Matt Barber - Full-Time Musician - Artist Spotlight Interview
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 Matt Barber Peoria, Illinois |
Artist Stats:
Type of Act:
Music Style: Income Range: Territory: Full-time since: Official Website: YouTube Channel: Discography: |
Matt Barber Solo vocalist Easy Listening/Jazz and Oldies $30,000-40,000 annually Regional, National 2005 MattBarberExperience.com MattBarber Love Notes from Paradise It's Been a Merry Christmas Romancing Nashville |
Matt Barber has never known a 'day' job. Wisdom from a 24 year old full-time musician.
Matt tells us how he travels the US playing to his specific target market. He explains how he prices and books his gigs while openly sharing the challenges and rewards of performing for a living. Matt is a great example of what kind of person it takes to put a music career together. After listening to this entire 35 minute interview, just ask yourself..."Do I have what it takes to play music full-time?"
Matt tells us how he travels the US playing to his specific target market. He explains how he prices and books his gigs while openly sharing the challenges and rewards of performing for a living. Matt is a great example of what kind of person it takes to put a music career together. After listening to this entire 35 minute interview, just ask yourself..."Do I have what it takes to play music full-time?"
| Matt Barber's performance Video: |
Matt Barber's Audio Interview video: |
Interview Transcript:
Intro October, 2011 Our interview this month is with Matt Barber. The most unique thing, I think, about Matt, is that he is probably the only young musician I’ve met who doesn’t have these fantasies that a record label is going to come along and sign him and rescue him. He had to have a career in music regardless of what happened. So by the time he was 19, he was full-time in the music business. He has a lot of good insight because his battle wounds are still kind of fresh, and it shows you what kind of person you’re going to have to be and what kind of person it takes and the spirit that is needed to become a full-time musician. It’s simple to become a full-time musician, but it’s not easy, and it’s not for everyone. Not everybody has the discipline that this young man has displayed in building a music career at such a young age. So I want you to listen and get some good information. I think you’re going to learn a lot and really be inspired by this young man.
Jill Because you were so young when you started, have you ever had a job at all, did you have one in high school?
MATT Odd jobs, you know, out on my Granma’s farm, painting, doing summer jobs. I had never had any kind of 8-5 job. I never had any desire to. One guy who really encouraged me was my friend’s brother Dave. He was a wonderful trumpet player. He used to play trumpet for Ray Charles years ago. We met at a place called the River Music Experience in Davenport at an open mike when I was 17. He quit music for 25 years and was just re-starting his career at the same time that I was starting mine. We really hit it off, so we would play gigs together. He would play trumpet on my stuff or he would play percussion. He just always encouraged me. He felt I had something unique to offer from the very beginning, and he just kept telling me to play. I remember one time when I was 17 I asked him, “Do you think I’m any good?” I guess he thought I was good enough to continue pursuing music. I’ve run into a lot of people who discouraged me. I had people in my own family who told me that I should go look for a job. I had to deal with some very negative people.
Jill Now when you went full time, you were 16, right? And you’re 24 now?
MATT When I was still in high school, I wasn’t doing it full time. I was just playing the odd nights. Some nights I would drive to Chicago which is about 3 hours from here, do a gig there and drive back and go to school the next day. I was just going out into local coffee houses and open mikes and stuff, getting more experience, mainly doing it for fun.
I really didn’t have a lot of advice when I was starting out. I just read as much as I could. I did do a lot of research. But getting to meet other musicians who were doing it was encouraging. I think that’s what helped a lot, talking to other people and learning from them.
But I would say it has to be the right combination of talent and drive, and it has to be something that you are really called to do. I think in this day and age, with the technology and the computer doing everything, it makes it easier for people to do a CD. Years ago you had to have talent and a lot of money to go into a studio and record. Now people are loading software and doing their recordings at home, and they are out trying to play and stuff and, you know, not all of us are meant to do this for a living.
But it just depends on how hard they want to work at it, I think. I sure had days when I thought, “Am I really supposed to be doing this?” But the more that I have performed over the past six years, the more that I’ve done it, the more I realized it really is what I’m meant to do.
Jill Now you play nationally, so you go everywhere. Are there cities that you tend to avoid or maybe don’t want to play in, or are there cities you really love going to perform in?
MATT They are all so different. That’s what is so amazing. Every place has a different personality and there’s good and bad in each city. With the style of music I do I kind of go to one of the nicer areas, so I don’t really see the ghetto side of cities too much.
