EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE KITCHEN SINK

​So you wanna be an independent artist, do you? A touring songwriter, you say? OK, no problem. You probably already know that you need to spend a large chunk of your time learning your craft, each day improving on your instruments, your voice, your songwriting chops and your stage craft (although I think that only comes from actually being on stage).

Being an indie touring songwriter means you do it all, everything, including the kitchen sink.  You are the driver, accountant, content creator, travel agent, navigator, tour manager, repair man, custodian, event planner, and merch maker. You name it.  You do it! 

I would guess for every hour you spend on stage, you better plan on 8 to 10 hours to get there. And I don’t mean travel time on the highway in your van, driving to the venue. I’m talking about all the biz work that comes with all the behind the scenes stuff that must happen if you’re going to succeed at being an independent artist. Playing is the easy part.

Today, I thought I’d focus on one thing - assets. Assets are referred to all of the things that you or anybody else helping you would use to promote your career and your life shows. So assets could include your bio, photographs, videos, social media images, and posters. 

I spent my morning and afternoon working on posters so I thought I’d talk about that. Calgary Jazz Crooner, Tim Tamashiro released a book many years ago when I was just starting to perform. I can’t find it anymore in my house. I can’t even find it on the Internet anymore. But it was a small soft cover booklet titled something like 100 tips for the music biz. 

One of those tips was to learn Photoshop. Tim argued that turning songwriter could spend hundreds to thousands of dollars a year, hiring a graphic designer to create a simple poster to promote a show. Tim’s tip was to get started now pay the initial cost of purchasing Photoshop and start creating your own posters. That’s what I did. Social media didn’t exist when the book was published, but now I have some rudimentary skills on Photoshop and create all of my posters and social media posts in-house. I know there are new easier platforms like Canva but just like you can’t teach an old dog new tricks I’ve never bothered to learn it.

So if you want to be a touring songwriter too, do yourself a favour get some sort of graphic design program for your laptop, open up a blank page, drop a photo of yourself, write your name at the top, the date, the venue, the ticket price, the ticket link. Nobody’s getting rich doing this so save yourself a few bucks and learn a new skill. You’ll use it forever.