Photo credit: Aisha Golliher
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
At the moment my tour vehicle is a 2007 Toyota Sienna mini-van with 210,000 miles on it. With the price of gas, I’m happy to be able to tour in this with a duo or trio. I bought it just over a year ago and have already put almost 50,000 more miles on it. I have had to fix just minor things–CV shafts on both sides were the most major thing. The AC needed some help, brakes, and tires. I have a nice big crack in the windshield that might need attention soon. Luckily I have a great mechanic friend and he checks it out every time I bring it in for everything that it is going to need in the near future.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
I do take a small cooler with me and three gallons of well water from the farm. I’ll take along nuts, apples, and dried fruit. I bring along my organic green tea. I fill my water jugs at the co-op grocery stores or at Whole Foods. I try to eat mostly organic, gluten-free, and mostly vegan with some fish and farm eggs and some organic local farm meat. This is of course hard on the road. I usually start out with boiled eggs, carrots, and hummus in the cooler.
With places I return to often, I know the good restaurants to go to. If we have to stop along the road for food, Panera and Chipotle would be the go-tos. But if we have time, it is fun to try to find a local restaurant that has healthy food or maybe even local farm food. This is definitely very challenging–much more than two weeks on the road and it all starts to slip and free pizza is looking good!
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
Ha, this is a great question for me. I play upright bass and have been known to wait until one of those big bass strings breaks until I actually replace them. This is kind of a bad idea because by the time they are breaking, they are also going out of tune often and don’t have as good of a tone.
Bass strings are expensive–anywhere from 200 for a set to 300 per string if you want a super expensive amazing gut string–the kind Dennis Crouch uses. I bought a G gut and a D gut for over 300 each and going to see how long those last me. I have steel strings on my A and E and they aren’t near as expensive–I think I only paid $50 each for those. Just replaced the G and D recently and probably should replace the A and E before they break!
Where do you rehearse?
At the moment, this is a problem. Living in a tiny house that has only solar electricity in the two bigger rooms has been challenging. When the weather is not great–too hot or too cold–we don’t have enough solar electricity to cool and heat the bigger rooms that have enough room for me to practice upright bass. We think this Fall we are getting full electricity, it’s looking promising. I have a little trailer that is hooked up to regular electricity. I practice guitar in there.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
The first song I wrote was called “Mama Tortilla.” I was 19 or 20 and had just listened to a Samba band so it has that feel. I used words from something I heard on Sesame Street –‘My mama makes the best tortillas in the whole pueblo.’ The entire song is based around this lyric and it keeps changing beats. It is actually a pretty fun song, but at that age, lyrically I didn’t have much to offer, ha.
Describe your first gig.
My first paying gig would be with the family band when I was 12. I can’t remember the first club name, most likely it was an Eagles or Moose Lodge in North Platte, Nebraska. Before doing the bar gigs we played churches and rest homes.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
My last day job would be farm work. And my favorite day job is farm work.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
It has fluctuated over the last 5-10 years depending on where I’m living, Covid, and other factors. I have made a living primarily playing music for over 20 years, but sometimes when moving to a new town I’ll have a part-time job for a while. During the 2020 pandemic year, we did work-trade on a farm near Austin, Texas in exchange for rent. Currently, we’re living in Austin, TX area, the local gigs down here pay well–better than Arkansas or Nashville–where I have also lived in the last 5-10 years.
From 2011-2014 I was playing a lot in Texas with the band The Carper Family and we were touring, playing festivals in the U.S., Canada, Norway, and Germany, and doing really well. Then I moved back to Arkansas, I thought to settle down and buy land and took a pay cut. Then I moved to Nashville and took even more of a pay cut. After two years in Nashville, I had made some progress and was getting better gigs, some touring gigs, and still going back to Arkansas to play with Sad Daddy for shows as well. In 2020 I moved back to Texas and remembered, ah the gigs pay better here! One could make a pretty good living playing music just staying in Texas.
Currently, with my last two albums (Daddy’s Country Gold and Ramblin’ Soul), I’m in a different game spending money on albums and investing in promotion. I make more but also spend more. Hopefully, the investment pays off in the future with bigger types of gigs coming my way, sync opportunities, etc, and Sound Exchange money. It feels like I’m most likely taking a step up to a new level of income if all goes well!
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
Hmm, I wish I would have moved to a music hub city sooner I guess. I spent a lot of time in rural Arkansas just playing the bars and playing out only a few-hour radius from where I lived. I did have success with certain bands, but it is hard to take it much further than playing regionally.
Being in a music town–such as Austin or Nashville–I feel you really start understanding the business, meeting amazing musicians to play with and be inspired by, being around great studios and great studio musicians/producers, being heard by festival promoters, etc. I’m just not a big city person, I prefer living in a rural place.
I moved to Austin when I was about 37 years old and then experienced more success for the first time really. Living in Nashville for a bit I feel was crucial to my understanding of the music business and getting linked up with certain musicians/producers/PR people that have been really helpful.
Now I feel I have a good balance for myself, living close to a big city music hub, Austin, but on a farm 40 minutes out. The only hard thing, Austin is not very central for touring. It seems that once you have built something up, you could actually live wherever you want though, and tour out of there. The music cities have been very helpful to build something up.
I guess another thing is I wish I would have realized what a difference it makes to invest in trying to make an amazing album and properly promote it. But sometimes things just happen all in good time. I also had to learn how to write songs, sing and play before I could make a good album.