Rest assured there’s always an end to the means,
Through the many years of touring around this country I have noticed that a lot of the younger musicians question their path at a certain point, there is an uneasiness, an unstable liquid to any musicians career. A lot of the times that eb and flow to their career gets interrupted by a brick wall. You get stopped dead in your tracks, even the most tenacious musician has a hard time seeing their way over under around or through. You have to be malleable, you have to understand that what you are trying to accomplish may not be attainable right now that doesn’t mean it is not attainable. If you look across the entrepreneurial landscape of industry tech, business, and art you will see that there’s a lot of commonalities. The person leading the charge gets lonely at times, look at any inspirational video on YouTube of a mastermind in their field. Art is not always restricted to just architecture, painting, music, sculpting, and things that seem to present themselves immediately as inspirational. There is an art to everything and sometimes that art gets lost to practicality. The two can be melded together though. I am a rock and roller, promoting my music and my brand. There has to be funding to mobilize these goals. When you don’t have a record label fronting the cost, pushing your album, your brand, and whatever else it is you’re trying to accomplish in the music industry, one can quickly find themselves dead in the water if they don’t find a source of monetary flow.
In 2011 I began booking Pullman Standards first cross country tour. Although we had been building up our regional following and residencies at various bars and venues around the greater southern California and south west United States, this tour was a little bit more ambitious. The crowdfunding page helped out with the initial cost. Money stashed away from various bar gigs what is the seed money for our merchandise budget. You can take all of the necessary steps and plan to have as much as you like but you don’t feel the stress of the road until you’re out there facing the day-to-day grind of what it’s like do you risk it all for your dream. Although that tour was incredible success monetarily and making new fans as well as contacts for venues across the United States. Next couple years would be incredibly rough.
Believe in yourself, know your worth, but also understand that when push comes to shove you better be ready to humble yourself and dig those ditches weather metaphor for were literally to get your self and your band and your dream to the next town to let people know you will do what it takes because you believe in yourself. A few years later and a few hundred shows on the road, one might think circumstances would change a little.