Building a Music Career: David Dixon on Persistence and the Business of Being an Artist

Tune into The Water Trough podcast as singer-songwriter and author David Dixon shares his journey building a music career, the persistence it takes to succeed, and the realities of the music business. A Berklee College of Music alum, David also discusses insights from his book The Musician’s Gold Mine and what it takes for independent musicians to turn their passion into a sustainable career.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Ed Drozda 0:10

Welcome to The Water Trough where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Draws to the Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've always wanted. Welcome back to The Water Trough folks. This is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor, and today I'm excited to be joined by David Dixon. David is a Wilmington, North Carolina singer, songwriter, guitarist, and not least importantly, the proud papa of a 2-year-old. While juggling an idyllic home life, recording new music and creating heartfelt live performances, which my wife and I can vouch for, very heartfelt. His debut book, "The Musician's Gold Mine" reached number one on Amazon's new releases in both music business and songwriting categories. His latest single "Before it Gets Too Cold", recently surpassed 300,000 streams on Spotify. David, welcome.

David Dixon 1:30

Hey, thanks for having me.

Ed Drozda 1:32

It's a pleasure to have you here. Debbie and I were inspired when we first saw you perform. Your wife and your very young son were in the audience as well. We were really impressed by the whole constellation of things, your performance naturally, but also your wife and child being there like that. It was an outside venue and it felt really good. It was a combination of many things, so thank you for that.

David Dixon 1:55

Absolutely, that's great to hear. It's really special for me when my wife and son get to come, especially when it's an outdoor performance and nice weather and see 'em out there playing and, you know, laughing while I'm up there performing. It's a special thing.

Ed Drozda 2:08

We look forward to many more as well. So I wanna start by asking you a question. Life is a journey. When did your journey as a musician begin?

David Dixon 2:19

Well, two ways I can answer that. The first is involuntarily. When I was two years old and change, my mom was a violin instructor and was one of the pioneers of the Suzuki method, which is a Japanese method of learning classical music through memorization and playing by ear before learning how to read music. So it's a pretty unique method of learning that has all types of benefits like with memory and there are some studies that show that it raises kids IQs. Greenville, North Carolina, my hometown was actually a mecca for that on the East coast. There was a teacher named Joanne Bath, who was my private instructor all throughout childhood. Between that and my mom also teaching Suzuki method, the way they look at it is the earlier the better. As soon as you can hold the instrument you start associating sounds and finger placement. You put little tape on the neck of the violin and you make association with sound. You listen to the music, like while you're eating breakfast and you just soak it in. It ends up developing pretty advanced ear training, and making it much easier to learn how to play by ear. We still have the tiny little framed violin at the house, you know?

Ed Drozda 3:33

Oh my gosh.

David Dixon 3:34

So when I started playing guitar later in my teens, I realized right away I had a pretty nice advantage at hearing a song and learning how to play it faster than just plunking around. There was really something there. As far as answering your question, when did I know that was the path I wanted to be on and pursue? That would probably be when I was around 12 or 13. I had already learned how to play violin. I had learned how to play bass guitar and the upright bass for orchestra and then my buddy had his dad's guitar. He was a drummer. He could play a few chords, and he showed me how to play some basic cowboy chords, and I was just kind of like, this is it. I feel more passion from this than any other musical flavor I had ever tasted. Love at first sight. Put a band together relatively quickly, starting with just us as a duo. Recruited our friends to play bass and guitar, and by the time I was 14, I knew that that's what I wanted to do for my life.

Ed Drozda 4:32

I think a lot of us would agree, when it comes to parenting, starting out with something at a young age, am I coercing my child to go that path or am I giving them an opportunity to investigate something? It seems like you were given an opportunity to investigate, which grew with time. Yes?

David Dixon 4:47

Yes. It was also not only guidance. There was a fair amount of discipline.

Ed Drozda 4:53

I guess we can look at it in reverse and say, in the end David was thrilled with the idea. Maybe not so much along the way. Is that what you're saying?

David Dixon 5:01

Yeah, I remember at times dreading the lessons, dreading the summer workshops that I had to go to at ECU, that was like international, I forget what it was called, but it was a big program that was annual and there was teachers from all over the world that came in and you learned an amazing amount of skills from all these famous instructors. But it's in the middle of your summer and you're 10 years old and you're like, I wanna be outside playing at the pool, or whatever. But all that said, I would not change a thing. I would not take it back for anything. I got an enormous advantage in my music career from my upbringing, so I'm glad my mom pushed me into it. There was a light switch moment for me, I think I was 14, I might have been 15. My house was the band rehearsal house. Most of the kids in the band lived in the neighborhood and we practiced a couple times a week. We got pretty doggone good for a high school band. There was this famous music venue in Greenville at the time called The Attic, and they hosted a battle of the bands. Of course we signed up for that. I had performed many times in front of people on violin, but this was my first band performance. We were a five piece, and the whole high school came, the whole rival high school came, there was 400 people in that place. There was a big screen that covered the bands in between. You know, we change over between the bands. I'll never forget when that screen raised and we're all set up and ready to hit our first note. People were screaming like it was a Beatles concert. It was my first taste. In my mind I was like this is what it's like to perform live music? I'm sold for the rest of my life. I'll never forget that. That was a powerful moment; after that I never wanted to do anything else for a living.

