Can you share your musical journey with us, from when you first discovered your passion for music to where you are today as an independent musician?
Both my parents were musicians, so there was pretty much no escape. I got started real early, playing bass when I was eleven, and I actually ended up taking over my dad’s guitar spot in a backing band and doing road dates and sessions when I was fifteen. I’m only realizing now how much I learned from both of my folks, not in the sense of melodies and chords and songs or whatever, but commitment, professionalism, devotion to the craft, and respect and regard for your audience.
What motivates you to create music, and how do you stay inspired to continue making new and unique music?
I flatly reject that whole tired premise that “you should be writing every day.” Bullshit – you should be writing only if you’re moved to come up with something that’s good, and if you’re not, you should stop immediately and go do something else. It’s like that old phrase, “never confuse activity with progress.”
To be honest, sometimes I’m not motivated or inspired at all! It’s taken me a long time to learn that that’s OK; just ride it out and you’ll be ready when the muse returns. And then, if you wait, you’ll write something meaningful and worthwhile. Sometimes that’s a few weeks, sometimes it can be the better part a year. The best thing you can do for your craft in that situation is to stop trying to make music, because if you keep forcing it, you’re going to make crappy music. Which is worse than making no music at all.
As an independent musician, you wear many hats – from composing to marketing. How do you balance these different aspects of your career, and what challenges do you face in the process?
I’m glad you asked that, because it’s actually something I’ve always really wrestled with. As far back as I can remember, I have always had tremendous difficulty balancing creative and business endeavors. I know what I’m supposed to do; just make music in a creative vacuum, without any regard for how it can be “sold’, but I must confess that I’ve never been able to do that. The meter is always running with me,
If I get a song idea, before I even start fleshing it out, my mind goes right into marketing overdrive. “Well, what kind of song will this be? What demographic are you going after? How does it need to be produced?” blah blah blah. Whoa, dude – just write the frigging song first! And I hate that. I wish I could find a way out of it, but when you do this for a living, you have a responsibility to make your music “sell,” for lack of a better word. That sounds terrible, but it’s the truth.
I have to admit that sometimes I’m completely envious of people who don’t make music for a living, and can just bang something out for the fun of it and derive satisfaction from just having created something. There may have been a time when I was able to do that, way back, but I can’t remember it ever having been that way.
Could you tell us about your creative process? How do you come up with new ideas for songs, and how do you go about turning those ideas into finished tracks?
Usually, I find that my best ideas come like a bolt from out of the blue, either early in the morning or sometimes in the middle of the night, and if I know I’ve got something, I have to capture it immediately. So if I’m in a hotel room, I’ve already got a few instruments with me and I can get the idea down immediately on my phone If I’m driving, I’ve got to pull over and do that on the side of the road.
If I’m at home, I get up immediately, whatever time it is, and go downstairs to the studio to get it down. This is why I call my studio the “war room” – I’ve got thirty or so instruments in there; guitars, mandolins, basses, keyboards, whatever – and they’re all hooked up and ready to go, like a fighter plane on standby on an aircraft carrier. The recording setup is very simple and quick and cranks up in seconds. I’ll record something right away, and most often, some or all of what you hear on the final recording was actually the original demo, warts and all, from 4am or whatever, because you lose the spark if you try to go back and cut the “real” thing later.
Independent musicians often face financial challenges. How do you manage your finances to sustain your music career while also covering your personal expenses?
Well, music is my “day job”, and then I work on music during my “time off” (laughs). I play a lot of different instruments and can do a lot of things for other people, so I’ll do hired-gun work for other folks, live and studio work, and that’s quite lucrative.
I also play a lot of live dates of my own, and I get paid very well for them. Licensing also brings in money. So, all told, when it comes time to invest in things like new releases, videos, promotional campaigns, etc., there’s some capital to work with there.
But all of these things take time – years in fact – to get up and running. It’s a slow, incremental growth, and you just have to stick with it. The most important things are: 1.) don’t try to do anything else; stay focused and make sure music is always the most important thing in your life, and 2.) learn to do as an many things on your own as you can.
Can you share a particularly memorable or challenging experience from your journey as a musician that has had a significant impact on your career and personal growth?
