What to do if things get difficult and the work dries up.

Sometimes things get rather tight and we need to make opportunities happen. As a friend of mine said once, ‘the trick to money was having some’.

So what to do?

1. First seeing the problem coming from a distance. Easier said than done but some of these things will take time so give yourself time for things to happen and act fast.

2.Think of a number of possibilities that open the floodgates to bring working, sell things, do other related stuff for instance sell equipment, do more lessons, get gigs, do talks, fix instruments for people and get your name out there.

4. Lock them together; does one thing lead to another? For instance a new pupil needs a new guitar, books, others to play along with. Create a chain reaction; later they can go to your gigs et cetera

5. Can you broaden your area of market, travel more, teach on the Internet, work at another school college et cetera

6. Peter Drucker the business writer said that there are three ways to expand business all other things are an expense. You need more customers, who buy more, and more frequently. Think about this it is really the only way

7. Build alliances, there are people that you can help and by extension they can help you. Cooperative ideas of offers from other businesses to one another can really do amazing things. We can expand on this greatly in another article

8. Referrals possibly the best way to expand. Ask then reward.

Remember the best time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining. So build up your resources when things are good to tide you through the rough weather. Think guns and butter; hard resources versus soft buy things that have value instead of things that melt away. Think about this when you’re buying things have they resale value? Interesting areas here are second guitars and second-hand music books that you can sell or even rent. In the case of guitars this is a really good way of trading because it doesn’t matter how battered they become or are they just need to be playable and then they become a continuous form of income.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk next year’s camp will be in the last week of July so get in early.

Keith Richards once said in an interview that songs were out there all around you, all you needed was to reach out and grab one.

 I like this idea along with the possibility that we do not have thoughts but thoughts have us. How else to explain the memes and ideologies that surface and then infect people from the great political thoughts and theories to what we become obsessed with and makes the news. I often ponder what happened to the flasher and the streaker, it seemed literally to expose itself in the 1970s. They all just go away? What possessed people? Some form of trickster maybe?

Often turning things around, thoughts having us making thoughts manifest and having some form of agency or spirit is powerful as it breaks the creative sensor and allows us to write. I like the NLP phrase about ‘it doesn’t matter if it’s not real, does it work?’

We need to open our minds for new ideas to enter like the muses of old to infect us, we need to be irrational willing to take ideas and turn them around; black needs to be white, white needs to be black the unreal needs to be the real and the real needs to be the unreal.

Scientific method is great but it is a tool, but scientism is like believing in the redemptive quality of an electric drill. I believe in the redemptive nature of the guitar (but I’ve seen the light, glittering of the machine heads).

Maybe we can change our lives by writing songs, following the idea of life mimicking art which is an idea that has infected people before but are strange examples of musicians and artists whose lives started to follow work they had produced. This has happened to me on a number of occasions which is taken me from ‘that is funny’, to, ‘that is odd’, to, ‘that is crazy’ to, ‘I had better right songs’.

The old blues men knew that songs had power to change things and that is why most old blues songs were active in things being able to change. In other words if my baby don’t love me no more, I know her sister will.

Blues camp this week and it is the 10^th anniversary. Lots of fun……………..

Some people be featured on an album but they don’t know it yet.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Give something back that hurts a little – Steve Martyn

In this society of risk adverse behaviour this is something which we have to embrace in order to achieve anything that moves us beyond where we currently are. Our society is full of legislation, attitudes and belief systems which move us away from anything that hurts or is even uncomfortable.

The foods that are good for us tend not to be the most tasty, certainly not the sweetest so that has led us to obesity and all the diseases that attach themselves to that condition and those which weirdly are a form of malnutrition due to us not consuming a wide enough range of foodstuffs, considering that we are in an affluent society we eat less diverse but more in a rationalised choice.

To become a great musician or an athlete you have to put in the time forsaking other things that may be sweeter in your life, like the computer game, or all the partying (if you have a life). The hours that a good musician puts in hurt and the fact that playing the guitar for three or four hours hurts your fingers and stretches the muscles to the point of cramp let alone the disappointment of not getting it right which does your brain in.

In a way it is a form of courtship with the spirit of music and creativity and should be viewed as such. There is no plan that works in courting a prospective lover you may know what you think you are doing but unless you adapt the plan to fit the person you are not going to get very far.

Making an offering or gift in courtship must be something that has value to you and them not something that you actually want to get rid of. When you give something like that it hurts a little.

In the past the great artists and players did not have anything to lose by taking a risk because life was shit anyway so it was worth the gamble. But from our perspective of comfortable, convenient lifestyles these risks are not undertaken, to our detriment. The reality is death is going to come and get you anyway so you may as well make the most of it while you are here.

A number of the young pupils that I teach come out with remarks such as ‘there will be a cure for cancer soon’ (I remember that being said when I was a young)’ In 20 to 30 years’ time we will be travelling to Mars et cetera et cetera. All this stuff is a dream to keep us going because when we get to Mars it will not be as good as we were told. it will be like it has always been, sold to people the suckers that will be populating it will be like the people that populated America and took it away from the indigenous people.

They will be indentured labour, people that are basically slaves bought and sold by land owners, that is how it was is done in the past and that’s how the future will play out but this time it will look like you have got a work contract with a big multinational company.

Think of the things that you’ve been promised in your life and they never quite work out to the utopian vision that you’re given and yet we fall for it over and over again. Why is that? If we looked at the hard realities and realised that anything that was worth having we have to work for and pay for in sweat and a bit of pain. So ladies and gentlemen pick up your guitars and play just like yesterday get down on your knees and pray, we won’t get fooled again.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days playing in a band learn the tricks of the trade.