Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Bluegrass Professionalism - Essay

This essay is a re-posting of my monthly column published yesterday on the CBA Welcome Page.  I look forward to your comments here or at other online forums.

Bluegrass musicians are deeply ambivalent about professionalism. Perhaps they worry that becoming “professional” means losing the intrinsic spontaneous improvisational center of our music. Or they're concerned that becoming part of a professional organization will serve to control their freedom. Or they just don't see how a professional organization can benefit their advance as musicians or bands.

At the heart of bluegrass music lies the idea that we are one of the few, perhaps the only, music genres in which the fans are also widely seen as practitioners. Large numbers of bluegrass fans come to festivals, attend monthly meetings of their local bluegrass associations, or get together in music shops or restaurants to jam together on a regular basis. The skill level of these bluegrass jammers ranges from just beginning to pick to highly accomplished practitioners, some of whom have spent significant portions of their musical lives as touring musicians. The lore and etiquette of the jam permit this range, encouraging beginners and novices to sit around the fringes of a jam circle keeping time on their instruments, while more skilled pickers gravitate to or are invited into the center, where they carry the bulk of the musical load. For many bluegrassers, making the music is more important than listening to it. Many people maintain it's at such events that the heart of bluegrass music is maintained and strengthened.

My observation is that many of the jams I see and hear along our travels are truly amateur, in every sense of the word. The music is played at a relatively slow tempo by people who love playing and singing together, but who are truly not highly accomplished. Often, when the selection of a song comes to many participants, they choose an old country song, partly because it's the music they love and partly because many of these songs are easier to play than much of the blazing fast, instrumentally demanding bluegrass repertoire. Some of these get-togethers, however, develop into full-fledged bands which decide to perform during a festival's open stage period (often held in the hour or so before the professional bands begin to play) or to compete in band contests for the privilege of earning a place in the lineup for pay on Sunday afternoon or, more rarely, next year's festival. A few of these pick-up bands emerge as touring bands. The Bluegrass Brothers would be a good example of such a progression. An amateur bluegrass musician, then, is a person who plays bluegrass music for the pure love of the form and sound of the music. He or she may be highly accomplished, but often restricts playing “out” to local events, performing at Rolling Hills Rest Home, or getting together with friends and family on the proverbial front porch.

In conversations I've had with bluegrass professionals, a common thread is their having heard the music early in their youth, been deeply affected by it, picked up an instrument, and practiced maniacally for thousands of hours over a number of years. Larry Stephenson's song, “The Sound that Set My Soul on Fire” captures the essence of this experience. The other common experience is that many professionals grew up in homes where instruments were always in evidence and began playing almost as soon as they could hold one up. The commonly accepted number of hours of concentrated practice thought to yield skill approaching professional competence is said to be 10,000. That's three hours a day for ten years. The minimum standard for professionalism in bluegrass is having mastered an instrument to a level most will never achieve. Most of the people on tour are truly practitioners who've spent the necessary time in the woodshed and played with bands to the exclusion of other pursuits and interests for a number of years.

So, it appears that in most cases, an extremely high level of instrumental or vocal proficiency is the minimum necessary skill level for entering the ranks of musical professionals, but it is not the necessary minimum for success. It starts with being a brilliant musician. Unfortunately, it also seems to end there, also. Too often we hear a musician say, “It's all about the music.” Well, it isn't all about the music. Success in performing bluegrass music at the professional level is more about learning a range of professional skills that include musical performance, but which also require spending enormous amounts of time and energy in the business of doing business. That is, musicians must spend what they consider to be inordinate amounts of time building, planning, and promoting the business side of their enterprise. Music publicist Ariel Hyatt has written an essay called “The Top Seven Reasons Why Artists Resist Social Media,” which is must reading for anyone wishing to be a top bluegrass professional. Here's a link: http://tinyurl.com/3alab7c . Read Ariell's take on this as an opener.

But Hyatt's essay is only a beginning. Professionalism in music requires developing a business plan, making decisions on how a band will brand itself, involving advisers in a range of capacities where many musicians lack skills themselves (accounting, communicating verbally, planning, and more), and continuing to develop as a band. Bands that have persisted through years of success as businesses have shown themselves to be adept in these areas. Take a look at Doyle Lawson, Rhonda Vincent, Dailey & Vincent, and others whose attention to detail and careful promotion have helped them turn musical excellence into lucrative careers. And with all this, musicians cannot afford to rest on their laurels as performers.

