Acid House Interview Jason Wilber

As you may have read, the AH Interviews needed a new home - and we have one! But, we can only post up Canadian Content, sooo I'll be posting them up here as well. I'll also post up the past few weeks in case you missed them - enjoy!

Week 1 - Jason Wilber

Welcome to the Acid House Interviews, whereby I interview my friends, colleagues and artists about music and the music business.

My first interview is with Jason Wilber. We have known Jason here at Rave On for a few years now, and he has played on 4 of our album projects. He is a talented artist, multi - instrumentalist and all-round super nice guy!

Jason Wilber

ja ~ Jason, thanks so much for participating! Can you tell us a bit about yourself to start things off?

jw ~ Sure, I was born and raised in Indiana. Live there still. I started playing guitar in local bands when I was in my early teens and progressed from there into playing with regional traveling bands and then in my mid twenties I started playing with John Prine, which lead to playing guitar for other singer-songwriters in the folk/rock/country vein. I'm a singer-songwriter myself and have released 7 records of my own.

ja ~ I thought it would be interesting to talk a bit about how in today's

industry, you really need to be a business person, marketing expert,

social media pro and jack/jill-of-all-trades..can you talk a bit about

all the different things you do?

jw~ I think that has always been the case really. The idea that you can just

play music and someone else will take care of all the business and marketing stuff is a mostly fallacy.

When you get to the point that you can afford to have other people working for you to do that stuff, you still have to understand how the business works so you'll know if they are doing the right things. Although, sometimes it's hard to know what the "right things" are!

Being an independent musician is much like running any other small business. You have to do bookkeeping, marketing, keep inventory, pay taxes, etc. and of course play music. I read a Herbie Hancock quote that said,

"You should spend about 50% of your time on music and 50% of your time on business".

I think that's a pretty good guideline.

ja ~ I am guessing that the emergence of the Internet and social media has made the business of music a lot easier...

jw ~ The Internet has definitely been a game changer. Much of the way I operate business wise today would be impossible or much more difficult without it.

ja ~ For emerging artists, do you have any advice on working in the

industry today, new strengths that would be beneficial, it's not like

the old system where you a) have loads of talent b) get signed = c)

you're off and running (I wondering if young people today even have

that rock star dream, or if their expectations are different?)

jw ~ I would say, never stop learning as much as you can about your art and the business surrounding it, work harder and longer than the next guy or gal, learn about your own strengths and weaknesses and how to get the best out of yourself, and put yourself in an environment where you'll come into contact with the people you need to meet to further your music career. If you do all of those, you'll probably develop an understanding of what else you need to be doing to succeed.

ja ~ People who read this may be anyone from emerging artists all the way up to industry professionals, is there Anything else you think is important to talk about? Anything you think is helpful or info to get out there would be great - you really have your foot the door to both worlds, as you are both artist and business person, and so it is interesting, to hear your thoughts...

jw ~ Sure, I would say first of all, only try to play music for a living if you can't stand not to. Because it's really not a great business to be in if you're a musician, for a whole variety of reasons that I won't go into here, but mainly because of too much supply and too little demand.

However, if you're going to be playing music all the time anyway, and you don't mind working really hard for very little money, possibly indefinitely, and you can handle endless boatloads of rejection punctuated by occasional moments of encouragement, then you might like playing music for a living. That may sound discouraging, but I think it's pretty accurate. Ask some other working musicians if you want a second opinion.

All that said, I sure can't complain. Music has been good to me and I feel very fortunate to make my living playing music I love.

Thanks Jenn.

ja ~ Thank so much Jason, we're happy to know you, and it's great working with you, we're very fortunate!

www.jasonwilber.com