A Musician's Note.

A few thoughts after a lifetime in music. Value your work. The time and dedication it took to accomplish your professional chops. Respect yourself. Or no one else will. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to my podcast series, The Train from Air Tree Station. My name is James, James Clark Jones, a singer, songwriter, writer, podcaster, erstwhile guy trying to make some kind of life out of a life in the arts.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

I know we're unsuchable.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

And this episode 16 is called a musician's note. As I continue to write about my experience in music, my time spent practicing guitar, mostly, guitar, hours every day for weeks and weeks, then years and years, just to reach a point where I might be competent enough to be considered a professional. I turned pro, I was around twenty-one. As I joined a few bands, I went on the road up north in Ontario, the vastness of northern Ontario, spectacular really, and other places, touring in vans and and old cars. With that in mind, I pause here because I want to come to a point near the end of this podcast. My career path as a young musician in my twenties was decidedly different than the path that 20 somethings might find themselves in today. I was fortunate. My early years were still part of a live music scene in bars and clubs, a phenomenon that at the time, at least in southern Ontario, it felt like it would go on forever. There was just so many gigs. So many gigs. I played in country bands and top 40 bands, a few heavy rock bands before I had an original band. I was I was versatile enough to pull off the necessary chops to appease an audience. I once joined a Leonard Skinner tribute band. We were genuine. We lived it. We loved the Southern Rock sound. I learned the solo. It's a Freebird, note for note. Now there are three guitar parts in there, by the way. Not just the one that you hear in the main part. I learned the live version, the Alan Collins, Alan Collins' main soaring solo part, the Stevie Gaines part, and the slide guitar intro, of course, from the sublime Gary Rosington. All three of those lads are gone now. Ed King, too, the guitar player who came up with the intro to Sweet Home Alabama. Yeah, that intro. Four guitar players, four different styles. I learned how. I would practice for hours, sitting on my bed, guitar in hand, my old Radio Shack Walkman playing a cassette of a live Skinnered recording. Practice, practice over and over again. I would listen, then play, then play along. I could do that for hours, literally hours, until I could play the music right, note for note. It had to be right. We wanted to do it justice. For a short time, I was also in a Rush tribute band. Rush. Great Toronto boys. I grew up listening to Rush and Max Webster and Saga and just all the all the local Toronto bands, Triumph. Amazing. We were pretty good in the Rush tribute band. I mean, you had to be pretty good to play Rush. I learned the subtle parts of the master Alex Lifeson, and I learned to play ferociously too, like he does when his quick linear solos soar over one of the best rhythm sections in the history of all time. I changed my playing from a slightly more bluesy Jeff Beck Southern Rock Clapton motif to a more formal, scale-infused Alex thing. I can't explain it any better than that. I was able to change styles and adjust. And if you visit my Instagram account, I have an old grainy audio clip of me playing a middle section of La Villa Strangiato. It's not bad. And we were loud. We were loud. I was also very skinny, so it's a long time ago. In between these bands, I would play in a few other cover bands, learning the top 40 of the day. I didn't like the top 40 of the day in the early and the mid eighties. And not then and not so much now. But it paid the bills, and the girls would dance. Club owners loved that. I was a snob, although I was kind of a stupid snob. Music was too important to me not to mean something to you. So serious. Top forty was shallow, digestible, and I didn't spend months and years learning how to play like Jeff Beck, Alex Lifeson, or the Allman brothers just to get girls on the dance floor. What a hoot I was to be around then, and I had no filters. As I have mentioned many times before, back in my youth, I could have used some better networking skills. But life, to me, to us, the band back then was black and white, cut and dried, right and wrong, no shades in between. I would save the world until my heartbreak through song. It didn't work out that way, lol. Nor should it. By my late twenties, I began to write songs with an acoustic guitar in hand with conviction, the allure of a light foot song, and then listening to Steve Earle, such a writer, made me, had me change my direction completely. I was hooked on writing. I gave up the electric guitar for a while to pursue my folkiness, tell a story in three minutes, just me and a guitar. I did that for a long time, made some records, lost money, questioned my place in the universe. But I wrote and I practiced best I could, gave it my all, despite the lifestyle and the booze and the smokes. Did I mention that I mention I lost money? I didn't know how better at that time to apply my trade. But I do but I digress. My point to this episode, episode 16 in my The Train from Air Tree Station series, is to offer perhaps some perspective to young players now. Young artists, singers, songwriters, musicians, painters, anyone creative. You must only create for yourself. Try not to let money or fame or groupies or friends or anything influence you. And especially not the suits. The money guys have no soul. Just create. Make it your best. For sure. You will look back someday and wish you had done something differently, a different vocal take, a different mix, more bass, less something else. That's a a woulda, coulda, shoulda thing. But you will never ever regret having put the effort into creating your own best work, your best art. Do your best. I've had gigs where I have walked off the stage after the show like King Shite. I nailed it. Voice was good, guitar playing was yummy. Yes. And no one said a word to me. Other nights walking off stage, vowing to never play again, sell my guitars, rinse my vocal cords with sandpaper. I suck. And someone from the crowd walks up to me and says, Man, that was awesome. You sounded great. You're never as good or as bad as you think. It's an average. So if you put in the work, the practice, the soul, the search for the feeling, you'll sound okay. You'll be a pro. Now, just be humble about it. My other point to this episode is to share some universal truths about dedication and grit and perseverance. A few life lessons from someone who I assure you has made many, many, many mistakes, faux pas, and cringy choices in a creative business in which no one, no one gives a shite about you. As an artist, you are completely on your own. Until, of course, you start making money for other people, but that's a whole other podcast. I grew to embrace this part on your own. And I learned to trust my instincts eventually and my gut. Eventually. So, in no particular order, here are a couple of gems and suggestions about a life