When I was in grade school, I took up trombone. I got really good at it; in fact, I ended up being an all-state trombonist. I still have the bronze plaque I received for musician of the year my senior year in high school, and I got a full scholarship for a six-year “sentence” at a classical music conservatory, which completely kicked my ass. Overnight my world changed. I went from pounding beers while playing country and rock in bars to sitting in a class full of people analyzing Handel’s Messiah, and I didn’t even know what it was. I got Ds and Fs, but man, I learned so much.
I remember how playing in the orchestra in seventh grade gave me a larger sense of awareness. One thing you encounter in a school orchestra is that you’re not playing all the time. And while you’ve got a thirty-two-bar rest, you’re sitting there, looking around the room and thinking, “Hmmm, what’s that instrument that girl’s playing?” You realize that there’s a lot of stuff going on around you. As a musician, you learn to listen and you learn to lay out; sometimes NOT playing is the coolest thing you can do.
And as a human being, in a larger sense, you learn coexistence. You how sometimes it’s about you, but a lot of time it AIN’T about you. You learn how to get along with people. I still remember that realization at that tender age. It still informs me as a musician and as a citizen. There are a million reasons we desperately need music education in schools, but I think that subtle sense of civics is the most important one.
With the rise of digital platforms, the music industry has changed significantly. How do you navigate the digital landscape, including streaming services and social media, to promote your music and connect with your audience?
I always rub a lot of people the wrong way on this subject, because my views are real hardcore capitalist and Darwinian. So here goes…
Big corporations and governments will always get away with whatever they can. That’s what they do; it’s the way it’s always been and the way it’ll always be. Musicians like to vilify Spotify and Google et al, and in many ways that’s justified. But those companies never put a gun to anyone’s head and stole their music. There is not a note of music on Spotify that wasn’t given to them willingly.
All the social media and streaming stuff works if you use it right. They are supposed to be discovery platforms. Learn how to make them work for you. If you decide they don’t work for you at all, then don’t use them. But if you just hand over all your work to them for free and then bitch about how you’re supposedly being “ripped off”, that’s your fault, not theirs. And if people claim to be your “fans” but don’t respect your work enough to pay for it, that’s their fault, not Google’s.
Everyone says, “No one buys music anymore.” That’s actually not true. What is true, sadly, is that most musicians don’t SELL it anymore. That’s the real problem. I use social media and streaming to sell my music on my own platform (my website) and at shows. Yeah, there’ll be some free stuff and some giveaways, but that’s on a fleeting, strategic basis, in a limited promotional capacity. I’m certainly not the only one doing things this way. Another one to watch on this stuff is Lucy Woodward, probably my favorite female singer. I only know her through friends of friends, but aside from being a monster artist and performer, I find her to be an extremely savvy online businesswoman.
Collaboration is a key part of the music industry. Have you worked with other musicians or producers, and how have these collaborations influenced your sound and career?
The most recent collaboration I did was with John Popper of Blues Traveler, on the “Rocket Rider” single. I already had the song written and the track was largely complete, but I knew it still needed something. I said, “Man what this thing really needs is a John Popper kind of harmonica thing.” Somebody suggested, well then, just get John Popper – and we did! His flavor really takes the track to another level.
Right now I’m re-mixing a track I cut a while ago with one of my favorite singers and songwriters, Juliana Riccardi. She lives in Los Angeles now, but I met her and started working with her when we were both living in New York City. Her regular guitar player couldn’t do a gig and referred me to fill in at the last minute; she came over and we met and hastily prepared a set of her songs the day before the gig. She wanted to do one cover tune; Tom Hardin‘s “If I Were A Carpenter” – a song that goes all the way back to the sixties. She picked the key and the tempo and the overall vibe, and it felt so good and went over so well, I suggested we record it as a duet. That track has been laying around for a while, but friends who’ve heard it have called me an idiot for not release it, so I’m going to include it on a new album this summer.
Your music likely reflects your unique style and perspective. Could you describe your musical identity and what makes your sound stand out in a crowded industry?
I was brought up almost entirely on music that was made before I was born; I was exposed early on to vintage country, bluegrass, big band, crooner stuff…you name it. My dad had this incredible vinyl collection – over 3500 pieces, which I’ve now inherited. He would play out at night and then listen to music at home during the day. I never even heard any rock or pop until I was about ten or eleven.
