Scot Ranney's LearnJazzPiano.com archive: A Question For the Grown Ups

LearnJazzPiano.com archives: A Question For the Grown Ups
ziggysane -- 10/04/2004, 18:00:30 -- #7731
Hey all. I have sort of a serious question. If it's inappropriate for the forum just let me know, but we seem to cover a wide range of topics here. This (hopefully) shouldn't apply to me for another few years but I think about it anyway.... Are those of you who've remained bachelors and/or been married to a career in music happy with your decision? Do you regret it for any reason? Would you do it again? Conversely, do the married ones here, with or without children, feel that they could have done more had they remained alone? Or are you content (hopefully) with your lives? Are relationships, marriage, and family impossible to responsibly enter into when one is a starving artist? Scot, Whacky (Artist ect.)(Old habits die hard), 7, Mike? Anyone else? Thanks Guys Danny
Dr. Whack -- 10/04/2004, 20:42:48 -- #7733
Great questions Danny. I think the short answer is that it depends on the person. I've been married for 20 years, raising three boys and two dogs. Now I broke my cardinal rule and married a singer. (she doesn't have Girl Singer Syndrome (GSS) though) Perhaps that makes her more understanding than the average spousal unit. I do have some friends who's wives have great jobs and don't mind supporting their husband's fantasies...I wasn't born with that gift:) The music business was actually good for raising our kids. My wife and I would spend our days with the boys, put them to bed in the evening, then off to play gigs (separate bands of course). They have all turned out to be very well-adjusted hairy teenagers (the oldest almost 20) and we think our being there when the were small was significant - we're very thankful. I do ask myself from time to time if raising a family has held me back in any way, but then I always think of David Foster. I hear he has many children (6 or so) - that answers my question...it depends on the person. As for starving artist...I was never willing to be one:) Good luck Danny. You seem like a very bright young man. Rick
Scot -- 10/04/2004, 21:37:56 -- #7734
I'm not married and can't imagine being married. I'm really happy with the way my life is, and enjoy almost every minute. So that's me- as stated above, it really is about the person. Basically, it's like this. Whatever happens, happens. If being single works for you, then that is what will happen. But maybe you meet a nice girl and eventually get married, and in that case, that is what happens. It all depends on the person because you simply are not able to control certain aspects of your life. If you try to force your life down a path that is not suited to you, then you'll be miserable and the misery will NOT be worth it. So go with the flow and don't worry about it- whatever happens, happens. With all that said- don't even think of getting married before you are 30, ok? Take that time to find out what life is about on your own, what music is about, and experience the great things that are out there. If I had gotten married to my one serious girlfriend when I was in my early 20's, I would have never said "yes" to an opportunity to play music in Asia. The five years I spent playing in Asia were amazing! The riverboat, Aspen, and other things I've done have left me at a place where I'm enjoying life. I have nothing against marriage, and if the right girl comes along, maybe it will happen to me. But it's never been a goal, and I don't think it should be a goal for anyone. Sort of a rambling essay, but you get the idea!
docz -- 10/05/2004, 03:35:38 -- #7737
This is a complicated topic. History tells us that marriage and musicians doen'st work that well... I'm working as a professional musician, and I'm married. Me and my wife have been with eachother for 4 years and married for 3. And my life has changed drastically since I left my computer programmming job to pursue a music career. We don't have any kids yet, so that makes it a little less complicated. But I believe it works better than when I was working full time as a programmer. When I was working as a programmer, I worked 40 hours a week, had a 4 hour a day commute. I left my house at 5 am and got home at about 8 / 8.30 pm. Which gave me about two hours to eat dinner and talk about my boring day before going to bed. My wife didn't work, so she was home alone all day. This was not a good way of living, and certainly put a big strain on our relationship. The money was ok, but what good does 50000$ a year do you when you only have 2 hours a day to spend it??? Now I work only friday and saturday nights from 10pm to 2am. I play songs on the piano and sing to bunch of drunk people. They clap, and sing along. My wife and her friends are with me on my gigs, I get up to a 1000$ a gig. Which means I earn almost twice what I did as a programmer!! And I have the entire week off to be with my wife. And I imagine when the kids arrive eventually I will have even more time for my family. So for me this works like a charm for the time being. Doc-Z
Mike -- 10/05/2004, 05:26:09 -- #7738
I have regrets when I let myself dwell on it. These days I think I have been too narrow minded spending too much time focused on music even though I have had other carrers in my life. When I dwell on it I beat myself up that I never made the music business give me health ins. I never made it give me any type of retirement plan. When I did own a house it was money I made from another business. But I also realize I could have regrets and most likely would have regrets if I had not done it. I do not think I ever really had much of a choice. The whole thing just burned inside me too much ... I had to do it... I still do. If I could stop right now and spend the rest of my life exploring other things with the same energy that I have explored music I would do it in a second. But that is not really a choice for me. I wake up each morning and it does not matter how bad the crisis in my life are ( There might be repo men outside taking my car, I may not have the rent money together and I know the landlord is coming over soon ... etc) I can only really think of what I am going to get done with my music that day.