I’ve made a wrong turn here and there. I once took a wrong turn in New Jersey and ended up in one of the worst areas of Newark. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Then in Miami, Florida, which I personally think is one of the hardest areas I’ve ever been to, the last time I was there I had a girl hit me on the freeway. They are some of the craziest, rudest drivers I’ve ever seen. And I was in this place setting up. It was a real hot day and I had on like a Hawaiian shirt. As I was setting up, this lady came in and sat in the front row, just staring me down and she said something like, “I hope you’re not wearing that!” Then her friend said something to her and she said, “He could at least put on a jacket!” Anyway, I went to change clothes before I started singing, and she sat there the whole time and looked like she was in a kennel. She didn’t clap or anything, and the people just kind of getting up and walking out. This one guy I overheard said, “He was horrible!” and the other guy said, “Well, they said he was a newcomer.” They were just reacting. I don’t react to people like that.
Jill You obviously get to see a lot of places all over the country, and often a local small-time musician doesn’t get to go out and see an awful lot, so how is that, when you get to travel and see everything?
MATT I love it, especially when I was first starting out because it was all new to me then. Every place I went was a new experience.
I tried to learn from every area I went to I tried to learn from the people there, and I tried to take a little bit of that with me. I saw some wonderful places the first couple of years, like Pike’s Peak in Colorado, Sandia Crest outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, beautiful places in northern Arizona. I camped at the Grand Canyon a few days. Flagstaff Arizona. I’ll never forget going to Las Vegas for the first time. Some friends I met there took me down on the strip and that just totally blew me away. There are so many wonderful places in California. I drove along the Coastal Highway One from LA to San Francisco when I was eighteen. I loved it, I just totally loved it. The Arcadian National Park in Maine was beautiful. Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Those are just a few.
The more I’ve done it, I’m used to it. So it’s not as big a deal for me to see different places. But when I get into beautiful places in the country, it’s really inspiring, and I actually do perform and sing better when I’m in those places because I’m so happy and content.
What gave you the idea of starting the Small-time Musician website?
Jill Everywhere we go, everybody always asks how we went about playing music full time. There’s no short answer for that. There’s no easy answer, and we’re not with them but for a short time or a few minutes. And there’s so much to it that will work for some people and won’t work for some people that you have to really narrow it down to what will work for everybody.
And the fact that I do know how to write and I do know how to educate and I do know sales background and things like that. If it weren’t for our advertisers on the website, we couldn’t do this. I couldn’t just sit here and work on this website without it. But my passion is musicians because my three kids and my husband are all talented musicians. So my heart is for musicians, but I believe that whatever you’re talented at, whether it is music, business, art or manufacturing, whatever you’re talented at, I believe that’s the way you’re supposed to make your living.
MATT That’s true, and not everybody uses their gifts….
Jill As a full-time musician, what did you think about the Small-time Musician website?
MATT I loved it! I thought it was so refreshing and very informative and encouraging, and the information you have is great. I learned a lot, especially about the gold and silver. I found that very interesting. And the truth, for me, it’s getting to know other people who’ve been there. Having that kind of bond really means a lot because for a long time I felt like a real oddity. I couldn’t relate to many people, especially when I was first starting out because I wasn’t making much money and there were so many people saying, “Can you make a living doing this?” and “Are you doing OK?” You know, I never went hungry once the whole time I’ve done this. And I know there are some people… Andy Williams, who is one of my favorite singers, when he was first starting out, once he had to eat dog food he was so hungry. I’ve never gotten to that point. Fortunately.
Jill It seems to me that as long as you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, things work out somehow because a lot of times we’ve been faced with things that just look impossible and something always comes up and it works out Why? Because we’re not going to give up and we’re persistent. Thomas has to play music like he has to breathe air, so he’s going to have to do it. You’re right, we’re like a different breed. What you’re saying about not having the people to relate to, we didn’t have that either. We didn’t have a peer group in this business and that’s kind of what we’re trying to create, a peer group of full-time musicians that can help each other.
MATT I think the fun-nest thing for me is that I love music so much and I love performing so much that I want the audience to feel that. I want them to love it as much as I do. So I want to thank you guys for putting this website together. It’s wonderful and thank you for wanting to help other full-time musicians and for your encouragement and support because that really means a lot.
What I enjoyed most was singing a song in high school on stage in the auditorium for some 2000 of my fellow students. I think that was the biggest rush for me and that happened only one time. To have all the people I knew cheering for me was pretty unforgettable.
I did a gig in Tucson, Arizona, at a coffee house and these kids were banging on a window behind me and they were holding up a dollar. I thought they wanted to give me a tip or something. Then they came inside and they came right up to me while I was performing and said I was causing the coffee house to lose business. They told me “We’ll give you a dollar to quit playing now.” And I told them, “I’m not going to quit. I came here from Illinois and I’m not going to quit,” and they said, “Well, our friend is going to beat you up if you don’t quit playing.”
