now the musician is locked up in a cabin in Virginia recording an album with his band, Here's To The Long Haul. He spends hours tucked away working on these recordings himself because they are are staying in a place with Pro-Tools. I find it amazing that technology has become so user friendly that even an album can be created by the band with no outside funding or help whatsoever. In fact they are even able to sell their music online by mailing several copies of their self-made albums to these people in charge of this website (I can't remember the name) that distributes their music for almost no cost.
For my fella and his band mates this is great but it also contributes to one of the biggest problems for musicians trying to make a name for themselves. With everyone capable of producing their own music and distributing it the really talented musicians, the ones that would have been picked out of a crowd by labels back in the good 0l' days, can barely be heard. When some joker with an acoustic guitar and some sappy love songs can make a record in his basement and distribute it without having to prove to anyone that he is worth listening to discovering new talent is next to impossible.
Now it is not so much those on high that decide who will and who wont be a hit as much as the screaming masses. Does this mean it is all reduced to luck or simply appealing to pre-pubescent girls? Think about the last time you heard a really good musician on the radio. Can you remember that far back? Most avid music listeners will tell you that anything worth listening to is almost impossible to find. It is out there. I guess it now has to be about patience and perserverance. These are not two things most twenty-two year olds are gratiously endowed with but he keeps trying and eventually it will all pay off.

The Importance of the Audience

Today in my British Lit class we discussed the move from the romantic period to Modernism. My professor mentioned that one of the biggest changes was a shift from focusing on the audience and finding validation for the work in their response and not giving a shit who read their work and finding validation in their writing as a piece of art. They believed it was important because it expressed something and because it was good. It didn't matter what anyone else thought.

The other day in a different class we read an article about a world famous violinist, Joshua Bell, who spent a day playing in a metro station. It brought up the same question, if no one appreciates it is it still art?

When I was younger and imagined what it would be like to date a musician I thought it would be something like being famous. Because of course all musicians play to stadiums full of people and sell t-shirts and write love songs that are secretly (or not so secretly) about you. Instead I am dating a bluegrass musician. Even if he is as successful as he could possibly be almost no one will have heard of him. He will probably never be played on the radio and there will most likely be no t-shirts and certainly no love songs. Bluegrass is sort of music for musicians in most cases these days. In that respect it is appreciated by someone but not necessarily by a traditional audience. In fact most people (including me sometimes) would find what my boyfriend does pretty boring.

So say he never gets hugely famous and not only are there no crowds but the "good" musicians never hear of him either. Will what he does still have value? They say if you are an artist you create because you can't not create. He would say that what you do has value if it's good but who defines "good". Is it the other musicians, is it the producers, or is it the audience that makes it a viable career?

On The Road Again

He left today. He will begin his fall tour in a week but left early to lay down some bass tracks on a friend's album in Asheville, NC. After Asheville he will drive to Tennessee where the rest of the band plans to meet him so they can all cram into one vehicle and begin their tour of colleges and bars along the east coast. He will be gone until the beginning of December and I miss him already, but this is the life. If you want to be a musician it does you no good to stay at home. 

  The band he is touring with is an environmentally conscious old time/bluegrass group that mostly plays functions protesting mountain top removal. For those of you who don't know, mountain top removal is basically a way of mining without a miners or tunnels and completely destroying the mountain in the process. First the land is clear cut, then explosives are used to turn what was a mountain into an enormous pile of loose dirt. Afterward giant machines come in and scoop away the soil and dig up the rock leaving the now exposed coal ready for harvest. Needless to say, there are a lot of people protesting this process and as a result the band has a lot of places to play. 

He toured with this same band last year and got the opportunity to protest inside some Bank of America buildings as well as spending some time in the swamps of florida attending workshops on environmental protest. It was a really great experience for him and  something that I am incredibly jealous of. He found it less than perfect because there really isn't a great deal of focus on music. They play all the time but for these people it is about the message. For him it is ALL about the music. He wants to make records and play shows with packed houses. It is a great experience traveling with these people but I am pretty sure this will be his last tour with them. 

Last year I received several late night phone calls from him telling me that he just felt out of place. He feels like a fraud when he is with them because of his lack of dedication. I think he is just being too hard on himself. After all, not everyone is meant to save the world with handcuffs and megaphones. Some do it with banjos and there is no shame in that.