Wanting It More Than Ever

Yup. Been away for a while. Will let you know why in a personal post soon.

However, couldn’t let this one slide by without mention:

Robert Redford opened up the Sundance Film Festival with a warning to independent filmmakers. After 25 years of his winter film festival attracting attention for indie movies, technology and the economy have rolled the clock back. There’s no easy financing now. There’s no automatic expectation that a film gets distro after playing in Park City. And, Redford says, if you intend to make it as an entertainer, you have to want it more than anything.

The same thing applies to the music business. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve met all kinds of musicians. Some are reconciling their lives with the overwhelming financial success they used to enjoy. Others wonder why they haven’t ever brought more than 30 people out to a gig. And others are trying to figure out how they can make a living making music without leaving their bedrooms.

Thanks to a decade of Making the Band, American Idol, Justin.TV and YouTube, I meet more and more musicians who expect to earn a huge income just because they love music.

As Redford points out, it’s not enough anymore.

You can’t just love music and expect it to become your career. You can’t just love music and expect your skills to fall in line with your aspirations.

You have to want it more than you have wanted anything, ever. And you have to want everything that comes with it — the surrender of some personal space, the crazy hours, the time on the road.

Even with the electronic outlets available to us these days, successful musicians still base their careers on a simple foundation: the interaction, in real time, of artist before audience. And if you don’t want that part of the music business, you’re not going to get very far.