I often get asked how I can call a career that includes winning an Academy of Country Music award and a Grammy a failure. Good question.
My usual answer is that yes, these awards do indeed mean I was a successful musician, but the reason I say I failed is that I didn’t build a sustainable career (well, that and the fact that whyifailed.com is an intriguing name for a blog and a book). I want to go beyond that though, and use my experience surrounding these two awards to give you some ideas to build your career.
ACM
I had a simple dream for most of my life: to be a sought after recording and live drummer. My detail of the dream was that I would record and play with a famous band and then get hired to do work for other artists that wanted “my sound, feel and ideas” added to their projects. The fact that I was to do all this in LA is another story altogether, but I ended up in Nashville and after many years as a side man, got asked to play drums for the newly formed Gibson/Miller Band. My final audition was a gig in front of the producer because he had to have a drummer that could record. That was fine with me because I wouldn’t have taken the gig without being on the records anyway. Step one of the dream. Check.
Not too long after that, GMB became pretty successful and of course, we eventually won the ACM 2 1/2 years later. Step two of the dream. Check.
But step three never happened, and the main reason is I was dreaming. I purposely used the word dream for this story to illustrate what I wrote about a few weeks ago in Dreams vs. Goals. As I look back at my time in music, the common thread is that I was good enough to make my dreams come true despite of the fact that I didn’t really have goals, plans, strategies and dates to keep me moving forward. But I WASN’T good enough to reach my ultimate dreams or build a career. And neither are you.
No one is good enough to simple drift through life and get everything they want. It just doesn’t work that way. Yes, I was blessed by some great things, and yes I worked hard to make the most of every opportunity. But what I REALLY failed at was making more opportunities. That’s the essence of goals: short term goals are about planning, thinking, strategizing and working to create and or find the opportunities that you can then turn into work. Long term goals are about the same steps applied to create and or find combinations of opportunities to build a career.
I played drums on some great records with GMB and we kicked butt live. What I didn’t do was parlay that into a recording career on other projects. I kept thinking “I need some time off to relax while we’re off the road” and, “I’m sure they know it’s me on drums and they’d be calling if they were working on projects.” Not to brag, but everyone in Nashville pretty much assumed it was the usual “A team” session band on our records and never thought another thing of it.
What’s tough about this story is what happened next: the lead singer quit GMB. In an afternoon, that chapter of my career was over and I found myself freefalling in a gap between the sideman I had been and “the guy in GMB” I no longer was. Had I been building the step three I envisioned in my dream, I would have been just fine. After that, my music career never completely recovered. Don’t feel too bad though, because I was about to play on a Grammy Winning project.
Grammy Award
A year of two after the end of GMB, the other leader of the band, Blue Miller, an excellent singer, songwriter and producer, got linked up with an unknown artist named India Arie. This led to the need to record some demos, and he gave me a call. One thing led to another, and eventually Blue produced, and I played drums on, four or five tracks as part of her development deal with Motown.
Now the story gets interesting because within the year, I decided it was time to pursue something else. That’s a LONG STORY for another time, but I was soon settling into my new job while playing drums on most weekends. That fall, I was asked to travel to a seminar. As a group of us were checking in the hotel, I picked up a time magazine with Alicia Keys, Joan Osbourne and India Aria on the cover. India’s album, with me on 2 tracks was nominated for 8 Grammy’s!
She didn’t win any of them because Alicia swept everything that year. However, unbeknownst to me, the label held onto our tracks and 2 of them ended up on the Voyage to India CD. I was so busy with my new job that I was only vaguely aware of that fact and I was completely clueless that she was nominated for a Grammy in 2003. That is until I showed up at work to questions by a co-worker about India winning the Grammy for best R&B Album. I had to go to the Grammy website to find out if it was true!
So what deep piece of advice do I have for you? Well, two things. One, you will most likely work most with good friends and ongoing work associates. I have a Grammy because Blue Miller called a friend he could trust to play what he needed. Second, you just never know what life will bring you.
It may be cliched, but don’t try too hard to figure out life. Just enjoy the ride.