Be willing to work really hard. You know, you get into a town in the middle of the night, check into a motel at one or two, the people tell you, oh, you got to check out by 11, we won’t give you any extra time, then you have the maid knocking at the door trying to bust in, so you’re tired and you’re irritated because you got maybe five hours of sleep, then you have to drive somewhere, you don’t have much time to eat, you’re trying to rush around, you don’t know where you’re going, your GPS is telling you to go somewhere and it’s wrong, so you have to call the gig, get directions, then there’s road construction, the road’s closed, now there’s traffic tie-ups, all these things you have to deal with that most people don’t think about. People think it’s easy to go and do a concert and that it’s fun, but there’s all these other things that you have to deal with every day. Being away from family and being away from people you know. Then you show up for a gig after dealing with all that and people don’t act very happy that you’re there or that they even care. Then you do your gig, and they tell you, “Well, we don’t have your check ready today. We’ll send it in the mail.” That happens all the time to me. They don’t tell me if they’ll have the check or not. Fifty percent of the time the check didn’t arrive yet and they have to mail it to me. Then I’m doing a gig, setting up, tearing down, talking to people, then having one or two people talk to you for an hour or two, then having to leave and driving to another town and having to begin all over again. Sometimes there are days when you have all day available and sometimes you don’t have ten seconds to turn around. You have to be very flexible and be able to deal with all that.
Jill Is it worth it?
MATT It is for me.
Jill Well you bring up a good point, that you do have to be flexible and I think a lot iof bands show up to play and whoever the diva in the band is gets all upset because something’s not exactly right. It’s a live show, you know, it’s not an orchestra, it’s a rock ‘n’ roll show basically. So what’s the problem?
MATT Right. Things aren’t going to be perfect. You’re going to get into places where the sound is horrible and you can’t do anything about it. You can work with your sound system and try to get it as good as you can, but it’s going to be different every place you go. There’s going to be times when you can’t fix it yourself and you’re going to have to deal with that.
Jill Do you do a 3-hour show or a 4-hour show because I noticed you do your vocal stuff over tracks, over pre-recorded tracks. I believe vocalists are musicians, personally, you just have your instrument inside of you.
MATT All the classic singers, like Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, didn’t play an instrument and nobody looks down on them because of that. I think the more instruments you play, the more power to you. I’ve always just wanted to sing, because of the freedom I have. I’m more of a performer and I’m fortunate with it, I’m something unique, I’m this young guy who’s doing the oldies, doing the Sinatra stuff, and there’s not many 24-year-old guys who are doing that so that gives me something unique that they remember.
I think you’ll discover that doing things unique and different and having something that people remember you by is worth a lot, just like what you were saying on the website, Jill, about branding and having a catch phrase and all that. I think that is important. And that is probably the hardest part of doing music full time, making the calls and doing the bookings because it’s such a different world from entertaining. The music is what we love and that’s what we’re good at, but talking to people on the phone and booking gigs is just a whole other world and most of us don’t want to do it. We all want an agent or we want somebody to do it for us, but the thing is, the reality, if we really want to do it, we have to do it ourselves and then if an agent comes along later, great, but I’ve never really had any type of agent.
Jill How long did it take you to realize that cover songs were really where the money was, not the originals?
MATT Well, I would go to a place and they would say which fans can identify with this, or they would be telling me what kind of music they wanted to hear. I just learned in time that if you can do a few of your original songs mingled In, you can start out with songs that people know and love and, once you kind of pull people in, you can do a couple of your own songs, you know, and that tends to work. But like you say on your website if you’re going to play live all the time, you’ve got to do music people know.
Jill It’s fine to be an original band if you don’t expect to make money, but I’m not going to tell somebody that they can create a full-time income in music without playing cover songs. I think that’s just a lie.
MATT Yeah. Michael Febray has been very successful doing the same kind of music that I do but he has done a few originals that he too wrote and he will do an album of mostly cover songs and then he’ll do two originals. He’s not doing an album of originals. If you’re hired for a wedding or any kind of party, people want popular music that they enjoy.
Jill The originals they use in the coffee shops, they don’t pay. They don’t pay the kind of rate that you’re going to need to do full-time.
MATT Right. But I would recommend it definitely for anybody wanting to get out and perform and get more experience, it’s a great way to just get out and play and it will help you develop your talent, getting the input from people, what they like and all that. That’s all I did for the first several months on the road. For several months I was doing coffee houses coast to coast, and I was lucky if people threw money in a tip jar. I mean, it’s a tough thing if you’re going to travel and do that but it will build you up as a performer.
Jill Yeah, I know that’s how T developed his whole act is by doing what you’re saying, you know, doing some of the low-paying and free gigs, gong to the different areas of the country, trying it out, getting the feedback, finding out what works and what doesn’t, finding which covers really work and which don’t, things like that. So there is a time and a place for free gigs and low-paying gigs but --
MATT I used to use a keyboard, to fill in parts along with the music, for extra effect. I rarely do that now unless I’m doing a longer gig because it kind of fills the time just to have that, for a winery or some kind of a dinner, for background music, then I’ll bring my keyboard and use that as well.
