17 Indie Artists on Their Oddest Odd Jobs That Pay the Bills When Music Doesn’t (not a poll)

Frankly surprised that the "lesser" cities of the Midwest aren't more sought-out as "liveable places for musicians". Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Iowa City all seem like lovely places!!

I'm curious if you mean as a home base for someone who already has a recording/touring career, or as a place to actively make a living?

Madison is getting increasingly expensive unfortunately, but Milwaukee can still be very cheap. I do know musicians who only do music here and in Minneapolis, but it's a constant hustle of course (and everyone has some combination of teaching/gigging/touring and recording revenue in some rare cases).

Milwaukee is gorgeous. I don't know anything about music scenes in those cities, I have a friend who lives and works in Madison and I've read that Iowa City has a good noise scene

Currently in Canada, Toronto is just becoming entirely unliveable from a rent-to-income perspective and musicians are deserting in droves. Montreal remains the best option for musicians, but you can't really work there unless you have perfect Quebecois French. Lots of small towns 1- to 2-hours outside of Toronto are becoming popular places to move to-- Hamilton especially. I found a tenable living situation in Toronto but if I'll likely be leaving the city in five years or so for like Paris (Ontario) or Bancroft or something like that

perfect Quebecois French

Eh, I wouldn't say 'perfect'. Nor 'Quebecois' for that matter… But yeah, you need to be able to get by in French if you want a decent job in Montreal.

In Madison there's been an unexpected upswing in jazz & DIY venues, which is nice, because it was bleak for awhile. It's still pretty bleak for rap/dance/most other scenes imo. Milwaukee has a lot more going on for rap/dance/indie, but it's not exactly a wonderland.

I think the midwestern winter is a real deterrent to more artists moving/staying here.

didn't expect to see a bancroft, ontario reference itt.

i was there once a couple of winters back, my ex's cousin was a school teacher there.

I’m sorry that people don’t find discussion of how music is made interesting. Please enjoy this video of people brawling to a self playing piano, which reminded me of this thread in at least four ways

Aye so my mom witnessed a fight at Costco today... commotion was crazy... but I’m dying at this self-playing piano scoring the whole moment 😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/LYNGWBAqEQ

— Allen Golden Jr. (@allengoldenjr) April 14, 2019

LOL, where is that?

Impartial observation from a guy who occasionally reads ILM but very seldom posts: I have no idea of the back-story here but I've enjoyed Turrican's posts ITT, even where I don't wholeheartedly agree.

The snarky criticisms seem weirdly misplaced (and a real bore to scroll through).

yeah i don't agree with falsehoods often as well.

scroll through my ass, lurker

don't do it lurker

I like that this thread has circled back to the player piano

I witnessed a brawl on ILX today, scored by a self-playing piano..

Regarding the odd present of the player piano:

I was curious a while back if Yamaha still had the self-playing (or guided playing) stuff in their newer keyboards that they were touting circa the early 1990s

It turns out they have exclusive concert experiences — you can have a live or prerecorded concert playing on video, and the piano part being played comes from your keyboard, which is being played at a spooky distance by the artist.

I’m morbidly curious about who actually pays for this outside of music stores hawking Yamaha product

i was watching The Great Egg Race the other day and one of their episodes was an automatic piano. he demonstrated it using a modern* piano that ran off data written on a standard cassette.

* modern for 1985

I'd be really interested in finding out how US granting systems work... I kind of just assumed there weren't any? beyond grants for institutions?

Like a lot of American things, a significant amount of arts granting is done by the private sector: mostly private foundations and some public community foundations. When it comes to government granting, this happens at the national, state, and local levels -- the latter two often end up working as incentives for artists to remain or come or leave certain areas.

Federal grants go through the NEA - National Endowment for the Arts (there is some that go through other departments like the NEH -- National Endowment for the Humanities, or other agencies to create "innovative" programs -- I think there is one arts grant program that gets funding from HUD -- Housing & Urban Development?). The vast majority of NEA money goes to organizations and institutions now -- after the brouhaha with the "NEA 4" -- but a lot of the grants are project based and are for individual artists working with organizations with a significant amount of the money being earmarked for artist fees. There are also contractual ways of funding an individual artist project through an organization, with the organization acting in a way like the "guarantor" of the artist.

At the state level, New York is one of the most generous states. At one point, California cut almost all of its state arts granting, but in the last 5-10 years has increased and expanded its arts grants, and definitely is marketing the fuck out of that fact. California does most of its arts funding through a bunch of different programs, and they change from year to year. I'm definitely showing my stripes as a "coastal elite" by not knowing much of anything about the generosity/funding of Southern and Midwestern states ... I'm definitely not implying that California and NY are the only games in town.

There's also local level government funding -- another reason for artists to live in cities. I can rant extensively about how this impacts local arts ecology/economies in terms of "rich city/poor city" issues, where the rich city gives the bigger grants, so the artists present their work in the rich city, and meet residency criteria often on technicalities, but because the rich city is rich, they move to the poor city, which does not have the money to do such generous granting ... anyway ...

Self-playing/midi acoustic pianos rule, it's how Drukqs was made

The Kyle Gann album too

Seth Horvitz's "Eight Studies for Automatic Piano" too

thanks to everyone helping to contribute to my thread tangent I pushed to get away from a more irritating thread tangent

on the good on-topic material: good post, sarahell!

