The Best Way to Get Rich in Music
A beautiful photo taken by Adam Purcell from Melbourne Ceili Camera of our finale at our Wesley Anne Melbourne album launch singing with Corn Nut Creek and Luke Byrnes from Double Dole Stringband
I got an alert from APRA, “Your royalties await”
I smile, thinking about how Missy Higgins and Peter Garret probably just received the same message.
I opened my account: $3.65
“That’s gone up!” I laugh.
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We had our first album launch at The G.R.A.I.N Store (yes! The one from the tune on our album!). The audience was spilling out both sides. Some rugged up in puffer jackets watching from outside, some dancing between the gallery walls.
My parents were there in the front row. They sang harmonies with me on Picola as a “surprise” encore at the end of the concert.
After the show an ex-councillor came up to them and said
“You must be so proud”,
“Oh Yes” they replied, “they’re just doing so well at their music.”
She continued with a smile, “They’ll never make a lot of money, but they will be happy”
Thank goodness my parents have always made in clear that they would be highly disappointed in me if I ever lived my life just to make money.
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Though I’m not sure if music actually makes us happy all the time. It sometimes feels like wrestling an angel.
There are pockets of intense joy. But the overall feeling is more like one of a deep sense that I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing.
It is true that we don’t make a lot of money from it. We definitely pay more money making our art than our art makes for us.
But our art holds us in other ways beyond the realm of money. And it creates a space for us to connect to and hold other people too.
A bit like the difference between a career and a vocation I guess.
And right now it feels like the most important thing I can be doing: creating and being part of events in the real world where real people gather and drink and eat.
Technology is sucking peoples spirits dry. It’s wildly out of balance - pretending to be our real life when it actually is a zombifying echo of the real thing. Driving a wedge between people, disconnecting them from their time and place.
Folk music is an antidote to this.
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So we don’t make money from it. But music has made our life rich in meaning. It hopefully makes your life rich in meaning too.
I realised this as a kid. That music gave you something special to offer. Whether someone was getting married or someone had died. Or just making a day special.
Being a musician feels like following breadcrumbs. You play a gig. Someone in the room will ask you to play for a different one, a new audience. Someone there then asks you to play somewhere else or to appear on their radio show. So it goes.
It’s a wild adventure.
Like, it’s took us to Alice Springs tomorrow, to perform at the Top End Folk Festival! (See a video here!)
I’m always thrilled to see the mix of people at a gig. It’s like a house party of your entire past life.
(Though I must confess, it was a shock to see students I had taught in Year Seven Music at our Melbourne album launch. I guess that’s how old I am now! A deeply delightful shock I add, in case one of them is reading this right now.)
There are layers of meaning making in every part of our music practice, from the gigs to the compositions and song writing - even creating the merch.
It’s like my Mum’s art work. She layers in all sorts of things, every layer using materials of meaning, from her hand-dyed fabrics, ragged tea towels from my grandmother, photos of my father shearing, local wildflowers.
Bits of everything in your life end up in your art. Then when you share it, you get to share your whole life (within in a three minute song).
That’s why I wanted to make a zine of the album, to celebrate all of these layers of meaning (which, if you haven’t already, you can download for free here!)
Every time someone listens to the album, comes to the gig or buys a piece of merch they get to add your art to their own story. And so the layers of meaning build up.
I can’t track that on how many streams we’ve received on Spotify or royalties on APRA. But I certainly can through the conversations I’ve had with people.
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Good things in life have layers of meaning.
(That’s why AI created art just doesn’t hit the spot. We can’t have instant meaning-making. It could be a layer in the process of meaning-making, but it can’t be the whole process).
Whether it’s music, a meal, reading your favourite picture book to a niece, a walk, talking to a friend.
What is the meaning of life? The meaning we create in life!
