The Musical Work/Life Balance

 

What a relief to be as busy as this. After that fifteen month state induced coma, that long night of darkened venues with only the slightest glimmer of light at the end of what at times resembled an ever-lengthening tunnel.

Anyway, that's all in the past and the music industry is back. Back for good.

I know some of my fellow professionals have fared less well than others, but the overarching trend is of a return to something resembling the old normal, and the longer this goes on the less likelihood there is of the SAGE goons chloroforming the performance industries once again.

Personally I'm delighted to be what I call 'the right kind of busy', in other words, playing great music with great musicians, doing exactly the kind of things which were what inspired me to get serious about the drums all those years ago. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I am exactly the musician I dreamed of becoming when I was six years old. Not in any way do I mean to sound boastful, but this is not some kind of fluke predicated upon sheer dumb luck. It's what I planned all along; and the more things progressed (the turning point being when I relocated to London in late 1992) the more I could see pipe dreams becoming reality.

It wasn't easy sometimes, but then again every once in a while I found myself in absolutely the right place at the right time, and an important door would open. The thing with this is though, that these key milestones are almost always only apparent with the benefit of hindsight.

Earlier I mentioned being 'the right kind of busy'. What do I mean by this? Well, a full diary with pages dark with lucrative engagements is a wonderful thing, and it is what I wish for my professional friends and colleagues both here in the UK and across the continents. However, there's busy and there's busy. If your time is taken up playing music that doesn't stretch you, and equally importantly doesn't provide an outlet for all those advanced concepts you are working on, then in my view, the economic reality of making ends meet notwithstanding, there may be something missing.

I often amuse myself with moments of reverie along these lines. Imagine if Buddy Rich had been a Broadway pit drummer, playing eight shows a week of (for instance) The Sound of Music, and only taken his big band out once every two weeks or so. I'm certain he would still have been a great player, but the masterful level of attainment that those of us of a certain age were fortunate to experience in the flesh would possibly not have been so inescapably apparent. One of his thought-provoking, slightly cryptic comments, oft repeated in social media memes that "You get good by playing" reflects this, I believe.

Similarly I wonder what would have happened had the young Tony Williams accepted a lucrative mid 60s pop gig (Herman's Hermits, peut-etre?) rather than spending those pivotal years in Miles \Davis's group, in which he (metaphorically) wrote the last chapter of the book of modern jazz drumming, started by Roy Haynes and Elvin Jones.

Sometimes I think that when people say to you, "But just think of the money", it's wise counsel to consider the other side of the coin. If you can possibly afford to.

Also, in pursuance of the musical work/life balance, make sure you have a 'project', just in case you're not fortunate enough to be busy doing work you completely love. Let's be honest; who among us pro players hasn't at one time or another had to pragmatically grasp the nettle and accept jobs that don't exactly fill you with joy. I look back over my mid 1990s diaries and for every great gig fondly recalled, there's another which induces a shudder even at this distance.

Anyway, to cut a long story sideways, I got lucky. My third attempt at forming a big band (in 1995) managed to be sustainable. We got it out of the pub back rooms and into theatres and festivals. This was done by playing pretty uncompromising instrumental jazz, without going down the repertory/nostalgia route. We didn't have a singer and the band didn't dress up like the cast of Dad's Army. In the years from 1995-2006 that project pretty much achieved what it was intended to do. I was with an alumnus of that band just the other day and we were in agreement that we made some sort of a mark. I sometimes wish we might have taken it further, had a little more success and profile, but I have a fairly well-developed instinct for the shelf life of projects. 2007 saw a reorganisation and a change of direction which has been adequately documented elsewhere.

\So the moral is, keep those projects on the back burner. I hung on to mine and it became the thing for which I became moderately well-known.

So with the milestone 60th birthday just nine months hence, I find myself happier with my situation than at any time previously. Not only that, there's at least one (maybe more) new big band project in the works. I'll tell you about that a little later.

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