Eventually I heard stuff my friends were listening to, and to this day I am a total pop whore. I mean, like anything from (these days) Dua Lipa to Doja Cat. So then I’ll start trying to make music that sounds like that, which of course is preposterous, because I can’t possibly pull that off. Then I’ll freak out and over-compensate by trying to do something that pulls from my vintage upbringing. Eventually I just chill out and find something halfway between, sort of the middle ground. It’s a fairly haphazard “process” if you can even call it that.
What role does live performance play in your music career, and how do you approach planning and executing your live shows, especially in light of recent challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic?
I’m doing about a hundred or so dates a year now, and one thing I like to do is use a bunch of different instruments onstage. I often get asked why I bother, and yeah, I could probably get away with just cracking a beer and doing the whole show on one guitar, but man, that would bore me. Depending on the material, I’ll bounce around between a few electrics (in various tunings), an acoustic 12-string, then a resonator, then the baritone and maybe the mandolin. But it’s all idiomatic; I play each of those instruments very differently, so my approach to the song is different. I think that kind of tonal variety and change-up in playing style keeps things moving, keeps things fresh.
As far as Covid, I was luckier than most musicians. I only lost about five or six months of business there. But it hit literally just days after I released the “Sixteen Sundays” album, so I had to cancel US and European tour dates and other promotional efforts. That album and those songs really never got a fair shot, which still frustrates me.
Many fans are interested in the stories behind the songs. Could you share the backstory or inspiration behind one of your recent tracks that holds special meaning to you?
I had trouble getting through “Looking For Cowboys” onstage after my dad died, because I’d get too emotional and I’d choke up and couldn’t sing it. I had never had that happen before with any song.
I wrote that song for my dad as a Father’s Day gift. He always loved old western movies, so one year for his birthday I bought him an old compilation DVD of classic westerns. I drove up to see him and gave it to him and he immediately put it on and – this was when he was older and his health was beginning to fail – he promptly fell asleep in front of the TV, but with a big, contented smile on his face. I figured what the hell, it made him happy, that’s all that counts; who cares if he sleeps through it? This was in March of that year.
He was a Navy combat veteran, and I had been looking for a way, musically, to thank him for his service. So I just sort of told the story of him falling asleep with a smile on his face to the old cowboy movies, and I started weaving the whole veteran thing into it, and it just kind of wrote itself. I recorded a demo of it and played it for him a few months later on Father’s Day, as a gift, and he just burst into tears.
Looking ahead, what are your future goals and aspirations as an independent musician? Are there any upcoming projects or exciting developments in your career that you’d like to share with your fans and the audience?
Well, I got blindsided last year with a cancer diagnosis. When you get hit with that kind of news, your life flashes in front of you. I had released five records, and I thought, “Is this what I’ll leave behind? Is this all I’ll have to be remembered by after I’m gone?” I’d spent the last few years working my tail off doing live dates. I’d made a living at it and enjoyed so many great moments interacting with people, but all that was fleeting. It doesn’t get documented, like when you go into the studio and make a record.
Then I remembered that a tiny fraction of that work actually had been recorded. I went through all the shows we’d done recently that were captured on multi-track. There weren’t a whole lot of them, but we went with what we had.
The first volume is all stripped-down or solo stuff, and the second volume is all stuff with the band. It’s essentially a snapshot of what’s been my setlist for the past several years. It’s also kind of a retrospective for me, sort of an end of an era, because I’m going to be moving on from a lot of these songs. They’ve done their duty, and I’ve got a whole new batch of music coming. Unless you want to have like a frigging five-hour show, you’ve got to eventually roll over the setlist and retire some things to make room for new music.
So far, it looks like I’ve beaten this cancer thing for the time being. I had a tumor removed and the cancer doesn’t seem to have spread, but we’re keeping a close eye on it. The silver lining here is that, after receiving that diagnosis, I went out every night and savored every note. It’s a blessing to be able to do this for a living, and I’ll never take it for granted again. But I have no delusions about cancer; I’m OK for now, but I’ll be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.