Ed Drozda 6:41

Out of curiosity, how did you do in the battle?

David Dixon 6:44

Well, we won.

Ed Drozda 6:45

Now it's totally cemented, right?

David Dixon 6:49

Yeah, absolutely. Validation. I still have the trophy in my garage.

Ed Drozda 6:53

Oh my gosh, that's so cool.

David Dixon 6:55

We were really good for a high school band. We took it really seriously. We were all passionate about music. The drummer was a prodigy, basically a John Bonham as a 15-year-old, of course not that good, but better than most adults.

Ed Drozda 7:09

Well, John Bonham was 15 at one point too. Right?

David Dixon 7:13

Yeah, absolutely. It was a really exciting time.

Ed Drozda 7:16

That's fantastic. I can see at this point you're taking the keys and the ownership of the vehicle, and from here on out you're destined to do what you wanna do and how you want to do it.

David Dixon 7:29

Yeah, there was really no other options for me. Nothing else I really cared about. I was like, this is it. I had a serious girlfriend my senior year of high school. We were both planning to go to Appalachian State but branch out, get the college experience. We broke up right before the end of the summer so that changed course for me. I was also on a violin scholarship at App State, so I was there to study classical violin technically. But I was a 17-year-old starting college and wanted to have fun and was passionate about playing in bands. So I spent all of my free time, not working on classical violin, and playing at open mics, playing in pickup bands, playing and singing around Boone. I realized this is not the best place for me to get the best at that. So I was really close to dropping outta school. I just read Miles Davis's biography and it really inspired me to go out and get it. I was either gonna move to Athens, Georgia or New Orleans. I was gonna be a street musician. That was my plan. Make enough money to eat and figure out a place to live and it's on. I called my older brother and he listened to me telling my great plan, and then he introduced an idea that I hadn't even considered. He was like, hey if you're not feeling classical violin and classical music theory and music training, but you are passionate about music in general and you wanna do this for a living on a more contemporary level why don't you apply for schools that do that? There's some really great ones out there. The Manhattan Conservatory, Berklee College of Music. Schools that concentrate on Stevie Wonder and the Beatles in music theory class instead of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven. So I was like huh, I guess I should look into that. After spending a little time researching Berklee I was like, guitar driven monster players have come outta here. It's like the Harvard of contemporary music schools so if I can get in there it'll change everything. So I moved back home and started the mission. Fill out all the forms, apply for scholarships, get accepted, and a few years later I was moving to Boston.

Ed Drozda 9:41

And that's no small feat. I think people should realize Berklee is an extraordinarily competitive school. It is not a place where most people that apply get into. It really is a lot like Harvard in that regard.

David Dixon 9:55

Yeah, I had already completed my freshman year and when I moved to Greenville I started waiting tables to save money 'cause I was like, if I get in I've gotta be able to support myself. My dad was so worried about me dropping out he said East Carolina University has a wonderful music school as well, a great jazz school. And that's what I was really into at the time. It's not because I wanted to play jazz for a living. It's because I had already studied a very challenging genre in classical music, and the other most challenging, helping shape you as a musician, with more vocabulary style for me was jazz. So my dad said if you'll not take any time off of college I will pay for your tuition for one year at ECU while you save up money and prep yourself to go to Berklee. It was a pretty good deal. I met with the assistant dean and got special permission to bypass a lot of the lower class requirements because it's not typical to go into a music school and say hey, I'm only gonna be here a year. I wanna learn as much as I can and take the most advanced classes that I can. So they were like okay, if you're going to Berklee and you know you're just gonna be here a year, we'll give you special permission. I got a whole lot outta that first year. It was like training wheels for Berklee for me.

Ed Drozda 11:08

That is just so cool, and that's just the continuation of the beginning. What happened next?

