Ace drummer Steve Goold and I talk about falling in love with teaching, gauging your standing in the music community, and studying music without loosing your connection to what it really is. Steve has worked with Ben Rector, Mat Kearney, Sarah Bareilles, Owl City, and Cory Wong, and it was a true pleasure to chat and soak up some of his gratitude.
I wanted to put my best foot forward, and I knew that my best foot forward required a lot of work.
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Actionable Advice
- I was taking gigs for the purpose of learning.
- Any opportunity I had to play for someone else felt like the only functional version of a business card I could hand out. There’s no musician yellow pages because people want to hear you. In 2005 I didn’t have an Instagram page I could direct people to.
- Well, I don’t know who’s going to want to hire me, but now that I’m here we’ll see. But if nobody knows I’m here that’s not really a fair assessment of whether or not people want to hire me. So I’m just getting on the horn telling people that I’m here.
- I don’t think anyone is just magically good. You gotta to earn it. And I’ve noticed that earning that level of skill via practice and preparation makes playing more fun. I want to enjoy myself, so I’m going to put the work in so that I can show up to the gig and enjoy it.
- Every really great musician I know had a period between 3-5 years where they were just dedicated to practicing. And it had nothing to do with preparing for gigs or tests. It was practicing for the sake of practicing.
- I want to give you as much permission as I can to not be a teacher if you don’t want to be.