Atul Gawande, a surgeon and New Yorker staff writer, has written an article called “Personal Best” (New Yorker, October 3, 2011, pp. 44 – 53) in which he examines the point in his professional life where he felt he had reached a plateau, the balance point between achieving the necessary skill level to practice his profession without any longer being aware that he was getting better. Through an experience on the tennis court and a series of interviews with musicians, singers, and teachers, he describes the process by which he came to understand the need for coaching as it applies to his practicing his profession and continuing to grow in it. Gawande's experience raises the question of whether and how bluegrass musicians continue to become more professional in their approach to plying their trade. How many active musicians seek out a coach to listen to their play and give them feedback on how they're continuing to improve? How many have the confidence to seek out ongoing advice from a professional mentor on their instrument or as a band? How much could they benefit from such an activity as it pertains to their becoming better instrumentalists and more consistently effective bands? What must musicians and bands do to stand out from the crowd as recognizably themselves?

Here are some other questions to ask. How often is your newsletter distributed? What's the state of your email list? How effective are your street teams? How quickly can you communicate with your one hundred or one thousand true fans? How do you maintain your web site, Facebook fan page, personal Facebook page, and Twitter account? How are you building your management team? Incidentally, each of these questions was dealt with extensively in seminars at IBMA-WOB in the past two years. Careful attention to and application of any one of these seminars would have paid for your admission fees in increased sales and bookings.

These are the kinds of questions that professionals ask of themselves as they pursue a career. Recently I interviewed a professional musician who commented that many bands sound alike. He said it's nearly impossible to identify most bands from their sound until well into a song and after the lead singer has begun to sing. Even then, many bluegrass bands sound very much alike. Some contemporary bands are almost instantly recognizable: Blue Highway, Dailey & Vincent, Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers, Rhonda Vincent, The Gibson Brothers, Del McCoury. Others are very good, but don't imprint themselves as thoroughly. How have these bands established a distinctive sound that has contributed to their becoming a brand? This is what every professional bluegrass musician and band needs to ask itself. Finding the answer and then selling it to an increasing crowd of bluegrass fans is the challenge.

13 comments:

  1. would you consider the Steep Canyon Rangers a pick up to touring band?

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  2. Hi Ted, Outstanding, on point & timely. Effectively if a person wants to be a professional they need to be professional in every way required for the job. Low expectations and the pursuit of mediocrity can be a life numbing experience. People seem only capable of happiness when they are trying to be the best they can be. Every utterance that encourages people to do their best adds to the collective good and I appreciate both your insights and the courage to address issues which merit serious attention and focus.

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  3. busgal - All bands come together somehow. The Steeps met and became a band while in college (as I understand their story) and have steadily progressed as they've increased their professional visibility. Their association with Steve Martin hasn't hurt them, either.

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  4. Another excellent essay, esp as it relates to beyond the music. It is critical to remind folks that it is not just about the music. Some very popular bands like the Lewis Family and Boys From Indiana did not succeed due their music.

    The one thing I believe you miss is how greatly the central Appalachian weltanshauung shapes bluegrass thinking worldwide. It is a remarkable thing deserving of extensive study. Regarding this topic, music was something people just did; music was not a profession. Mac Wiseman among many others recalls being asked when he was going to get a real job even after he had hit records.

    In short, the underlying culture doesn't embrace or support the kind of professionalism which is essential.

    PS: I accidentally walked in on the Steep Canyon Rangers - as green as St Patrick's Day - buying their very first PA for their very first tour and getting rudimentary instructions from the former road musicians selling it to them.

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  5. I could not agree with you more about the seminars and educational panels at IBMA more than making my registration worthwhile each year I attend. I look around the room so often and hardly see any artists who I know are trying to get to the next level in the rooms listening and it baffles me. Perhaps they are the folks who want a conference to be more of a jam session gathering but for me (I am not an artist but someone who works with artists) I think the educational value on learning the business side of things is highly valuable, not just to artists but to the DJs, promoters, managers and agents who attend, and there are still chances to jam. In that sense, I think IBMA has a very good focus on what their conference is for and it is a shame more local acts who are trying to move to the regional and then national level don't come and take advantage of the wealth of knowledge so freely shared.

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  6. Yep... :-)

    There is another reason most bands sound alike, but we've already talked about that. ;-)

    Clint

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  7. I think your post misses a primary feature of bluegrass. Put simply, if you define bluegrass as you seem to -- as a profession -- then the supply will always exceed the demand. So if you have ambition, and both the musical talent and the business talent necessary to excel as a bluegrass performer, then you are probably smart enough to take up another profession. To make a life in bluegrass, then you must be comfortable with the fact that your material rewards will be comparatively modest. You must see other rewards -- and of course there are many. But they are not well measured by business models.