marksdg -- 10/05/2004, 06:24:33 -- #7739
Ziggyzane, I have been married for 11 years (I got married when I was 19) and I have pursued a normal carreer (scientist) and have one kid. I don't have any dreams of playing professionally, but I wish I had learned Jazz piano when I was a teenager. I realized later that when you are single and in high school or college, you have much more free time than later in life. It has been a good life having a regular reliable job, and really not having money worries, but I will never play like I could have played if I had pursued a music career. My kid, however, is already learning to play jazz and may end up pursuing a music career. To get married as a musician, you just have to have a wife who supports that. If your fiancee says any comments, and I mean any small comments at all, that indicate that she thinks you should get a regular job or is unwilling to live on a tight budget, I would give up either the music career or the fiancee. Having said all of that, if you are willing to stay single into your late 20s, you should definitely be able to see if your career can work in that time. If when you are 25 you have not had any success at making a modest living, you can easily train for a different career. Alternatively you can go ahead and pursue a career now, and spend all of your free time devoted to your playing. If you are single, you should have enough time to still really get good. What I would definitely not suggest that you do is get married and have kids as a starving artist (and don't assume you can always control whether you have kids or not).
Dr. Whack -- 10/05/2004, 07:03:06 -- #7740
Ya know, I look at my non-musician friends who are now enjoying the fruits of working "real jobs" their whole lives and I question myself again - money can be a very good thing...but I also realize I passed on a lot of great opportunities in music that could have panned out on a larger scale...like John Lennon (I think) said: "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.) My apporach to life has always been as Scot mentioned above. I deal with what's happening right now and just don't worry about things...everything always works out somehow...I'm not rich at all, but the money always shows up when I really need it...
7 -- 10/05/2004, 09:17:02 -- #7752
My checkered love life is too sordid and lengthy to go into, but if you find the right woman and DON'T marry her, you'll kick yourself in the ass for the rest of your life.
ClosetBlues -- 10/05/2004, 09:33:26 -- #7754
And if you don't, she will.
nn -- 10/05/2004, 20:34:48 -- #7772
docz you make 100000 a year?
docz -- 10/06/2004, 01:02:16 -- #7778
Not yet, because I haven't done this actively for a whole year yet. I used to do dinner gigs, getting paid 300$ a night for a 5 hour wedding dinner, but that's over now. Now I do theese pub gigs, and they pay a whole lot better, so how much it adds up to in the long run I don't know, but It's looking pretty good, and pretty close to that number. I've got loads of gigs ahead so this is going to be a good year I think :) Doc-Z
docz -- 10/06/2004, 01:05:51 -- #7780
But to give you a perspective, when my big brother was doing this same thing about ten years ago, after a couple of years of hard work, he was pulling in about $300k a year.... If I can pull just a quarter of that, I'm a happy man :) Doc-Z
sid -- 10/06/2004, 01:12:10 -- #7781
Remember Cheech (or is it Chong)'s curse: May your daughter marry a jazz musician. sid (life too complicated and abnormal to contribute anything more helpful to this important thread)
docz -- 10/06/2004, 01:25:02 -- #7783
who is Cheech? Doc-Z
Gordon -- 10/06/2004, 02:08:33 -- #7786
Cheech and Chong have made a series of comedic movies displaying their penchant for experimentation with recreational narcotics. Their biography at www.artistdirect.com succinctly states that Cheech and Chong were "simultaneously championing and lampooning the stoner community which became the team's most ardent supporters".
