K'Brocking Entertainment

What is the difference between a rock star wannabe and a true local musician? A rock star wannabe is a band or a musician who pretends to be a rock star when in reality they are a local musician like all of us. A true local musician is someone who acts like one.

I can think of 10 ways how you can tell bands & solo artists can be a true local musician, read on:

• We’re not worried about making money - A true local musician would play gigs for free or even open mics. We don’t care about making cash, we’re in it for the music.
• We’re not worried about how many people shows up at gigs - A true local musician would play for either huge crowds or just to the venue owner only. All those rock star wannabe bands out there would want large crowds at all of their shows. We want big crowds at our shows too but if we don’t get ‘em, we’re okay with it.
• We know there is no such thing as a “headliner” or “opening act” - I never acted like a headliner or a open act. I didn’t care what the order of line up was on the gig. I didn’t care if I played last, first or somewhere in the middle. Most bands would want to play last because they live under this delusion that they are a “headliner” act.
• On social networking sites we like to treat our pages more personal - The bands who pretend to be rock stars would make their networking sites professional, they act like they are bigger than the people posting on them. They market themselves to make them look like rock stars. The true local musicians would actually interact with people like they are human beings, by replying to everyone, not treating them like “fans”, treating them like real people.
• We respect most talent - There are no egos with us true local musicians, we respect all talent and supportive of all musicians. We also don’t act like we’re better than other talent.
• We act like professionals - Being nice and friendly to everyone, leaving our egos out the doors. We don’t feud with other bands or venue owners, we’re respectful to everything. Even if it’s something we don’t like, we keep to ourselves and act like a grown up.
• We release music whenever we want to -A lot of rock star wannabe talent would have a strict release day when they’re about to release new songs. We don’t really have to be like that as long as we’re not signed to an actual label or anything. We can release music whenever we want to. Just make the music, record ‘em, and get ‘em out there asap. You don’t have to force people to wait for new music.
• We’re not worried about getting big opportunities or winning awards or contests - Like I said in another blog post, we shouldn’t have to worry about these silly awards. If you do win these things, it’s not like you’re going to be even bigger after that. You’re still the same local musician. All we should care about is making music for the people who support it.
• We’re not worried about getting signed or becoming famous rock stars - There’s too many bands around here that want to make the big time and take over the world with their music, but not us. This is not what us true local musicians are in it for. We’re in it strictly for the love of playing music, period.
• We’re willing to make music at home, not in expensive studios - A lot of bands would try to find the most expensive studio to record an album. We don’t have to be like that. A lot of us local musicians would be willing to make music at home using shit recording equipment. Using cheap computer software or even a 4 track machine.

This is a post that a lot of bands & musicians out there, don’t want to read. They’ll think I’m crazy, but all the above is the truth. Enjoy!

Kev

… and most of them don’t even want to admit it either.

I understand that bands want to get their music heard and get their stuff out there. I do too, but you really need to get rid of this, “My music is great, listen to it” attitude. The way a lot of bands put themselves out there is crazy, not naming names. A lot of them have to be careful of how they put themselves out there. They’re putting their music out there for the world to hear. If they advertise themselves wrong, they could get themselves screwed down the road. They’re probably already are getting themselves screwed, when they’re not even realizing it.

They need to let the music do the talking. Put it out there and see what happens. Leave your ego out the door and let the people decide if they want to like it or not. That’s how I always did it.

Too many bands strive for publicity and for a bigger fan base.They all want as much local coverage with the press as much as possible, they obsess with interviews and getting on the covers of newspapers. They try to get as much publicity of their music on the internet as much as possible.

They all want to feel like rock stars… the professional interviews, music videos, they call themselves going on “tour”, etc.

Honestly, I don’t need to do all that with my music. I just put it out there and see what happens. I’m proud of the music that I did in the past and I plan on releasing more new songs later this year, hopefully. I never acted like a rock star, over the years. I acted like a local musician enjoying the love of music, that’s all that should matter.

