DRUMMER CAFE

Ok, this isn't for nationally known or world known touring pros.
And, it isn't for the weekend warrior making a little extra cash.

I'm talking about - those of  you, without being well known and touring with the greats,
who are 100% making your living with drumming.

Tell us - specifically what are you doing?

Some answers I would expect:

- Playing on a cruise line
- Playing in a frequently working, well paid wedding band

Please tell.                     

I can't wait for the day that it is my 100%.  It is for a few months out of the year while touring, but those months are usually really really skinny when it comes to how I live and the niceties that I enjoy.

(note:  i just read this back and realized it might sound a bit braggadocious.  if it does, I certainly didn't mean it this way; I just wanted to answer the original post of how we make it work.  It's more written with the general sense of freelance-musician paranoia: the "oh my god, i'll never work again!" feeling.)

gotta side w/ chilledbongo on this one.  i make my living making music. i've been playing drums for about 23 years.  i barely make my living playing drums.

what i do:  some broadway (less in the past years as the big shows have stayed on and there's less opportunity to get new seats/new subbing gigs), though i had great run for a few years.  even then, wasn't playing drums-- was playing percussion.

The great thing about broadway is that it's the shining star of the legit, contractor-driven scene.  I've gotten a healthy amount of great gigs simply through the network of contractors who work with so-and-so, etc.  I'm doing a tour in mexico in a month with a well-known artist-- it's a gig i wouldn't have gotten without having had some connection (ie, years of playing for next-to-nothing while holding down a day job until an opportunity came along) to that.

lots of on-and-off teaching, but it's extremely hard to find dedicated and consistent students.  I'd like to teach at the college level but (and this is bad planning on my part) i don't have an MA.  that could change, of course, and if i taught i'd like to be a balance of ethnomusicology/post-diasporic subcultural theory/music.  I've done guest lectures on that, but not easy to nail a full-time position doing that.

I play an extremely healthy amount of indian weddings--sometimes 3 to 5 in a weekend.  I play dhol and tabla and not only are these fun gigs-- they pay extremely well.  Last saturday morning i was playing dhol on a yacht to 200 people dancing (after getting home from a gig in baltimore at 4am).  If you gotta grind it out, there's worse ways to do so.

a fair bit of session work--i'm on the last records by Jennifer Lopez and Taylor Dayne--but again there's less and less that goes on in NYC and, seriously, you've got cats like Sean Pelton here who've been doing it for ages as your immediate competition.  Session work isn't as glamorous as i think i thought it was when i was growing up; it's also not the label-and-union driven thing that it was even 5 or 7 years ago.  What it is, mostly, is doing work on spec for a producer you know and trust and then, once they get a tune signed, getting a check in the mail 2 years later. 

or, in the case of certain producers, not getting a check and having to call and berate their imbecile junior staff/interns into sending the @$%# check after you heard the song on the radio.

I also have a solid, dependable, well-stocked recording setup here, and have done a good bit of remote recording, ie-- getting files from someone, laying drums or perc on the session, and ftping it all back.  I've done a good bit of video game scoring work this way, as well as on-spec collaborations with some composers.  definitely a good process, and one that i'm sure we'll be seeing more of.  I know Billy Ward does a bunch of this.

really it's all about diversifying.  I can't imagine making a living only playing drumset and i don't know any drummers who do-- the peers of mine that are making this work all teach, play other percussion gigs, grind out wedding gigs, do contracting, etc. 

I run a monthly DJ night as well at one of the better clubs in town and that's become a really great focal point for getting done what i want to get done both musically and professionally.

In this day and age, on the circuits that i run in, performing music is a craft and writing it is in art.  The craft pays consistently, but not phenomenally.  If you can make the art work for you-- writing for a commercial, doing remixes, landing sync licenses for TV shows, doing dance arrangements on b'way licensing stuff for video games-- you'll be making $ that follows a back-end, residual model.  For everyone i know who's really making a NICE living playing music, regardless of instrument, that's what's paying the bills, funding the roth IRA's, and (in one case) buying the vacation house in connecticut.

Drumming is great but unless you're in a good band that's got great business behind them, playing tons of well-attended shows, and getting a cut of the publishing $ on the tunes-- the world has changed.  Very very VERY few hired-gun gigs pay enough to eat off of, let alone pay the rent. 

so, in a word?  HUSTLE.  figure out what you're good at, what separates you from the pack, and do that.  that's the way to make it work.

Thinking about going pro Frank?

TeReKeTe - Aside from Mr. Whitten's posts, that is the most informative post on making a living in the music biz that I've seen.

Frank - Aw c'mon man!  Don't sell yourself short.  Granted, we're not all capable of playing like our heros, but the fact that you love to play means you have something to offer.  It's just a matter of finding the right outlet.  I'm fortunate to have TWO outlets that are absolutely perfect for me.  I'll never be a pro, or even a widely respected drummer, but I'm OK with that.  I have sticks in my hand at least three times a week and I have a blast doing it. 

Easy now.  Make sure you always play drums for the right reason.  The money will come.  You don't have to be driving a bentley or be on a world tour to be a success.  And maybe you are setting the bar a bit high right now, which is ok too but can lead to depression. I would also read the Kenny Werner "Effortless Mastery" Book to get your head back together.

Terekete and Chrisso made amazing points.  You will have to hustle like any job right now to get more $$$ but then drumming is not always so much fun when one has to "meat" drum all the time.  Personally I hated being a professional- semi pro is more my speed and a helluva lot more fun.

You gotta read that kenny werner book frank.  Plus what doesn't make you quit makes you a better player.

Hell, you can always devolve into a rock player like myself.  My jazz playing is atrocious (well all jazz playing sounds like a bunch of mistakes to me).  LOL  JK!!! 

Makes it hard for me to go look at what he has to say if he was born
a prodigy.


That's funny stuff.   Definitely hits home.

Yeah, and I didn't mean to imply you played stiff Frank and you needed to relax.  Like I said, those weren't the intended points.

There are critics for every book out there.

But yeah, you had a bad rehearsal.  It happens.

Really tho' how long have you been at the skins?  Give yourself a break.  It takes a decade of playing a style religiously I think to just be a mere mortal.  I'm pushing 30 years of playing rock.  I listened to some recordings from rehearsal this week.  C'mon!  There were a couple of cool bars but I'm just another guy who plays drums.

 Look for those little nuggets and work on the stuff that isn't so rosie smelling.

yeah, it's totally a jazzer's book.  You will love it I think.  Some of the meditation stuff is a little wacky doodle, but it's fun to fool around with once and awhile.