Comments on: Cellist Zoe Keating on Quitting Your Day Job, Going on Tour

By: paulbailey.us (beta) » Bookmarks for July 6th through July 15th [del.icio.us]

paulbailey.us (beta) » Bookmarks for July 6th through July 15th [del.icio.us] — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:55:22 +0000

[...] Create Digital Music » Cellist Zoe Keating on Quitting Your Day Job, Going on Tour – “Should you quit your day job and go on tour with a rock band? That’s the question answered by cellist Zoe Keating at Ignite, the 5-minute hyperpresentation series put on by O’Reilly.” [...]

By: Musical Gear

Musical Gear — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:07:11 +0000

Zoe Keating, I’m speaking as a frustrated musician, and I must say that you should go on tour. Make a living out of something that you love to do. Strike while the iron is hot, for you shall never pass that way again (or maybe you will, who knows?) If there’s not much at stake if you leave your day job, then by all means, take a radical sabbatical. Enrich your soul. Just my 2-cents…

By: RCUS

RCUS — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:39:33 +0000

@ Edwin:……I think you need to get in the habit of submitting me some Ableton based projects in the “Online Work Request” system instead of the drab Powerpoint garbage i seem to work on lately…..at least then i can look like i’m working on “work” when I slack.

@ everyone else: sorry, inside joke. couldn’t resist. We both work for the same mega-corporation. Fosforo kicks ass, i could be a roadie for them but I think i’d be booted off the tour for my East Coast rave scene roots and my overuse of quantize features hahahaa.

@ Zoe and Peter: thanks for the post! i thought it was great to hear this perspective. I am still definitely up for touring and hopefully will make it a reality in the next two years.

By: Jaymis Loveday

Jaymis Loveday — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:02:24 +0000

Another downside which Zoe didn’t have time to mention: You don’t get time to create anything when you’re on tour.

For those who don’t read CreateDigitalMotion: I toured as visualist in a band with a high-profile musician, a couple of months after he’d made the top 6 of Australian Idol. From the day we set off on tour, to the encore of the last gig I played was precisely a year.

When we left I was expecting an awesome creative journey, and took along my video cameras, graphics tablet, production gear, and hundreds of hours of media to fill with content.

The sad reality was that you spend so much time doing all of the things Zoe mentioned – as well as a myriad other tasks – that you don’t really get any time to create anything while you’re touring around.

That was the worst part for me. Bad food and weird beds and no sleep take their toll after a while, but not being able to make anything new is the quickest way for me to get disillusioned with just about anything.

By: Birds Use Stars

Birds Use Stars — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:37:29 +0000

I have a running theory that there is a certain percentage of mankind that actually has absolutely no sense of humor. They laugh at things they are told are jokes and at terrible sitcoms because they are hiding it. Point being that there will always those that take whatever you do completely seriously if it doesn’t have a laugh track, and Will Farrell making a weird face.

Anecdote regarding touring from my previous band:

The drummer, one of the guitar players, his girlfriend and myself in the middle of a terrible van trip for a bit of gear 3 states away. All of us were miserable, starved, and short on sleep.

Me: So, you know that this is what touring is going to be like right? It’s going to be this miserable, but our van will be full of equipment.

Drummer: Yeah, but that will be different, because it will be like a vacation!

Long story short, I got the hell out of that band.

By: lematt

lematt — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:25:30 +0000

i had a lot of fun watching that presentation.

i have toured + deejayed, so a “should you quit your day job to go on a deejaying tour” would be quite funny, as the alcohol factor gets multiplied by 100 :)

thanks Zoe

By: stk

stk — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:29:05 +0000

Every time I get back from a tour I vow to never again spend several weeks in a minibus with a neverending ‘flu, cold feet, terrible diet, breathing secondhand weed smoke with more booze as the only respite, and rushing to claim the most isolated patch of floor before anyone else.

Invariably, twelve months later it seems like such an exciting idea to do it all again.

I hated touring in the US. So many crappy bars with shit soundsystems full of indifferent people.

The UK on the other hand was a much better experience.

By: edwin

edwin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:35:53 +0000

i’ve toured.
it’s what i always dreamed doing since my days as a roadie for the Groovie Ghoulies.
my most recent experiences have been with my electronica band Fosforo.
our first tour was through new mexico and east texas. we played at a variety of bars and it was an established route by a promoter that always gets the bands paid decently. for an indie band it was a break even type thing. selling merch was the only way to profit as most of the places we played were bars with no cover so really what we got was a percentage of the bar. i think it’s all in the connections you make and who you know when you’re an indie artist. there are several ways to plan a tour that DIY articles have thoroughly gone into, always plan a route and use your connects to skip on paying for hotels.
the short weekend jaunts to nyc and boston worked out well for us. we’d hop on a plane, stay at friends places, eat well, and ride the chinatown bus back and forth between cities. it helped that our lead singer speaks mandarin in order to negotiate the fees for the extra gear on the bus.
we also toured 17 days in Europe with our tour manager Freddy “Jesus.” the bulk of the tour was in Germany where we were always paid, had a place to stay, fed healthy vegetarian meals by the establishment owner and were met with enthusiastic fans that liked to dance and drink all night. in some places the bar owner would get mad if we didn’t drink. Europeans appreciate music in such a different way than Americans. I’m faced with pay to play here in LA all the time and in Europe they paid up front or right after the show with no problem even if the night had only ten people or 400! i wouldn’t ‘quit my day job…instead i’d use one week of vacation time and maybe do short weekend tours with the rest of my vacation. for more details check out http://bigineurope.wordpress.com which was the perspective of our Europe tour from my lead singer.
peace!

By: tiago morgado

tiago morgado — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:21:01 +0000

I have posted this comment on youtube

I must assume, that when? you like music, and believe on what you do, being able to project yourself to an audience (and earning some money with that) might be just great.. when you are studying music academically, and spend the whole day learning and eventually making some music, you are not happy because you cannot project what you are.. there are not better life conditions.. each one has its own difficulties, and you just have to learn how to deal with that

thanks for making this show, instead of making just shows like america’s got talent and? pop idol

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:23:50 +0000

Thanks, Zoe! Well, hey, it’s prompting some interesting discussion.

But yes, I can tell you, doing the 5-minute format in front of a HUGE crowd (a half-drunken crowd in my case) means that saying provocative things is often your best bet. (Incidentally, I think Zoe did better than I did. Ahem.)

No need to apologize about the rest of the country. Now, I’ve gotten pretty adept at slumming the Interstate exit, but boy, yes, novelty wears off for everyone eventually. It also kills me to go back to Louisville and see how much of the city has been made over in this odd, generic suburban thing that’s identical everywhere (NYC isn’t immune from that, either, though generally we get the same chains with more rats). That’s a different topic, of course, but I think relevant enough to the reality of what touring is like…

Of course, touring is just one of a number of non-glamorous things you can do that involves sacrifice for the love of your music. And we wouldn’t have it any other way, which is why I agree — no need to get caught up in a ‘grass is greener’ situation.