Bands live in this fantasy world that they want to be big. That’s my point that I’m trying to get at. I don’t need to get more publicity as a musician, when all the publicity I can get is right here on my site. I would like more publicity, but if I don’t get it, I’m cool with it. I’ll just continue to do my thing, make music for myself and my true fans who actually support it.

Kev

Loren Weisman said:

How to make it in entertainment quips & tips – Its ok to say no. Would you rather be known as the liar or the honest one? Don’t promise you are going to a show that you arent going to. Don’t tell someone you are going to do something you have no intention to do. Don’t tell some one you will call or be in touch if you have no desire to. Just be honest. I have been told I am harsh and brash for telling someone I will not listen to their demo or I am not going to stay for their set. I am giving the respect of the truth, which in my book is much better than lying and pretending to be nice by making a promise that will never happen. Be real. Be Honest. it will put you a step up in this industry.

This blogger is right on the money again!

There is nothing wrong with being honest in music. As some of you know, I’ve been brutally honest in music over the years. Maybe a little bit too much, lol. Some hate me of my honesty and some love me for it. It’s all good.

Over the years, I wasn’t afraid to call out people that acted unprofessional and I wasn’t afraid to say which bands are crap that I had no interest in. I’ve also been honest with my own talent as well.

There are too many people in the music industry who pretend to be nice when in reality they don’t even like you. Pathetic. I don’t want to be that kind of person. I want to be the real and honest one.

If you don’t like a band’s music and think they suck, don’t be afraid to say it. If they’re acting like ego-maniacs or being assholes, don’t be afraid to say it. If you want to turn down a gig that you don’t agree with, don’t be afraid to turn it down. I’ve turned down gigs, you don’t have to say yes to everything like a lot of bands seemed to be doing out there.

You don’t have to be nice, all the time. Do what’s best for your music and that’s where I come from.

I just found out that Loren Weisman is a guy by the way, not a woman, my bad. It’s just that the name Loren is most popular with women, lol. Keep up the good work, man. Love the blog! A lot of truth on it!

Kev

One of my favorite local bands, Eastbound Jesus, may have a questionable band name. Some may find it wrong and offensive. I don’t find it offensive. I think it’s pretty creative and different. It definitely grabs peoples attention. I don’t think the band name was meant to be offensive at all. Of course, with the name “Jesus” in the band name, all this talk with religion would start.

Of course, the more well known and popular this band becomes, the more haters the band is gonna get because of their band name.

My advice to the band, don’t listen to anybody that talks shit about your band name. Don’t ever change it just because other people don’t like it. What ever it takes to get more recognition to your music, more power to you.

I mean look what famous bands & artists did with their names like Black Sabbath, Marilyn Manson, The Grateful Dead, and many others. I’m sure their names were controversial in the beginning. I’m sure a lot of people thought their names were offensive at first, but think about it. Do you think any of those bands, I listed would be big & famous if they didn’t have those names? No.

Don’t ever feel bad if other people find your band name offensive. If EBJ actually makes it big in the industry someday, even more people will attack them for their band names.

Let me tell you a true story, I was at my local gym and was talking to some guy that I know, I was wearing the EBJ t-shirt there. The guy notices it and asked me, “Are they a Christian band?” And I said, “No, they’re a bluegrass rock band that my cousin plays in.”

To the guys in EBJ, don’t ever feel bad if other people are hating on your name. Think of, “The Grateful Dead”. That name is controversial because of the word, “dead” in the name. Same thing. If the band name is catching people’s attention, good or bad, you guys are doing the right thing. Don’t ever listen to anybody. Whatever reaction, the band name gets, whether it’s offensive or not, is good for the band. Whatever it takes to get people to your music.

Kev

When bands & musicians get bigger opportunities in their careers, like opening for national acts, winning Battle of the Bands competitions, winning radio station contests, winning songwriting awards, etc. Bands get all that, and soon after, they act like they’re so big and cool. Acting like they’re so popular.

If I got all that stuff with my music, I would act like that stuff means nothing to me. None of that stuff is important to your career. Bands obsess with opportunity too much. They want to get bigger things and move forward.