    Like Art noted above, the continuing supply of bluegrass fans is culturally based. Think of them as the sea. The new fans based on new sounds are like the water at the beach -- it comes in and goes out periodically. The tide is sometime high and sometime low, but unlike other genres, it never goes away -- because, after all, the sea is still out there.

    Let's pick,

    -Tom

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  8. Tom - Bluegrass isn't a profession. It's a form of American music practiced by both professionals and a lot of amateurs ranging in ability from novice to highly skilled and appreciated by countless others. People choose their profession for lots of reasons in addition to making money. As someone pointed out to me the other day, bluegrass is the only form of folk music that began as professional performance and moved back to the fields and parking lots and then found some people who became good enough to play professionally. My major point though was aimed at those who wish to be able to support themselves and to their resistance to doing what needs to be done to accomplish that. It also speaks to those who suppose that playing at the highest level is sufficient to assure such success.

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  9. "My major point though was aimed at those who wish to be able to support themselves and to their resistance to doing what needs to be done to accomplish that. It also speaks to those who suppose that playing at the highest level is sufficient to assure such success. "

    All genres abound in those. I don't think any of them are likely to read this. Or listen to you when you explain it to them -- they never did (do) when I spoke (speak)with them.

    I loved the story my friend from Lincoln Lab tells (he is a banjo player by the way) about a hot young Physics PhD from MIT who was doing space based radar -- he was essentially the intellectual foundation for the program. But it all fell apart when he went to Berkeley to study classical guitar.

    I always loved that story, but my friend told me years later that he came back -- sort of spoils it all.

    Let's pick,

    -Tom

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  10. Good article and good points. Professionalism is a broad word. Is attention to sonic detail professionalism if audiences don't resonate with the sound? Is playing sound you don't like but making lots of money playing fun or professional? By some standards the Carter family "sound" is hardly "professional". Goals also measure success. Folk like Norman Blake and John Hartford played with the "big time" country crowd but for most of their career played their own musics, not what the Nashville or even bluegrass crowd wanted to hear. In an interview Doc Watson once said that a successful period of his touring career was also the most lonely, the price he had to pay for the success. Business professionalism can, depending on one's goals, compromise some aspect of enjoyment to the musical experience.
    There are countless bluegrass band, 13,451 guitar pickers in Nashville who can play twice as fast as many top performers, but those I like the best stand out for the music they make, not necessarily the technical acrobatics. Blake and Hartford's music has something not found anywhere else. Newgrass Revival has an unparalleled style. Some musics are defined by the singer's vocal timbre and interpretation such as Allison Krause and Tim O'brien. Sometimes "leaving a little bark on the tree" may not yield a professional sound but can be much more fun to play and to listen to. Ultimately, professionalism is a relative word, as is success.

    Jim

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  11. A subset of my gang of jammers and I are playing a local rest home this weekend......I had to laugh.

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  12. I have no argument with anything you say, Jim. Professionalism has nothing to do with the kind of music a musician chooses to make. My essay deals with the degree to which a person chooses to develop his ability to communicate his own music to the greatest number of people in order to help make a better living doing it. It certainly doesn't include "selling out" (a term I dislike, but there it is) is order to make more money. Money shouldn't be the goal. Everyone has to determine the amount he or she wants to sacrifice for art. Sacrifice includes choices like placing the music and its demands above home and family or successfully integrating them. I believe that making the decision to become a full-time musician on the road is a huge one. People who make that decision should approach it knowing the entire body of what they need to do in order to work towards the success they think they want to achieve.

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  13. Great article... yes, music as well as any art are generally done at first "for the love of" and in time those who begin to produce something that others believe of value find it necessary, rewarding and even further inspiring to begin to "while loving it" sell or get paid a little something for the efforts in return. Doing the business of business is the necessary side that most of us do not like to do but, it is the necessary evil, if you will. There are many great talents in the world, most that we recognize and see a lot of may not be the most talented but the most organized and business driven, or who have a lot of help on the business side. Striking the happy medium for where you and/or your band is at is a good starting place. Seems though like it always comes full circle and back to the passion and love of doing it... this is what makes it so good in the end. Well back to fixing the website, facebooking and tweets! Slainte!

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