docz -- 10/06/2004, 02:21:02 -- #7787
Is it those guys in that "Still Smoking" film? Doc-Z
Gordon -- 10/07/2004, 03:25:52 -- #7838
Yes
neverwilllearn -- 10/23/2004, 03:55:59 -- #8279
O.K...Advice needed.. I am a single Teacher (on sabbatical) from U.S.A. who has fallen in a major way for Canada musician who plays in the Orchestra of a Broadway show that is touring until mid 2005..my young daughter is in the show and I am chaperoning .. He is talking about marriage ... Any tips, do's or don'ts, or suggestions or advice before we take the plunge? and for after too. He doesn't make alot of $$ & that's ok for me (but he's concerned) I just don't know what I'm in for...
docz -- 10/23/2004, 05:01:11 -- #8280
I guess the only advice I can give you is follow your heart, allthough I'm probably too young to give advice about theese serious subjects... Doc-Z
neverwilllearn -- 10/23/2004, 21:36:29 -- #8297
Well from reading some of the threads, which by a fluke I fell upon, you musicians are a special type of 'being'.. so from this non-musical math teacher.. I think I am going to take your heart advice to the bank.. that tells me alot ... and keep doing what we love hearing.. playing your music.
Scot -- 10/24/2004, 09:47:28 -- #8304
If you get together with a musician, a serious musician, you need to be prepared for the fact that you will be the second love of his life, music being the first. If that doesn't mess you up, then go for it. No matter what a serious musician says during the courting period, eventually the fact comes out that music IS life and everything else is secondary. That's probably why my girlfriends last two months :) What person can live in a situation where they know they are second and can never come first?
savage -- 10/24/2004, 10:22:46 -- #8305
Women will come and go, but music will always be there for you...
Scot -- 10/24/2004, 13:21:54 -- #8317
I'll drink to that (really, it's time for football and beer :)
mooondancer -- 10/24/2004, 18:08:06 -- #8319
"Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one" Duke Ellington
Scot -- 10/24/2004, 19:05:05 -- #8324
If you're into classical piano, you recognize the name Robin McCabe and the amazing talent as a solist and professor she is. I was working at the University of Washington TV station (Cablearn! what an oh-so-clever name) and we did an interview of Robin for one of the university tv shows. She is a musician- jazz, pop, classical, I don't care what genre you're in, there are people who play the music, and then there are the musicians, those who LIVE the music. She is a musician. She said, and I've quoted her on this in conversation before, "The piano is my mistress."
neverwilllearn -- 10/25/2004, 06:04:32 -- #8330
Well thank goodness I am very secure and have alot going on in my own life, one would have to be I suppose, because it sounds like the reality is clear.. I will be second.. I needed to have a full picture & that is o.k.. thank U gentlemen now read on.. I found the following article on the net.. see if it brings any truth home .. I feel like I have now been officially warned!! "Don't Fall in Love with a Musician" A woman's warning Vicki Wiseman Never fall in love with a musician. That's my warning to you. Especially if you're not the kind of woman who cares for bars and tiredness and a constant nagging jealousy. If you're the kind of woman who is meant to be any artist's wife, but a musician's. A painter maybe. A man who stays at home, takes his rage out on your love, wheedles for your attention. Even that will suit you better than the musician, who leaves you alone too long and doesn't tell you when he'll be back. But you'll fall in love with him anyway, despite all warnings from your friends and family. You won't be able to help it. Because when he is at home, he is quiet and calm. He writes songs while you sleep and plays them for you in the morning. He is full of devotion and devotion that has no cost. At least, not that you're required to pay upfront. We'll talk about terms later, when he is playing those songs he wrote for you in another part of the city and women are smiling at him and smoke lifts around his dirty golden hair and you are lying alone in your bed waiting for him to come home. Then we'll talk about terms. Condition one, you must allow your love to sleep all day and drink all night because that is what he is born to do. If he must work, it will be at a job you distrust and brings you more fear that his art itself. He'll be a bartender, shifting beer toward old alcoholic men in a pub where he stays afterhours to feel alive while you feel dead. You will lift your head at every 5am cab hoping it's him, come back to hold you a few hours before you have to go to work. It is never him until you're too tired to know it is. Condition two, you must not expect him to care about things like vacations, and houses and fine things. Although he leads the parade with talk of children, you can't imagine losing more of your time with him than you've already lost. If you end up married to a musician, poor woman, you will raise those children alone. You will put your money in a bank account and wish that you could take him to Scotland for a month. But he will be busy recording and becoming famous. And you will be too busy being jealous to leave him and do it yourself. Condition three, you must leave him. Even though there is no struggling against your love for him once it's born. Even when you've left him, kept him away from you for years, it will still be there worming inside you. You're glad to have left jealousy behind, to not worry about when he'll be home... but you'll still think about him everyday and your stomach will still turn when you remember his Sunday morning cigarette winding out the window and the guitar he kept in his lap and how much he made you believe he loved you despite all the other conditions. You won't forget that part, though the others, sometimes you will. Condition four, when it's over, you have to leave it over for his sake. Because it tortures him and makes him sad and broken. Musicians need to be sad and broken. It gives them the excuse they need to release themselves into it fully. They don't want you holding them back. Even if you want to just a little. Admit it. You don't want to let him be sad or broken. You just want him to love you in a way that he can't.
