Share The Wealth, Spread the Love

Scheduling

This week I’ve decided to write a little bit about the perils of being good-at-more-than-one-thing. In my youth, I always looked on versatility as the most useful and aspirational quality that I could have as a musician. After all, if you can do everything then surely you will get more work. Right?

Well, the answer is yes. And therein lies a problem. You will get bombarded with so many different kinds of work that you have to do a hell of a lot to keep all of the plates spinning at the same time. To give you an example, I do a wide range of live gigs on bass and on guitar. Learning different sets, for different bands, in different styles, on different instruments, bringing different gear and setting different sounds…. It takes a lot of time and effort. I revel in it and love the challenge of being kept on my toes, but sometimes I misjudge the balance and take on a bit too much.

The danger is that when you agree to do too much work, you are in something of a bind. Chances are, you won’t realize until the week actually arrives, that you have a schedule like this:

(Bear in mind last week was brutal and I finished in the studio at 2am on Sunday night)

Monday:
Morning: Workout at the gym
2pm – 8pm: Bass rehearsal with band 1.
8pm – midnight: Go home and prep tunes for band 2 (bass) and 3 (gtr).

Tuesday:
Morning: Sort emails and website, make some calls, prep gtr tunes for band 3, drop broken guitar amp over to repairman.
12 Noon: Pick up van and drive 3 hours to gig.
Evening: Do bass gig with band 2, rock out 11 – 12:30, get locked out of van and hotel, (see last blog) get to sleep after 3am.

Wednesday:
8:30am: Up, out of hotel and another 3-hour van ride back to London
2 – 7pm: Second rehearsal with band 1. (I recorded this one… needs editing though!)
7pm -2 am the next morning: Sort out my house (new housemate moving in tomorrow) and do a midnight food shop.

Thursday:
10am – 9pm: Teach at the ICMP
Hard day’s teaching –feel pretty tired.
9:45 – midnight: Chop up rehearsal into mp3s…prep tunes for tomorrow’s gig.
This is done in a semi sleeping stupor, but mp3s are done and sent out.

Friday:
10 am – 12 noon: Teach at TVU
12 – 4pm: Drive to Wales
Friday night: Play a gig at Blues Festival with Band 1.
Drive back from Wales – home at 2am.
Ouch. Really starting to feel it now.

Saturday:
Sat 11am: Clean house, arrange gear, prep gtr tunes for bands 3 and 4.
12:45 – 1:45pm: Teach an emergency lesson with a private student.
2 -5pm: Drive up north. Crap traffic – bank holiday…
5 – 11:30pm: Hang around at Band 3 guitar gig… prep tunes for Band 3 and 4 (also had dinner and watched a little Family Guy ☺.)
1am: drive home.
3:30am: Get home. Friends are drunk. Ouch.
4:30am: Sleep

Sunday:
Now, by the time Sunday has rolled around I am about as useful as Roger, the special needs tree that we met in Wolverhampton on Tuesday night (again, see last blog).
I have 2 choices. Spend the rest of the afternoon prepping guitar tunes for band 4 gig tonight (which I know won’t be over until 12:30) or, call in a favour from a friend.

The important choice
I called a good friend who does this gig more than me and asked if he wanted it. He said yes. I was ecstatic. Okay – I’m losing a little bit of money, but to be honest, he throws me gigs, so it’s nice to return the favour. Also, at this stage… I’m not going to do an excellent job and I’d rather put in an awesome dep in than turn up and be average. My reputation doesn’t need that sort of thing…

Now, my Sunday was more about watching 24, taking a bath, sorting out all of my bits and pieces around the house and tying up loose ends before I flew home to see my family in Belfast. For a change, I wasn’t arriving in Belfast like a total Zombie. I was awake and alert, I felt well rested and I had a great afternoon playing with my nephews.

In recent years I have managed to moderate my work, but at the minute I feel like I’m rolling down a hill – remember when you were a kid and you rolled down a hill.. it was fun, but sometimes it went a bit too fast… and you realized you weren’t totally in control of it anymore. It can take the fun out of it….

So I spend time as much as I can, balancing out my work. Prioritising certain things over others. Sometimes because of money, sometimes because they require too much of my time. The key to it is putting good, reliable, effective deps in.

If you want to be busy, make sure you have a support team. They are your back up plan and work spreads – they will no doubt throw you work at times when they need help and it all evens out.

The ego can compel us to feel like we should do everything that we can do, but this isn’t always true. Better to spread work around – share the love and keep things at a manageable level for yourself.

Think of it like butter – if you have enough for one piece of toast, but you spread it over two, both pieces will be too dry to enjoy…