I do want success with my music, yes, but I’m not gonna have anything to do with Battle of the Bands or any of the stupid contests. No offense to you bands out there, that goes for this kind of stuff. This is never going to be me.

Bands act like winning contests and awards, is a pretty rewarding thing for their careers. It actually means something to them. In my eyes, the most rewarding thing about music, is writing the songs for the people and having the people enjoying it. That should be rewarding.

I would like to open for a national act someday. If I ever got that opportunity, it wouldn’t be a random national act because they’re famous. It would have to be an artist that I like and admire.

I would like to get signed to a small indie label someday, but I won’t go for any random label. When a label asks you to sign with them, you have to be careful. You can’t jump up to any opportunity that is thrown at you. You have to be careful with everything in the music business. If I were to get signed, it would have to be with the right label with careful research.

I would like to release an official album on a real CD someday but I don’t think I’m gonna bother, because nobody’s buying CD’s anymore and people are downloading music off the internet mostly. Therefor, I would try to get my music on Itunes sometime down the road.

As you all can see, I would like to be taken seriously as a good songwriter, instead of treating it in a negative direction. I don’t obsess with opportunity. I’m all about creating the music and making the art. That’s all that should matter.

Kev

Loren Weisman’s blog is starting to become one of my favorite music blogs on the internet.

I know open mic night’s maybe pretty popular in your hometown. The open mics are pretty popular in my area, the Capital District, in Upstate New York. There are open mics all over this area from bars to cafes. I’ve seen some good open mics and seen some bad ones. I’ve seen open mic hosts run the open mic professionally and unprofessionally. I’ve seen a lot of ego clashing with other musicians on open mics too.

How to have a good open mic? Read this blog here, written by Loren Weisman.

Back in the early 90′s, when I was first starting out performing live. I started off playing a bunch of open mics when I was younger. I would pretty much do anything to get actual paying gigs. So I thought performing a bunch of open mics would be a good start. It would be a good start to perform live and help build my confidence up. When I first started performing live, I used to have stage fright. I used to get nervous and scared as hell, in the beginning. Now I’m not scared anymore and have 100% confidence performing in front of an audience.

Open mics are just open mics. They are not “gigs” or actual “shows”, that some musicians mistakenly call them. When I was starting out, I would play just about  any open mic. It didn’t matter if it was a bar or a coffeehouse, and I was underage back then, probably about 18 or 19, I would play at open mics at bars just to get my start.

As I kept playing open mics over the years, I started to get actual paying gigs out of that. That’s what open mics are for.

Open mics are for musicians of all levels, whether you’re an amateur/hobbyist or a professional musician, it doesn’t matter. All musicians are welcome to play at them. They are an opportunity to get musicians together. Meet other musicians, become friends with other musicians and share music with each other just for fun. They are also opportunities to get actual paying gigs and look for musicians to start a band.

I’ve seen open mics where I’ve seen musicians get treated badly ’cause they felt that he/she had no talent. It even happened to me too, sometimes.

An open mic is just an open mic. Musicians today still don’t treat it like one, it’s just that when you run into other professionals on an open mic, they’ll think that they are better than you. Just because you’re a professional doesn’t mean you’re better than others. If you’re a professional, doesn’t make you a perfect musician that you think you are.

I think the amateurs/hobbyists can be just as good. They can put on better performances and they shouldn’t have to get treated badly. I support and treat all talent with respect. Sometimes professional musicians that go to an open treat it like an actual gig, when they need to leave their egos out the door. I’ve seen it happen too.

I haven’t played an open mic or an actual paying gig in a long time though. I do plan on going back to performing live again, once I get a new batch of originals out there.

I love performing live. Performing in front of people can be an amazing feeling. It makes you feel stronger and helps make you a better person.

