I try to support local musicians the best I can. I enjoy meeting different musicians all over the place, and I have met many local musicians over the years. They all have different personalities and they are all different. I have also spoken to many musicians online who I haven’t even met in person yet.

So what musicians get my respect and the ones that don’t? I’ll do a brief explanation with a list.
The Musicians That Do Get My Respect: 

• Are the ones who concentrate on the music alone. Just playing your gigs, and writing the songs
• Acting friendly and down to earth to people, even to me.
• Does not have an ego problem whatsoever.
• If you play music for the love of it alone, not worrying about fame, popularity, or money.
• Just acting like a true professional in music.
• If you have talent in what you do musically.
  

The Musicians Who DON’T Get My Respect:

• Are the ones who act like douchebags, musicians who act like assholes to people. They are out there.
• The ones who have a huge ego problem. Musicians who jerk themselves off with their self importance. Thinking they’re so talented and big, most of the time.
• Musicians that think it’s okay to attack and criticize other musicians. This has been a problem for years in the musicians community.
• Musicians that try to scam people money with their kickstarter projects and other fundraising stuff for their albums, tours, etc. A lot of them are capable of doing that stuff with their own budget.
• Musicians who act unprofessional either online or off.
• Musicians who don’t care about fans supporting them. I’ve seen it. Some bands are not good with their fans for shit, when their fans don’t even realize it.
• Musicians who fall for scams easily and non-trusting label signings. Musicians who actually go for pay to play gigs.
• Musicians who get upset at criticism easily and gets defensive over attacks aimed at them online. If you can’t take a bit of honesty, then being a musician isn’t for you. Sorry.

I can keep going with these lists all day.

The problem with the music community here, that a lot of musicians like to support every musician they set eyes upon. Not with me you see, I like to look at things with a bit of reality. Just gotta be real about stuff and not be a faker or a liar, you know?

I have been criticized for my negative rants at musicians over the years, and just wanted to clarify.

Kev

We hear stuff like this all the time. You ask yourself these questions. Why aren’t many people supporting my music? How come my mp3’s aren’t getting too many plays? How come not many people are coming to my gigs? Well, do you ever stop and think, that you need to step up your songwriting skills and improve your craft? If you’re getting lack of support of your music, you can’t put the blame on other people, when the reality is, you need to put the blame to yourself. You have to look at your songs and see what you need improved on. If you want your music to be at your best, you’ve got to be a perfectionist for a lot of reasons. Take everything in songwriting seriously. People are not going to support music if they don’t like it, that’s a fact that’s been proven for years. When a musician complains about lack of support, they get all defensive. Saying things like, “Waaaah, people don’t support me. I’m great and they should respect me”. I’ve been guilty of this myself before. Again that old saying, “You can’t beg for respect, you earn it”.

I’m trying everything I can to improve my songwriting skills. It’s a learning skill, indeed. While you can’t please everyone, there is a way to get everyone to like your music, it just needs to be really good. Good music draws people to your stuff. No other way around it, as I said plenty of times in the past. Someday, I would like to make the best music possible where I can make everyone happy, but it’s difficult to do. This is how EBJ is inspiring me. They’re inspiring me to write better music. If you want to get popularity and success in your music, step up your talent.

Writing a great song that grab a listener’s ear, will get people’s attention. Take your time with the music. No need to rush. You don’t have to have the best singing voice or the best guitar playing skills, all it takes is songwriting talent. I’m going to take lyric writing more seriously too and try to take to a different approach. Maybe make my lyrics more poetic, than storytelling. I’m going to start planning on reading more poetry too. You can’t beg people to enjoy your music, doesn’t work that way. They’ll let you know when you’re good. You don’t tell yourself that you’re good.

Kev

I’ll be going to this EBJ show tomorrow night at the Putnam Den in Saratoga Springs. Feel free to come on out if you got nothing going on, and want to see EBJ yourself.

See the show event, here.

I’ve been wanting to check out the Blind Owl Band and the Mallet Brothers for a long while. Both bands look interesting to me. Tomorrow night shall be a good night of music.

I don’t go out to support local music much anymore as I used to, but I like to go out to see EBJ ’cause they are a band that I respect more than anyone around here.

Kev