Seek Out Those Witchy White Women
A lot of people will say that, musically, playing for—and specifically, in my case, playing bass for—kind of a witchy, rich white woman who’s all about soulfulness, vibe, and spirituality is a huge pain in the ass.
And I will completely agree. It is, in fact, a humongous pain in the ass.
They are very good talkers and horrible listeners. They know what they want, but they don’t know how to do any of the things to get there. And they expect the world and are generally completely thankless from an acknowledgment point of view.
My pitch to everyone is that these are perfect conditions under which to work.
Because if you can figure out how to get your stuff done happily here, you are ready to do music.
Recently, I left a situation, but said I would help. Prepared backing tracks for a gig and sent them off early.
They did not open these tracks until rehearsal, realizing that there were three or four tracks missing, which I didn’t know.
So I got a text from rehearsal, and within about 15 minutes, rendered the other tracks and sent them on.
And I still haven’t heard back whether they worked. No “thank you,” nothing.
First of all, sitting around in this world waiting for a thank you is ridiculous.
But had I not done a gig like this for the past couple years, I wouldn’t have been able to render that stuff in 15 minutes.
I remember the first time I put tracks together for somebody. It took me like a week.
Last night, as I tried to render these, the click wasn’t coming through. I knew what to do. And I had three songs rendered quickly, and I understood everything that was going on.
Had I not done these pain-in-the-ass gigs, which I was paid for—I even got paid for rehearsing, by the way—I would have never been able to work this quickly.
I don’t like to give a lot of advice here. If you’ve read anything, you know this.
But I will give this advice: Seek out those witchy white women and work for them.
Because if you can get it right, you’re a professional by any definition.