Kev

This blog by Loren Weisman said:

One of the biggest differences I see in artists that succeed over the artists that fail, is when they are faced with a massive, time taking, pain in the ass task or challenge, the ones that suck it up, drive ahead and get right to work are the ones that seem to achieve over the ones that try to find ten ways to make it easier, simpler or spend more time trying to modify the challenge. The ones that procrastinate, complain, wish things weren’t a certain way, or put energy in to blame, just waste time that could be spent productively moving forward. In the end, they waste time, effort and most lose the end result of the desired success. When you got shit to do, do it. Don’t go on to Facebook or grab a drink and bitch about what has to be done, just do it.

Again, another great point that I agree with. A lot of struggling musicians out there like myself go online and complain about how they aren’t getting success, and like I said, I do it too!

If I want success and more popularity, I got to think of a new plan and a new mission.

1. Try to make my music as best as possible.

2. Promote myself as much as I possibly can.

3. Keep a positive & good attitude, be a professional through everything, no matter what happens.

Yes, I’m planning to get my music going again soon. Been writing some songs and messing around with ideas.

I don’t really need another site to promote my music with ’cause I’m probably just going to use this one.

Kev

There’s this well written blog post written by a professional music consultant by, Loren Weisman. She gives advice to unsigned musicians that if you want to get more listeners, and more fans to your music, you shouldn’t blame the fans for failure.

Read this interesting blog post, here.

She is so right that bands and musicians shouldn’t take it out on other people if you’re not successful with your music and if you’re struggling like me. After reading that blog post by her, it certainly gave me a wake up call, for sure. It can be good advice for me as well.

After reading that blog post, made me think about how I treated the music scene in the past. I’ve done it before. Going on angry rants on blog posts, on how horrible this music scene is and how no one supports music anymore. I gotta stop that, and so does all other musicians around here.

I gotta stop blaming the fans, other bands, venues or the music scene itself for not supporting  my music. If you keep it going, you’re going to get bad karma out of it. This is one reason why I had to change my blogging personality. I had to become a professional offline and online.

If bands around here keep ranting about how bad this music scene is, they aren’t going to get anywhere with their music. It’s gonna turn other people off. They’ll be like, look at this guy, why would I want to support him? Or look at this  band being all negative and stuff, screw ‘em.

Maybe this is part of the reason, why I’m not liked by some people around here? Aaaah well, lessons learned. You learn from your mistakes and move forward. Move on to better things and stop thinking about the past. What’s done is already done.

You see this with bands and musicians all over. They all complain for failure. I see this in facebook everyday and on craigslist too. Bands going on rants on how people don’t support their music and how they’re getting screwed by venues. Not good, and not professional.

If you want to get success in music, the only way to get that is, making good music. It’s gotta be good, there’s no other way around it. That’s what makes people support your music because they like it. They certainly won’t support music they don’t like. If you’re a struggling musician trying to get success, the best thing to do is keep going. Keep making music, and who knows what may happen. One day you write a good song, release it, and all of a sudden, you get all kinds of good feedback everywhere. That will happen, you just need to keep writing songs.

Getting success and popularity takes time. It don’t happen over night. All those bands that are already successful like Phantogram and Eastbound Jesus for example, they start off small and built their way up. Both of those bands started off struggling in the beginning but they got more successful as they went along. It takes time and hard work to get success.

I’m learning and trying, will keep doing my thing. I’ll get success with my music someday. I do want it, but I’m not rushing things. Again, not getting too far ahead of myself.

Yes, it is painful and hurting that you’re music dreams is failing and falling apart, but you gotta stay strong and positive throughout the whole thing. No matter what happens. I’m learning and trying real hard!

Great article by Loren Weisman, and for that, I subscribed to her blog.

Kev

In facebook the other day, I put up a post ranting about how other young bands are getting all this success (getting lots of fans, being part of battle of the bands competitions, maybe even getting some fame and opening for national acts, etc.). I left out the bands names so I wouldn’t get into any heated flame wars with their fans in facebook. They would probably figure out who I’m referring to anyway.

In the post, I admitted, I sometimes get a little jealous of them but in a good way. I do want all that stuff myself for my own music. Yes, I would like to be signed to a small indie label someday, perform on large stages in front of thousands of fans, open for some national acts, I wish I had a very large following, etc. I’m not rushing it and don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

If all that stuff, don’t happen to me, I’m all cool with it. I’ll just stay happy playing music. After I wrote all that, a guy replied back and said, “Well said, because you create art, you already are a success”. I agree.