David Dixon 11:15

I moved to Berklee. I had two years left of school. I was pretty terrified being a southern boy, not knowing a soul in the north. I don't like the cold weather. Great place to move for that. Right? It was such a challenge to not only gather the courage to make this happen, but also financially. I thought I was one and done with the dorms at App State. Have that one year of experience as a college kid and then get your own place. And it was like, no, you can't afford a place in Boston. You will be living in the dorms. It was kind of weird because I like to have fun, typical college kid stuff, and when I got up there I made a deal with myself- that's not what this is for. You got two years up here, you're gonna work your butt off. You're gonna get as much outta this as you can, and you're gonna put yourself in a position to have fun later, once you get successful or get the ball rolling at least. Berklee was full of pressure and anxiety, learning new information that I'm really happy I did, but it was a hard and stressful two years. It was one of those things that helped shape me as a person, and it absolutely improved my skills musically.

Ed Drozda 12:21

As a business coach I've had occasion to work with a number of creatives, and by creatives I mean those who are typically in the arts. They're very deeply entrepreneurial and there's a different construct about them in my estimation. One of the biggest things is discipline, being able to establish discipline. There is that tendency to create and not have to focus on how I create; I just do. The fact that you're saying this is important for creative people to hear. Those two years probably seemed like 20 when you were there.

David Dixon 12:57

Yeah I was in the thick of it. The time wasn't passing quickly and in retrospect it was just a little blip on the radar of my life. I think it's interesting what you said about the artist brain, and creatives. There's a lot of people, me included at times you're in the creative head space and it's really easy to be unorganized. It's really fun to create, but it's a whole different skillset to get that out into the world, see it come to fruition. For instance, I'm in my office home studio right now and I just cleaned up probably 15 different to-do lists that all had some similar bleed over and consolidation. I can very quickly let that get outta hand because I'll be trying to think in creative mode, but for people that are doing it DIY, like myself, you have to learn the skill sets or at least work on 'em to bridge the left and right brain or else it kind of becomes chaos or you end up with a million unfinished projects.

Ed Drozda 13:52

Right. You're self-aware enough to realize that these two facets of the creative can be consuming and in a sense distracting from the things necessary to allow it to happen, right? I hope that made sense.

David Dixon 14:09

It does.

Ed Drozda 14:10

We could talk at length about your performances. To a musician performing is the outward expression of what you do, but you've chosen something else as well, and that is to write a book. And your book is to help people make this big open space sensible. Can you tell us more about that?

David Dixon 14:31

It's actually just what we were talking about. There's so many talented people out there, artists, not just musicians, but especially musicians. Some of 'em are really good at the grind, the business side of things, the hustle. They might not be the most talented musicians out there, and some have both. It's the unicorn. But then there's a lot of people that are really talented. I often come across friends and colleagues that are incredibly talented, but they lack a lot of the business side of things, the organizational side, strategy, ways to work smarter, to get bigger things done, bigger milestones. A lot of times it doesn't take much of a change. It can be a couple little things that are getting neglected, and everybody's different. You have to wear a million hats if you're an independent musician. That's just the way it is. The main inspiration for this book is because I have so many colleagues and friends that are incredibly talented in one area, but lack skills in another area. This was magnified by a disc golf group of local Wilmington musicians. We would meet up and play disc golf and chat about our gigs. Many of them are successful full-time musicians, but we would all talk about, hey we play the same places we do these similar private events, what's going on with your website and marketing, how'd you promote this show, what'd you do when that club owner was trying to stiff you on some money? Whatever the case may be. There's a million hats that you have to wear as an independent artist, and there's just no way you're not gonna have some gaps. Every musician I've talked to, myself included, have gaps, and some of those gaps could be career changing. The difference in you comfortably making a living or not. The more we had these conversations, the more I realized, some of the information that I've been working to learn and figure out the hard way for 20 plus years seemed like secondhand implied info to me. And it's totally not even to other full-timers. Not that that makes me the expert, but there was a lot of information there that I knew would help a lot of other people in a similar situation. I started writing it like maybe this will be a blog or a series of blog entries and all of a sudden I was 170 pages in, not even close to being done, and was like, this is a book. So, that was the inspiration behind the book. I wanted to marry left brain, right brain, remove the gaps that could help people find success easier, not beating their head against the wall and not having to make mistakes, in some cases that I made exactly that were career setbacks or kept you from overcoming an obstacle sooner. Also taught guitar lessons for 15 years. I stopped doing that probably five years ago, even though I loved it. With my performance schedule and recording something had to get removed from the schedule. But I really enjoyed teaching and I had developed almost like family relationships with some of my students. It was very rewarding. There's nothing like showing somebody a concept, figuring out a way to where it really registers with them, 'cause all students are different. You know, you could explain something the same way to two different people and one of 'em gets it and the other one doesn't. So you gotta figure out a different way. That was missing from my life at the time that I was writing this book, so I was like well you know what I'm gonna do? I've got all these cool little short lesson concepts that I've seen work with other musicians over many years. I've seen 'em light up when you show 'em this minor-major chord. It sounds like the spy chord in James Bond. You know what I mean? Most musicians even accomplished players, if you didn't study jazz you probably don't know what that is. Parts one through four are mostly focused on music business, client relations, marketing, all that stuff. Part five of the book is actual music lessons. I've read a lot of helpful music business books and I studied music business at Berklee as well as performance. But, I never came across a book that had actual hands-on music lessons combined with the business side. So I was like, there's value here, this could be really cool for other musicians. So that's what I set out to do.