Jill Now, how many gigs are you averaging per week right now?
MATT It varies. Anywhere from three to five. Sometimes I’ll have one a day. Sometimes I’ll have two a day. I live in a central area, so I’m about two and a half hours from St. Louis, and three hours from Nashville, four hours from Louisville, four hours from Memphis, and I try to work within those areas as much as I can, but I do have to do a lot of driving back and forth.
Jill And then you tour through Texas two months of the wintertime, right?
MATT Yeah, I do a snowbird tour every winter, with stops in Texas, Louisiana, Florida and the Carolinas, and I try to book a lot of the same places. I try to start out asking for a set price, but I have to be negotiable. It depends on how far I have to travel. If I’m going to be in town for two days, I will try to book several and that way I can do some for less money just to be making more. I think everyone sort of has their own opinion. Some people would want to have a set fee, but I would rather have some gigs that pay less than have no gigs at all.
Jill Right. I don’t know any full-time musician who has a set fee. Really what I’m looking for is your flat fee versus beer sales or door sales and all that kind of BS.
MATT That’s different from what I do because it is such a special thing. The gigs that I do, I sing in senior communities and I don’t really do any gigs where there’s a cover charge at the door. I have done a few where people purchase tickets. Most of the communities I go want to pay for a one hour performance, and I usually ask between $100 and $150. If it’s more of a high-end place then I’ll just tell them I usually get $150. Sometimes they’ll tell me we can’t afford that or they’ll tell me what their maximum is and I have to decide whether I can take that or not.
Jill Right, right. Now, you use a tip jar, correct?
MATT I do if it’s like for a winery or more of a restaurant type thing, but not really in the retirement communities.
Jill Yeah, there’s point, right?(laugh)
MATT Right. They don’t carry cash on them. They do buy CDs but a lot of times they have to go up to their room and get their money. They don’t carry it. And they would probably frown on having a tip jar. Some of them can be very uppity about something like that. They would probably say well, if we’re paying you, you shouldn’t be asking the residents for tips or… I don’t know.
Jill Like when we’re doing a private party, and we’re there for their guests like that, we don’t use a tip jar, either. We use it in the bars, in the restaurants, things like that so when you’re doing your one hour senior community, it’s almost like a private party you’ve been hired for.
MATT Yeah, yeah, it kind of has that feel.
Jill We still sell CDs at private parties, and that’s kind of what you’re doing, too.
MATT Oh, Yeah. You know, I’ve encountered so many different situations. I’ve even been in places where they told me I couldn’t have the tip jar out or I couldn’t even sell my CDs, like in a bookstore or even in a coffee house where they wouldn’t let me put out a tip jar.
Jill Really! That’s strange. I’ve never run across that, I don’t believe.
MATT Yeah. There are so many things you have to deal with. If you’re really wanting to be full time, there are so many sacrifices that have to be made, and you have to deal with whatever people throw at you and not get mad about it because you’re going to have to put up with every kind of person under the sun.
Jill There’s a lot of information on line, get rich selling your music on line, all that kind of stuff. You’ve got your music on line, so you’re sort of like us, but you also sell your CDs at the gigs. So my question is, how much money do you make from music sales on line versus music sales at your gigs?
MATT Most of my sales are done at gigs. I do sell some on line from time to time, and I just like having that option available. I’ve sold over 2000 copies of one CD alone at gigs which may not seem like much to some but from what I hear, it’s decent for an independent artist. The guy who records me in Nashville says that most of his clients who order a thousand CDs never sell a thousand of them.
Jill He’s absolutely right.
MATT Sales have been down over the last couple of years, they really have. Sometimes I sell one or two in a gig, sometimes I don’t sell any, sometimes I sell 10 or 12 of them. I used to not really promote the CDs. I would mention that I had CDs and I would introduce a song from the album, but I wasn’t really aggressive. Lately what I’ve been doing, I will hold the CDs up and mention what songs are on there and I do a deal that if you buy three, you get one free and that seems to rather encourage people to buy because, you know, they think they’re getting something free.
Jill Do you believe, when you read on line, that you can make a full-time living selling music on line? Do you think it will ever replace your performing income?
MATT Oh, no! I mean, unless something miraculous happens, I really don’t. There are so many misconceptions and just a bunch of bull out there that people buy into. But I have a really strong work ethic, and I really believe everybody who has ever been really successful in the music business had to pay their dues and worked hard. You don’t get on American Idol and become an overnight success. It doesn’t work that way. You have to get out there and work for it. I mean, you have to know how to handle it if you have any amount of success.
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