Before we knew better…
we went on tour in January
we went on tour in January again
used the lawyer the record company recommended to negotiate the record deal
got a bazillion tshirts screen printed cause we thought the design was cool so they’d sell fast for sure!!
believed artists when they said they could draw x amount of people
thought the manager would quickly catapult us to iconic status
said yes to a gig in Baraga, Michigan ;)
we thought we’d get discovered on 6th St. at SXSW
we left the festival without picking up the check
Hey, we didn’t know any better. Then afterwards and over time, we did know better and made adjustments to our expectations and vision of reality.
The real problem is its very difficult to learn from other peoples mistakes and missteps. Our brains just don’t feel the pain and discomfort enough when someone else tells us their stories. We don’t remember them. We don’t share and experience the pain.
If I tell you (like I’m about to) it’s a bad idea to go on tour in the middle of winter in a van and trailer…when winter rolls around and your manager or agent or genius drummer wants to hit the road in January, your brain probably won’t recall this paragraph.
But if YOU go on tour in January and experience sliding off an icy road in a van and trailer, cancelled shows due to weather, small crowds do to weather, you will never forget to not go on tour in January.
It’s experiential.
This is just one blog post in the hundreds of blog posts I’ve written, but I will tell you this is one of the more expensive blog posts I’ve written. The pain and heartache and monetary expense of ‘not knowing better’ cost me and the people I was with A LOT (and the above list could have been a lot longer too).
I invite you to learn deeply from the people around you.
Before we knew better we would brush off good advice from experienced people because we thought we knew better.
p.s. I’d love to hear from you on this. Send me a list of “Before we knew better, we…” and down the line I’ll put a bunch of the responses together and send them out on here.
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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com