Ed Drozda 18:31

That's really fantastic. I can imagine that unless you've got extraordinarily deep pockets, the vast majority of musicians do not have managers and or agents. They're doing this on their own. That's where a book like this really comes in handy because as you said, you can perform till the cows come home, but if you don't have any business sense whatsoever, you might as well be busking in a subway in New York City, because it's not gonna go that far and it probably won't fulfill you, because the performance alone is not something you can live on. Right? What I'm hearing you say is that it's not so complex as they might think it is. I'm hearing you say that it can be simplified and codified in such a way that yeah, you can do it too.

David Dixon 19:18

That's absolutely true. There's such a broadness to things you have to know to get most of your bases covered, to set your career on a positive trajectory for success. More than just playing bar gigs for paying your rent. There are a lot of complexities and I tried to clarify many of them in the book, but generally speaking your recap is pretty accurate. You can do this. You just need some guidance and direction and you can learn the guidance and direction by grinding for 20 years, listening to a lot of music business podcasts, reading all the books you can get your hands on, talking to other musicians, having a mentor. But, it saves a lot of time if you can get it all in one source.

Ed Drozda 20:00

Takes me back to the old KISS principle. Keep it simple, stupid, it doesn't have to be so complex. And I like your idea of one stop shopping where musicians can come to one place and it's straightforward. Because there's always more than what you read and what you hear. It's not like it's snap your finger and it happens. Right?

David Dixon 20:19

You can get overwhelmed easily by all the noise, for sure.

Ed Drozda 20:23

I imagine so. I'm envisioning what it would be like and I'm thinking crap, this would be a real mess.

David Dixon 20:29

What most people don't realize is the performing, the songwriting, and showing up at your gig is a very small part of what moves the needle. It's almost implied, you better have put in a lot of hours, developed your craft, worked really hard, you're proficient on your instrument and, capable of putting on a professional, entertaining show. That's the bare minimum. There's a lot of other stuff behind the scenes that make it sustainable.

Ed Drozda 20:54

And ultimately make your performance that much more enjoyable too.

David Dixon 20:59

Absolutely. It's a cumulative thing for sure, and once you feel a little momentum in your career, there's ebbs and flows. I've had a lot of highs and lows, and that's just the life of an artist. But you do get a lot better at everything. You get more comfortable talking to the crowd, telling stories about songs, if it's that type of gig. Not being worried that you have a few too many open dates two months from now on your calendar and confident that something will come through because you've put yourself in that position. It's all cumulative, it's an ongoing process.

Ed Drozda 21:32

So David, this conversation breezed by like a fine melody, but as all things we've come to the end of our time. Before we go is there anything you'd like to leave our listeners with?

David Dixon 21:44

If you really want to do this, you can find the way to do it. There's no one right way to do it, but there's a lot of basics in a ton of different categories. You need to check those boxes to put yourself in a better position. But I'm proof that this is a possibility and you don't have to be famous to make a respectable living in music and do it your own way and be your own boss, which is a very freeing feeling. It's a thing about my life that I'm proud of. I'm leaving for a three day trip to Richmond in a few days, and I'm meeting up with my close friend slash very talented producer that I know from Berklee. We're working on new music, so I haven't released anything in a while, aside from the book because of just how chaotic it is having a toddler. But I should have some new music soon so if anybody wants to check that out or ask me any questions, I answer my emails. If anybody has any questions, any musicians, if I'm able to help 'em by answering something that I know the answer to, they can reach out to me. My website's David Dixon music.com and I love connecting with fellow musicians and helping 'em along.

Ed Drozda 22:51

Excellent. Well, David, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure for me to have you here today. I really appreciate it and I look forward to seeing you back out in the community in the near future, especially as it gets a bit warmer so you can do some of that outside stuff, which is fantastic.

David Dixon 23:08

Thanks for having me.

Ed Drozda 23:09

This is Ed Drozda The Small Business Doctor, and here at The Water Trough, I want to thank my guest, David Dixon, and I want to remind you that a healthy business is a successful business. I wish you melody and tunes that will keep you light, breezy, and on the right track. Pun intended. Bye folks.