7 -- 10/25/2004, 23:00:51 -- #8347
What cynical rubbish.
Guillaume_Haydn -- 10/26/2004, 00:28:26 -- #8349
Hello everyone, I wonder what artist meant by "GSS (Girl Singer Syndrome)". Somehow I seem to intuitively understand because I instantly had to laugh... From the heart of Europe, Haydn
sid -- 10/26/2004, 01:26:36 -- #8350
Ms Wiseman has an ironic name, that's for sure. Anyone can be consumed by their job, and then it can be hard on the family. It doesn't happen only to musicians, and it isn't confined to men. I write from experience. sid
time to talk -- 10/26/2004, 05:51:08 -- #8354
personally i find the "wiselady's" comments hurtful. I wouldn't even consider myself an amature musician, for me it's just a hobby.. but just to keep up this hobby requires considerable effort and sacrifice, and i am always accompanied by disquieting thoughts such as "should i quit or not?". I have always taken exception to negative comments about musicians dedication to their music.. this is so because the majority of people who make those comments have spent much time for probably most of their lives listening to and enjoying music created by the very kind of person they are criticising, I.E, the musician that has to spend alot of time honing his abilities so that he can express himself so beautifully, a beauty, which is enjoyed by so many people, some of whom, are unable to appreciate what it takes to be able to deliver such loveing heart warming expression through the inanimate objects that we define "instruments"
time to talk -- 10/26/2004, 06:01:28 -- #8355
ps. loveing = loving p.s. neverwill learn.. (just to clarify things)my comment was not directed at you, it was directed at the comment made by ms wiseman, who's story seems quite one sided, though each is entitled to express themselves..freedom of speech etc,, ttt
LarryC -- 10/26/2004, 11:28:49 -- #8363
G.S.S. = When lead singer thinks she thinks she is greater than 1/x of the band (where x = number of members in the band). Can occur in the male species as well...see Van Halen circa 1985 under the diagnosis LSD (lead singer disorder) and the band Chicago in 1986. :-)
Scot -- 10/26/2004, 12:52:35 -- #8365
I should mention that I know quite a few musicians- very serious musicians, very good musicians, very professional and some very famous- who have gotten married and had good family life while being able to balance their professional life. I think the Wiseman article is 100% true-- some of the time.
docz -- 10/28/2004, 06:26:38 -- #8394
I think people are differen't, musicians also. Well a lot of great musicians were not good at relationships, but that doesn't mean that all musicians can't commit to another person. I think it depends on the person, and what the circumstances are. If he is madly in love with this girl, I mean truly madly deeply (yes I know....) seriously in love, chances are he is willing to commit. The only thing that will make a musician draw away is that if he has to choose between the music and the girl. For me music is not the primary love of my life, my family is the most important love in my life, but music comes in second, however I am really dedicated to music, as it is the thing that enables me to make a living and provide for my family, an also it is a thing I have a real passion for. Most musicians live for music, I live for my family and music. But people are differen't. I certainly care for houses, cars, mortages, vacations etc. And I'm fortunate that my wife serves as a road manager and helps out checking the crowd at gigs, claiming money and such. So me as a musician is a job for two people, she is the administrator, and I'm the performer. It's a magic symbiosis and it really works. But this may offcourse not apply to eveyrone else... George Gerswin, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald went through life with no real serious relationship... But then again there are others that did: Glenn Miller i.e. I still think you have to listen to your heart, if it works out, great! if not move on.. you still have a lot of life left to live, so why not live it? Doc-Z
nn -- 10/28/2004, 08:29:39 -- #8397
It doesn't matter who comes first, as longs as everyone is happy. ;) ;) ;)
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