The Musician's Superpower

Playing live might be the last place we hold the keys to the castle

(At 3rd and Lindsley in Nashville)

My first paid gig was at 17 years old, playing an event for the New Zealand equivalent of NASCAR. 

The organizer of the soiree approached my high school music teacher, probably mostly just looking for a cheap band, but when my teacher called me into his office and asked if I would set up the gig for the all-girl school jazz combo, I was ecstatic! 

Someone would pay me to do what I happily did for free every lunchtime, weekend, and uninteresting class period I could talk my way out of. 

I talked to the client and arranged for each band member of Blu (no “e” because we were incredibly sophisticated) to be paid the grand sum of $50 each, and we spent the next few weeks coming up with as many songs as possible. 

On the day of the gig, we loaded the school amps, drums, and PA system into our too-small cars, dressed in our “stage blacks,” and headed down to the Auckland waterfront. We quickly ran through all our favorite songs and had to fill in the rest of the set with adaptations of songs we played in the school big band, but the crowd enjoyed it, and we had a blast.

Post-show I suffered the first of my lifelong side-player ego blows when everyone wanted to gush at me about how good our lead singer was. She was great, I agreed, but my fragile teenage ego would’ve loved even just a nibble of the compliment cookie too.

Ego shaken, then came the first in many hard-learned lessons about gigging… 

We packed up our gear, pocketed the cash, and asked how we should leave the venue, given there was now a massive line of motorsport vehicles on parade outside. 

“You can’t leave now, it’ll be at least another hour until the road is clear.”

Well, shit. 

That was when I learned the importance of contracts and the day I understood the need to include an “unable to leave for an unreasonable amount of time after we’re done” surcharge.

It was also day one of a beautiful multi-decade career as a professional musician.

As a music lover, I bet you still get misty-eyed whenever you think about the first time live music transported you somewhere. I’m sure you can name the show or album that made you want to play music yourself, the performance that made you want to be a singer or the song lyric that started you on your journey to becoming a songwriter. 

Music has been an essential part of human culture for as long as there’s been human culture. Nothing can replace the experience of being in a room with live music and the connection between performer and audience. 

Livestreamed shows during the initial Covid-19 lockdown were better than nothing, but only just. The demand for gigs to return came not only from the industry who wanted to get back to work but also from the fans who were desperate for a fix of their favorite drug: live music.

Playing live is also the best place for new musicians to get good. To learn how to entertain, troubleshoot gear problems on the fly, connect with an audience, and hone your craft as an instrumentalist or singer. 

If you want to set up your instruments and play music to other humans, you can. And if you’re good, they’ll listen, maybe applaud, throw some money in your tip jar, and hopefully come back the next time you do it too.

You can pack up the car, hit the road, and find fans in the next town over and the next town after that. You can book a tour overseas and take your show on the road. If you’re good and you stick with it, you can create a performing career out of nothing.

You can hone your craft, build a fanbase, and make money without relying on label execs, music media, or social media metrics.

There’s a beautiful simplicity to the performance transaction: a human who loves to play music plays music to another human who loves to hear it. But live performance is also one of the last areas in the industry that musicians can control from the outset. 

On social media, a professional marketer can run your account. Streaming pays fractions of a penny per play; profits largely depend on the tastemakers who run the editorial playlists. Merch returns are rolled into 360 deals where the labels take the lion's share, and TV & movie syncs are harder to get in the landscape of 60,000 new songs being released daily on Spotify alone.

Performing live might be the last place in the music industry musicians can’t be outsourced, replaced by tech, or their reach controlled by algorithms. 

And it’s definitely the musician’s superpower.