Dirty Sunbeams

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working”

– Pablo Picasso

I’m willing to bet that when Mr Picasso said this, he wasn’t referring to stacking shelves or pulling pints. We’d all prefer to picture dear old Pablo working away in cluttered, high ceilinged rooms on his craft –  at the easel dawn till dusk, pausing only to send Hemingway out for beers or demand Cole Porter fetch him refills of Prussian Blue and Cadmium Yellow. For the rest of us who aren’t A: living in a Woody Allen film – or B: the most celebrated painter of the last few centuries – time is money. We must make time for inspiration in between working “normal” jobs to earn a wage to support ourselves. How unfair!

Why is this? 

In the case of independent music, it’s because you don’t really get paid for it any more. Not really. Plenty of money changes hands, sure, but there are far too many hands for much to go around.

This weekend for example, I will travel down south with my band for a festival. Eventually we will receive 90% of an agreed fee (after the live agency has taken their standard 10%) in return for a 45 minute slot as the penultimate act on a good stage on Saturday night. This was an offer we couldn’t really turn down, as it’s a pretty good slot and it’s a pretty good fee. Some bands would kill for that slot. It’s possible that by the time you read this my band and I have been killed for it. Nevertheless, I am going to return home significantly skinter than when I left. So where does all the money go? 

Over and over we hear “there’s just no money in music any more”. That’s only half true. There’s actually a shedload of money in music, it’s just now shared between a tiny handful of tech billionaires. It’s not a profit problem, it’s a wealth distribution problem. Spotify alone made $14bn in 2023, up two billion from 2022. Live Nation made $22bn.

The money exists. The same old money that had sax players in one-hit-wonder pop groups buying sizable houses in their late teens now piles up in the bank accounts of so few people they could start their own band. (Daniel Ek and the Hoarders, perhaps?) 

As for the rest of us…

So you’re thinking of playing a gig? 

Here’s just FIVE of the places your money will disappear to!

1. THE VAN (£150+)

When it comes to touring, The Van is king. “Quick! Where are my spare guitar strings?” in The Van. “Where’re my painkillers?” In The Van. “Where can we sleep now that we’re miles from anywhere in rural Belgium, the roads are closed and we’re gonna miss our hotel check-in?” you guessed it. On tour the van is the Santa Maria to your Columbus, the Beagle to your Darwin, the Death Star to your Vader. If she goes down, we all go down. Just recently, the van I’ve toured in most has been sold on, and the band is still processing a significant – if ironic – sense of grief about this. We called that van ‘Mother Goose’, and the four of us will miss it fiercely. Fortunately, we will get a good deal on the hire of a van this weekend, thanks to our tour manager extraordinaire (let’s call him Mr B), who we couldn’t possibly function without. 

2. THE (WO)MANPOWER (£100+)

Tour managers and drivers are a crazy bunch. Mr B is no exception. Why anyone would want to put themselves through the torment of dealing with British roads, ruthless deadlines, constant hiccups with equipment and the often unreasonable and self-destructive behaviour of band members all at the same time for days or even weeks on end is a little beyond me. Much like the artists, they almost certainly don’t get paid what they should much of the time – and their wage has to come from somewhere. 

3. THE GEAR (£100+)

(Not that kind of gear, you’ll have to pay for that out of your own pocket these days). 

Depending on the show, the distance, the state of your equipment when the offer came in and numerous other factors too tedious to mention, there will be times when you just can’t lug all your stuff to a show. Maybe you’re a seven piece collective with a tuba player and you don’t have the budget for a van with that many seats and enough storage space for an upright bass. Maybe this time round it’s cheaper to borrow or hire. Remember, nothing is free. For international trips, it’s a major expense. Flying guitars overseas is (obviously) a nightmare and costs a fortune. Hiring equipment on arrival is usually more cost effective, but will still really set you back.

4. SOMETHING TO EAT (£20+) 

Ever hauled a Roland JC-120 down two flights of stairs after a 6 hour drive, fuelled only on San Miguel and Paprika ‘Lays’? Food on tour is usually a tragedy, particularly if it’s the British Isles you’ve got the misfortune to be traversing. If you’re stopping at the side of the road, expect to pay double or triple what you usually would for the same rubbish anywhere else. One particular coffee chain now charges £2.70 for a 600ml bottle of water at service stations. I don’t think Jesus will forgive that. 

5. A PLACE TO CRASH (£200+)

Gone are the days of throwing TVs out of hotel windows. Hotel room windows no longer open for a start – at least not in the ones musicians can afford. Finding somewhere affordable near to an inner city venue is no easy task, especially with plans changing so often on tour that many booking are made on the fly on a phone by whoever’s unlucky enough to be in the passenger seat, scrolling through pages of Travelodges and (if you’re lucky) Premier Inns… “What about this one? Only 22 miles from the venue and it even has running water!”

So how does anything get done?

We’re all aware by now that the ‘music industry’ is fundamentally flawed, and this is most pronounced for those already on a tight budget. Nonetheless, new artists are breaking through. Not en masse, and they’re not dominating the charts or having fireplaces installed in their private jets,  but fantastic new music is being made and great shows are still happening up and down the country. The main reason for this is – of course – the ferocious passion of the people involved.

So many individuals (and by no means just musicians) put their all into keeping the dream of independent music alive every single day. It’s the people who respond to last-minute emails, who are willing to go on a Tolkien-esque quest to replace some obscure cable the clumsy synth player broke in Calais, who know the ins and outs of their venue like no one else in the world, who will suffer all week just to make your rag-tag thirty minute set go ahead – it’s these people you will come to know, to owe, and to love if it playing gigs is what you really want to do.

At the end of it all, when the screams of the amp die down, the lights come up and the song-soaked faces of the crowd are revealed; when the shrapnel and empty cups appear amongst the primordial ooze of the dancefloor, and you feel ready to sleep for a thousand years – then you will ask yourself “was all this really worth it?”. There may come a time for all of us when we aren’t sure any more. But for me at least, right now, the answer will always be yes. 

“The purpose of art is to wash the dust of daily life off our souls”

– Also Pablo Picasso

Herbie May