Quitting Time
Published: Fri, 05/13/22
Basically, at some point you can't fully invest in the next thing without letting go of the last thing, so while it takes a certain amount of dovetailing to make sure the new thing has any legs, at a certain point a bit of calculated leaping may be called for. Sometimes the old thing has just run its course. Writing for guitar magazines was fun, I just reached a point where I wanted to spend less time talking about music and more time making it. Playing for other people was a blast until I realized I could never make my own music a priority while constantly booked months out with other people's rehearsals and gigs. And writing music for ads and documentaries was great until the downsides of the business itself finally outweighed the upsides of getting paid to write music.
In each job, the essential pleasure was in getting good at something. Granted, had I reached the point where I was fielding calls to write for Rolling Stone, tour with Sheryl Crow or to score the latest Pixar film, I might still be doing any one of those things. But I didn't. I just got good enough to experience the satisfaction of being a guy who did that sort of thing – write, gig, compose – then did it for a while longer. Until it felt like time to do something else.
Last week, I did an advertising job for the first time in three years. Falling out of the hot, humid Austin sky as it did, the work was as fun as I remember it being on a good day, and maybe more so, because now I'm not constantly stressing over and hustling for every job. Also, over the past three years, I've kept learning and writing, which – see above – were always the most fun parts anyway, so I was able to work quicker and better than I ever used to, and that was a pleasure in and of itself. Most working musicians take justifiable pride in their ability to conjure up working capital with just their bare hands, and I'm no different; I doubt I would have dropped everything to help hustle alternative milk products if there hadn't been a chunk of change waiting for me at the end of the day. But there's something gratifying about rejoining the old crew for one last caper and discovering you still have the fingers to crack that particular brand of safe.
–––You can never have enough chords up your sleeve, but it's not always clear what chords to use or how to add them to a blues progression. So for today's Youtube lesson, I thought I'd explain three specific ways to add more chords to an A minor blues. You can find the lesson here:
Add More Chords To A Minor Blues
More soon,
David
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