I find and develop bands for a major label. It’s called A&R, and I do this from the basement of my home. I love this situation; it enables me to see my family a lot in spite of the fact that I spend a lot of time traveling to other cities in search of the next big thing. Prior to this gig, I was in the radio business. Some might say I went from one sinking ship to another, some might be right, but I’m cool with that. I keep closing my eyes, hoping that when I open them someone will have figured out a fair way for the music business to start making money again. Until then (or until I come up with the answer myself), I’ll keep my head down and continue my search. People often ask me what a typical day looks like for someone who does what I do. The truth is, there isn’t a typical day. Each day is very different from the next, each day is unpredictable.
One of my bands is currently on their first headlining tour, and its going fairly well. That is until last week when I got the call that their bus driver (the third one that they had been through so far on the short tour) had gone missing. Up until then he had been a very dependable driver. He often told the band stories about his amazing wife and kids, about how much he missed them and couldn’t wait to get home to see them at the end of the tour. A real family guy. It seemed very unusual that he was late for bus call, like 4 hours late; something was definitely up. The band had to get to Vancouver
that night for a show, and they were currently stuck in Seattle waiting for family man to show up. Finally, the band’s tour manager decided to take a cab to the driver’s hotel to see if he could find him, and find him he did.
When he got there, he asked the hotel manager to escort him to the driver’s room, he did and when they knocked a very tired woman’s voice from inside yelled, “coming”, but she never opened the door. The hotel manager decided to open the door himself with the master key, and when they walked into the room they found the missing driver along with two prostitutes surrounded by crystal meth and crack paraphernalia, strung out like nothing they had seen before….nicely done family man, nicely done—your wife and kids will be proud I’m sure. The owner of the bus company personally flew in from Nashville to drive the band on the rest of the tour…such is what I deal with, always interesting, always an adventure.
Who knows what this week has in store. I’m not traveling, so I’ll most likely sift through the hundreds of demos I’ve accumulated over the last couple of weeks, in hopes of finding something amazing, my hopes will most likely not be realized, but I’ll try anyway. Next week I head to Madison, Wisconsin for a studio session with a young prodigy that I’m interested in working with…we’ll see how that goes, at least I’m pretty much guaranteed that I wont have any run-ins with family-oriented crack addicts…
-mm
