What’s Next

I've discussed this before, but I need to revisit this subject for my own benefit.

What's Next? asked the man.

For a bit of background, I should point out that I am or aspire to be both a songwriter and a performing musician. The two roles cross over and are intertwined, yet there are aspects of them that are separate. For instance, I can spend large parts of my days writing songs and working up demos of them. This involves little or no interaction with other musicians except any time I may decide to use one for a demo, such as having a singer sing on one. But this is about how much I want to gig, or play out.

If you've read my last post, I talked about the need to get out there and play. Thinking about that, the next question is, "how much?" The reason for asking this now is because it can be very easy to go too far, or try too hard to fill my time with gigs and possibly be disappointed. What I am discussing here is purely theoretical at this point.

I have a friend who is a professional keyboard player and he plays with a number of different bands. Since it is his living, he gigs nearly constantly, though he tells me it's not enough and he could do more. Sometimes, I think about how cool that would be, to hit the road for a couple or few weeks at a time, gig nearly every night, and just play with great musicians. (In fact, he plays with bands that are the same style as I love, so that makes the idea even more intriguing.)

On the other hand, I have a really great life right now. While I enjoy going places, I don't enjoy traveling very much (I'd much rather be there than get there, in other words). After a while, I often find myself missing the comforts of home, all my stuff, etc.

I also don't want to be out late, away from Lori, every night. She has a "square job," and can't stay out late on school nights. Unfortunately, her getting up and leaving in the morning usually also gets me up, putting me behind on sleep if I was up late the night before. I try to make up for that during the day, but that hasn't worked as well as I need.

Even though I've had no offers yet to play with any bands regularly because I haven't gotten myself out there (again, see previous post), I think it's worth having an idea of what my goal is so when offers do come, I know what I want to take on. At the same time, I'm not 100% sure what I want. I haven't gigged terribly much, so it's possible that I'll love it so much that I will want to do it every night, but it's also possible that I'll hate it and not want to do it at all.

The Answer is Very Simple

I need to try it and see.

Really. That is it. I have some ideas about how much gigging I want to do, but how much I end up actually doing, if it were completely up to me, I don't know. As I said, there is a part of me that thinks I would love to do tons of gigging. I had thought that the time in my life for that was passed. But, I have been thinking about it a lot lately, so maybe I'm more open to the idea than I was a few years ago.

Or maybe I'd be happy to just have a gig a week or so, enough to be regular, but not so much as to be out all the time. The only way for me to find out is to try, and to be cautious about how much I'm doing. Some of the concern I'm having is because I often don't realize how I feel about something until after it's over. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, "take how much will kill me, and back it off just a little bit." The other side of this is who the gigs are with. I might be open to constant gigs with a blues band, but a country band, not so much. What I've written here is considering it from the point that the opportunities were with a band I wanted to play with a lot because of my interest in the music, not because they might make it big or they pay me a lot.

P.S. Bonus points if you know where the titles come from.

Posted 2009 08 10 at 4:53 AM

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