On what to do with yourself when you can't perform
I am a performing musician, as opposed to a session musician, a song-writer or a composer. Performing in front of a crowd, big or small, is the ultimate goal I have in mind for all the music I make. It's a feeling like no other when you're there on the stage, all eyes and ears on you, and you give your all, "music, like mercy, that gives what it is and has nothing to prove" (Ani Difranco, Up up up up).
It's a trying process too, you worry about doing it well, about interacting with the audience in between songs, about forgetting lyrics, or a part of that new song that you haven't got under control just yet... But if for whatever reason you can't do it, it feels like part of you withers, like you're invisible. My good friend H, bass player from The Lazy Dreamers, put it this way: "it's only when I'm on the stage that I feel I'm alive".
Well, it's one of those times now. My student visa in China conflicts with any activity other than studying, including performing for commercial purposes, so apart for the occasional gig at the university on certain special holidays, I'm pretty much on a dry spell. All I can say about that is, when you're a guest in a foreign country, you have to abide by the rules, there's no way around it.
Well, then... what do you do in order not to wither? You put the time that's freed up into other aspects of your music in order to take it to another level. Performing is time-consuming in many ways. Apart from the actual gig time, there's also the practice time to keep the set fresh and diverse, getting there and back, the occasional party that follows a good gig because it was good and you're in the mood, or a bad one because it sucked and you want to forget, both rendering you useless for many of the hours of the incoming day. It's not just kicks and giggles, you know! So, anyway, now that time is abounding, you sit awhile and think about all those things that you've been putting off until a moment like this came along. If you're a DIY musician, there's always plenty.
In my case, studio work became a priority. That's how the remastering and release of Arts & Crafts and Frankensteins came to happen, and how the first album of Sour Bounty will hopefully be ready around February 2018, including a good many new songs that we had the time and inspiration to write soon after realizing this aforementioned dry spell was no joke.
And, of course, there's the dreaded promotion... Hours and hours on the computer learning how to do stuff, trying to do it, failing, biting your fist to keep yourself from throwing the computer out the window... websites, profiles here, there and everywhere, editing pictures and videos... and always the feeling that however much you can do will never be enough. Welcome to the life of the independent, and I mean INDEPENDENT, musician.
So, this is what I do, apart from the couple of times that Vinny and I grabbed our instruments and simply played on the streets, just anywhere, to get our fix (no hat or open guitar case on the floor, lest a well intentioned soul might land us in prison by giving us a tip and thus making us guilty of the crime of playing music for commercial purposes).
Make the most of the time. The work is never-ending, and I have no excuse not to do it. And no dry spell lasts forever anyway...