...so anyway, last Saturday when I took my daughter to keyboard lessons at the local music store, while waiting for her lesson to finish (where I spend the time playing various guitars on the shelf), I got to play for John Lennon, and not only that, he said I was pretty good ;)
Okay, so it wasn't really John Lennon but the John Lennon look-a-like/tribute band musician Marcus Cahill, who happens to live in the area and was running the store at the time. I had a brief chat to him about what he does, and why he was working in a music store. No suprises - he gets good gigs overseas, and makes reasonable money, but here in sleepy Perth Western Australia there isn't much demand for his talents. I got the impression that doing some work in a music store was not about trying to make ends meet, but rather to give him something to do during the day!
There's a couple of interesting tidbits to derive from that. That it is possible to carve a living from being a not-specifically-world-famous musician. That if you are prepared to continuously travel the world you could probably be fulltime run off your feet performing. But if you just want to live in a suburb, in a city - even if you have enough money to live on - there isn't enough work to keep your hands busy so you may as well have a second job.
I don't have aspirations to be a working musician, I quite like my day job (okay, maybe not everyday, but on a whole, my day job brings me a sense of satisfaction.) It is good however to see that for those who do want to be a working musician that it is possible to achieve, but maybe have a backup plan just in case you don't make it - or you *do* make it and just want to live in a suburb, in a city and live a "normal" life :)
JAW
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