The Perils of Leadership
I got together with the old side project Big Trouble on Thursday at The White Squirrel. Big Trouble spent a shaky decade playing pretty often. I think we formed around 2007. We never made a proper record, I think we only set foot in a studio once. When we had the money/energy to record we were more likely to connect with our favorite vocalist, Crescent Moon, for a session. Those sessions turned into pretty amazing recordings. Check them out here:
Playing songs you used to play all the time feels a certain way. It feels familiar, and it also brings you back to the spirits, good and bad that you had at that time. And it helps you realize how the years have changed you. When I was playing bass with Big Trouble, I was playing music all the time. 2-3 shows a week, probably averaging 2 rehearsals a week. Making albums, writing songs, practicing to some extent. I spent a lot of years where music was my main source of income and Big Trouble was a part of that bucket. So my fingers had this dexterity, my ears were perked up. But, the downside of playing lots of music is that at times I failed to bring the reverence for the process that music really deserves. One can be overloaded with music, going from gig to gig without the appreciation the music deserves.
I also could feel some of the negative sides of my youthful spirit at play on stage. I’ve spent time in most projects I run feeling like the other members de facto know I’m going to do a lot of the ambassadorial lifting for the band. I’m gonna pay the taxes, I’m gonna cut the checks, I’m gonna book the gigs, I’m gonna call the set. I’ve gotten to quite a good spot about that in Heiruspecs. And I should actually say we have, not I have. There is both more shared duties and a very modest recognition financially of some of the extra roles that I and Felix carry on. That feels like pretty good terrain. Doing these things for Big Trouble is harder. It’s harder cause it’s less active and because my brother is in the band. I don’t even know how to explain it to somebody who doesn’t have a brother, but doing some kind of creative and business pursuit with a casual leadership model and your brother is involved, it’s complicated. It’s not even bad, it’s just complicated. And I can feel all my youthful tension inside my middle aged body while I’m trying to also respond to the moment musically. Different than I could’ve before, I was able to let that tension exist, look at it, and continue to explore it and the things surrounding it.
There’s a bigger question in these struggles, if you’re kind of the leader dude, what do you do? Do you embrace that? Do you force yourself out of that role? When are you being a good leader? And when are you being the extrovert white dude asking and answering every question? And when in my life has my willingness to be a leader actually been because I knew I couldn’t be a good worker bee? I’ve struggled with bad pitch as a musician. I’ve had bad practice techniques between rehearsals. I jumped on being a leader because it was in my comfort zone. Sing a third above you? Probably not! Talk to the irritable sound guy who hates rap? I got you. Transcribe that strange chord progression? I’ll try! Book an East Coast tour, I got you. I spent so much of my twenties pretending that I was just spectacular. I spent so much time bossing other people around when i should’ve looked inward to work on my craft, to humbly invest time in trying to be great. When Heiruspecs got to a certain level of fame I thought the only work I should do is get us to the next level by muscle. I never thought I could help get us to the next level by me making myself better as a bassist. I still practiced, but I don’t think my spirit was in improvement. I thought I could do my best work as a project manager. And maybe that’s true, but I project managed at the expense of actually working on the project. And I want to fix that, I want the next decades of my life to be aligned differently. I think that’s partially why I’ve been pretty resistant to working management in my radio career. It’s also not like I’ve been offered a bunch of management gigs and turned them down, it’s just not something I’m angling to do.
I want to fundamentally embrace the challenge of being better at the craft of being a radio DJ and music director. I don’t want to focus on pointing fingers, planning campaigns. I want to deliver excellent interviews, provide opportunities for folks who listen to Jazz88 to fall in deeper with the music we play, to feel compelled to take in a show, to buy a record, to recommend an artist because they feel a deeper connection to the music. I want to program the music in such a way that someone who is a casual listener of jazz goes deeper, finds new favorites, gets engaged with the music. And I want to give the type of experiences that I think the best Music Directors and DJs do, they make their cities better, not just cooler, better. It becomes a better city to start a band in, it becomes a better city to do a benefit in, it becomes a better city to be young in. It becomes a better city to be old in. I want to bring that all in. And I don’t want the fact that my career is off to a good start stand in the way of me bringing it to a great end.
Managing and fancying yourself a manager is a challenging place to be. I don’t think I’ve always done it well and I don’t think I’ve always done it for the right reasons. The next time I approach that work, I want to change somethings about how I do it.
Cucumber Library.