^ Agreed!

Yes that was very informative, thank you!

Are there any examples of American bands paying for recording or other costs with grants?

There are several organizations - the Robert Bielecki Foundation and Giant Step Arts, among others - that give jazz artists money specifically to make albums. (Giant Step also pays for manufacturing.)

it's been a while since I read the original piece, so sorry if this has been mentioned, but one common side stream of income I hear about is wedding and/or corporate gigs

IME musicians who get grants seem to be more aligned with experimental or otherwise artworld adjacent music scenes. Feel like stateside it’s more normal for visual artists to get grants

one common side stream of income I hear about is wedding and/or corporate gigs

Almost as odd as teaching music

Weddings did wonders for Omar Souleyman.

Jazz is an institutionalized form though.

Also most of the musicians I know who play wedding gigs and teach lessons are jazz musicians (because they can read, play any style, etc).

Classical musicians = chopped liver, clearly :P

its always amusing to see Echolyn videos on YouTube because there's always a comment like "that's my music teacher's band!!"

I thought it was interesting that the band who did "Cool Kids" were music teachers for a second.

I have several music teacher friends who play in proggy bands.

I'm not sure I really think of rock as less institutionalized than jazz, although I'm not really clear on what is meant by "institutionalized". Certainly not when it comes to Suicidal Tendencies.

I mean taught in schools & universities, accepted on a mainstream level as a cultural good, available support from grants, organizations, local government, etc.

Suicidal Tendencies??? :)

Sorry, just a weak joke about a song titled "Institutionalized".

I spent a lot of the last three years supervising college-level rock and EDM recording/production projects and currently make a living mostly teaching kids stuff like AC/DC, Green Day, and Weezer songs (sometimes in Catholic schools) so I'm less convinced wrt what is being taught. Wrt grants, it seems like a tautology since that was the topic of discussion: pop/rock artists get loads of grants and public support in this country.

That's Canada though, right? In the U.S. only energy drinks give EDM scholarships.

I was teaching at a US college the last three years but a coastal elite one tbf. Obv jazz has had a few more decades of academic institutionalization than rock so yeah if we're talking strictly about academic institutionalization. I guess I was thinking of "institutionalization" as something that could also refer to the institutions of major record labels, the broadcast industry, etc.

playlists of mainstream politicians

I regret to inform that energy drinks will no longer be giving EDM scholarships soon :(

I’m finally watching “The Good Place”; an ep. in S1 has one of the best EDM jokes evah

I have several music teacher friends who play in proggy bands.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Wednesday, April 17, 2019 8:17 AM (one hour ago)

i know a lot of musicians who teach, and they are either strictly classical people (including traditional folk genres), or they play in proggy bands

IME musicians who get grants seem to be more aligned with experimental or otherwise artworld adjacent music scenes. Feel like stateside it’s more normal for visual artists to get grants

― Vapor waif (uptown churl), Wednesday, April 17, 2019 6:52 AM (three hours ago)

Not really. There is more grant money available to the performing arts vs. visual art in the U.S. ... and it is often built on the following ideas/assumptions: visual art is more commercial -- in that the work is more easily saleable for significant sums of music; and performing arts are more public, in that they provide more of a "service" to the public, that is, audiences. It depends on the genre/sub-genre of both disciplines however.

I'm not sure I really think of rock as less institutionalized than jazz, although I'm not really clear on what is meant by "institutionalized". Certainly not when it comes to Suicidal Tendencies.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Wednesday, April 17, 2019 8:44 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean taught in schools & universities, accepted on a mainstream level as a cultural good, available support from grants, organizations, local government, etc.

Suicidal Tendencies??? :)

― change display name (Jordan), Wednesday, April 17, 2019 8:51 AM (one hour ago)

There are also political issues involved in the institutionalization of jazz, in that it stands in for "artistic accomplishment by African-Americans" at a socially-acceptable "high culture" level. ... which has led to a lot of problematic arguments and discussions re the evolution of jazz and the role of white ppl in it, and class differences among African-Americans, and whether jazz is still "radical" because it has a presence at lincoln center as opposed to rap ... and way too many thinkpieces involving Wynton Marsalis and Kamasi Washington

but then Rat Bastard got a huge ass Knight Foundation grant for like putting on the International Noise Conference, but that's an outlier in terms of the conventions of music/arts funding

also i would like to thank ilx for expressing interest in the generally boring rarefied things I know/deal with as part of my job (or rather, many past jobs). ... feeling lots of <3 rn

This is honestly so interesting!

I have some imaginary comedy sketch in my head where a group of musicians from different parts of north america are talking about funding and grants and one ends up pointing a finger and exclaiming "but you're subsidized.. BY CANCON!!"

Sarahell, def otm about the jazz stuff.

At one point I got really sick of doing jazz gigs because it felt irrelevant, was often musical wallpaper, etc. Now I love doing them because you get paid and it doesn't matter if anyone comes or if they listen, and the free food and drinks are way better than playing original music in a diy space.

I can see the transition from the paying for a copy business model to the paying for usage business model reaching a climax
when they finally get the chips planted in our heads. Music lovers, who have songs floating in and out of their consciousness
all day, will have a hefty bill to pay at the end of the month.

a chilling vision of the future