in the arts learned through my hard personal experience. May I just say full disclosure, the responsibility of any and all past actions is fully, fully mine. But anyway, listen up. It's been sixty years, but I am finally learning to keep my private face private and my public face public and to never confuse the two. A lesson for younger listeners here, and for those of us who bloom a little late. Sometimes I felt like I got everything wrong, turned around. I worked within the limits of my talents, always pushing past or trying to, in order to capture something good, articulate, create something that might last for a while. My goal was to one day reflect on the work and think, oh, that was pretty good. My best efforts. Early on, I made a deal with myself. As I got older and the pain in my shoulder and neck made practicing a real chore, I would stop playing if I got to a point where I was no longer developing as a musician, getting better. Same with songwriting. At some place, I had little left to say or share. Thirty years is a long time. So putting down the guitar and turning my writing chops into a book or a podcast seemed like a natural progression. But I don't know. People ask me why can't I why can't I play just for fun? Well, because it's painful. I didn't play music for fun. It was my work, and I'm not as good now. Loner that I am, I've not had many people around over time to compare notes. So I'm learning this on the fly with some reflection. I've reached an age now where I understand what a person might say, I did the best I could. Some things are just now in the past. Self-taught and too stubborn to ask for help. I never knew if what I was doing was the right way, the best way. I mean, who really does? Here's a few other things I learned the hard way as a once young musician, performer, and songwriter. Get your yellow pad out in your pen. The less you get paid, the worse you will be treated. Guaranteed. People who pay for your work and services without question will be your biggest supporters. Quote unquote exposure without compensation will only get you a cold or the flu. Don't give anything away. Nothing. If you are performing, this is good, in a bar or a club, and the marquee or the blackboard outside of the venue says live entertainment and not your name and not your band's name, don't play there again. If you need to move tables and chairs to set up your equipment and have to wait until people finish their lunch first, don't play there again. They're not committed to being a live music venue. Verbal contracts mean absolutely nothing. Nothing. Get everything in writing, even an email. Value your work, the time and dedication it took to accomplish your professional chops. Respect yourself. Trust me, no one else will. And no one will come to you, even if you're naturally gifted. Amazing. Network and get to know others in your art world, both on the art side as well as the business side, and treat everyone decently. People will always remember how they were treated by you. Believe me. Man, I have regrets. I wish I could go back and say so do a couple of people. For sure. Try to surround yourself with good people, decent people. Avoid, this is big, avoid negative people at all costs. They will never come around to you. You'll always regret the work that you didn't try. The odds of being successful, i.e. fame and fortune, are remote at best, even if you're hugely talented. Create for yourself, be the artist you want to be. Do not release any tracks unless you feel they're complete. The internet is forever. Listen, I have at least 20 songs. I wish I could go back and fix and redo and remix, reproduce, uh, remaster. There is no better feeling, though, than articulating your creative soul in a project. That's the work. Embrace it. Now, old person talking to young people, because I was your age about three minutes ago. Young people of the world, 'twas ever thus. Forge what you will with the tools available. The blame you find in us and our generation will one day be on you by the generation to follow you. Use your fear, your rage, your certainty, your disillusionment to do what you believe is best. Because, guys, it will fade as you change and age. Life gets in the way. You will never regret doing the right thing. As a musician and a writer, these are the only times in my life I felt fully connected to who I am. It's taken me 50 years to figure this out. So, as an artist, where do you feel connected? Those are a few notes that I've made over the last couple of months on my Substack page, and I thought I would share them today on the podcast. A musician's note, episode 16 of the Train from Energy Station. Find me also on Instagram and Substack. If you wouldn't mind, leave a review on whatever platform you're listening on right now. Five-star little little note. Only nice reviews, please. I'm trying to play the algorithm game. And I'm honestly, it's beyond me, this whole algorithm on social media. Somebody help me, please. The song I want to leave you with this week is called A Woman of a Certain Age, Guitar and Vocals. I recorded this in my 30s. I wrote it in my early 30s. And quick story, I was working in a bar, a pub in downtown Toronto, and there was another bar around the corner that when we finished shift or I finished shift, I'd go over and have a have a drink and I'd watch you know TV, whatever, and the bartender there. She's she was older than me, so of a certain age, sort of a tongue-in-cheek thing. And I watched her work, and she'd been doing it for a long time. And she had this great way of smiling at the guests and lighting up their cigarettes and having her own cigarette. But I would watch her as she looked the way, and just the difference in her facial expression when she wasn't on stage in front of these guys at her bar. I came up with a story that became a song, and I wrote a little bit about it. A woman of a certain age. I'll be back next week with another episode, trained from Early Station. Please let everybody know about this podcast. If you would. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

I've been around enough to know that all that's past is gone. There's youth inside my heart to hope that more is yet to come. These men sit around my bar, care little for what I see, but I know more about them like a flower knows a bee. I stand here every night, just look about this smile on my face, and the music way too loud. Well, I said goodbye to thirty a year to ago. Now I'm of a certain age. I read that much in Cosmo. Never thought I'd wind up here. When I was young, I had no fear. Dreams we had made it also clear Well, I would be in twenty years. Never thought I'd be here on the stage I'd take my power. I don't have to tell you I have to say the question if this is my fate. If this is nothing, I'll just be less I work too hard. This knowledge promised me what more I know, less I believe. Well I never thought I don't want to fear where I was younger had no fear. The dreams we had made it also clear, I would be twenty years from now. In everything I flow, they all act like they're on stage, but you know I run the show, but the dreams I have beyond this, that narrow time if I could just get out of here, I know it would be fine, would be fine.