Thing is, I can’t tell whether I’m a successful musician or not. I’ve always had mixed opinions with my music over the years. You either love it or you don’t. Over the years, I’ve been made fun of and people bashed me saying I had no talent and was accused of not being a musician. I was also ignored by a lot of people no matter how hard I tried to promote my music and my music dreams were shot down by a lot of people too.

I believe I’m already am a successful musician, the way I’m looking at it. Like I said before, I’ve played over 30 gigs in the past. Shared the stage with almost all the bands and solo acts around the area. I’ve played almost all venues around here too. I had radio airplay with one of my older songs from the past, did a radio interview and had the opportunity to perform on a local TV show for Public Access. I also played on a few huge festivals. Plus, pretty much all local musicians all over the place know who I am and pretty much all of them, follow my blog. People are talking about me, either good or bad.

I think that’s pretty successful don’t you think? Seriously, think about it a few minutes. I think I had a successful music run. Of course, there will be some that will disagree with it and say all that stuff is nothing, but that’s alright. No matter what you think of my music run, I was very proud of it.

I may have not been signed yet, or may have not played Coachella or Lollapalooza, I may not have won Battle of the Bands or any of the stupid radio contests, but I was successful.

Then, of course, other people won’t see it. They would think this band here and that band there is something special and they would think that band has something good going, and I would get ignored completely. No Metroland cover. No local press coverage. Even though I didn’t get anything back from my music run, I was happy with it and I did accomplish things greatly.

I still have lots to learn and lots more to go to get success in music. I’m trying. Trying very hard. Not rushing things, taking my time. Success and getting well known don’t happen over night. It’s a long long road. I also want to get better at playing the guitar and singing before I go any further in my music dreams. Another example of not getting too far ahead.

It’s just that too many young bands are living in fantasy worlds. Thinking they’re something special and they look at music like a popularity contest. That’s never been me. I didn’t care about popularity or success, I just wanted to play music and enjoy myself. If I don’t get any of those huge opportunities other bands are getting, that’s cool with me. I’m just happy sitting here in this room, with my guitar and creating art. I think that’s being successful more than what other bands are doing.

Bands can be insane sometimes, and the way fans look at music can be too. I’m not afraid to tell the truth about this stuff. Young bands should take their slow time and not rush themselves. I’m 35 right now and I don’t even have a band yet, but that is something I would like to do down the road. See? Not getting too far ahead of myself.

Kev

Another thing that bothers me about the local music scene around here, is the way fans support local music. It seems that most people only support the music they like and they completely ignore the local bands they don’t like. Which is understandable. It also seemed like that the only time I got to play in front of a huge crowd at a gig, is when I open for a band with a large following. When I play a gig by myself, I don’t get much of a crowd. Some people just support your gig, just to be nice and friendly, when in reality they don’t actually like your music.

Yes, I did have actual fans that came out to see my set, so that was better than nothing. I will admit that sometimes it is hurting and disappointing being a struggling musician. Other people supporting other bands more than my music, is a little weird and strange.

I just wish fans would support all local music, ya know? Not just supporting the bands and musicians that they like. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried my very best to promote my past gigs and too many people ignored my show invites. Yet, they accept other invites from other bands that they like. Only very few people actually accepted my show invite and they actually came to the gig.

Yeah, I do have loyal fans of my music, and would like a lot more, but if people don’t like my stuff, like I said before, I’m fine with it.

So this is why I thought I would step up and try and become a better songwriter and musician. Become a better guitar player and singer. I’m working hard at both trying to improve.

I guess writing good songs is the only way to be accepted as a musician. It is tough being a struggling musician trying to get recognized, I’ll admit it, but I’ll take it for what it is. All songwriters deserve to get supported and get heard. It doesn’t matter if they suck or not. In my opinion, it’s just rude and disrespectful to be opinionated at local musicians.

Kev