Sharing and giving and having and receiving.
 |
| Obligatory Friends reference. |
I'm sure all of you have had to ask a favour of a family member, friend or stranger. When you ask in a polite, non obtrusive manner, whoever you have asked will generally help you out (unless they are a dick, or genuinely can't help). Asking for help is something a lot of people struggle with. No one likes to be vulnerable. The fear of hearing 'no' is always there, the fear of failure and rejection will always rear its ugly head.
Today the subject of the HB blog is asking. Specifically, is it ok for an artist (by that I mean musician/writer/performer/visual artist etc) to ask for financial help to further their art/career.
I know I probably harp on about her a bit, but this is something EVERYONE should see. This is what I hope to be the future of the music biz. Amanda Palmer's talk 'The Art of Asking' at the TED conference in California last week was inspiring and full of hope for the young buck musicians like your friends at Honeybone. The speech has gone viral.
Please watch it, its 10 or so minutes of awesomeness. Even if you dislike her music, she's one hell of a public speaker.
The basic gist is: the question isn't how do we make people pay for music, how do we LET them pay for music. In 2012, Amanda Palmer made global headlines by raising almost 1.2 million dollars (US) through crowd funding website Kickstarter for her new album 'Theatre Is Evil'. About 25,000 people backed the project, including yours truly.
Crowd funding has opened up an entirely new way to distribute and pay for music. Amanda (we're on first name basis now she's retweeted me) used the Kickstarter as a kind of preorder for the album, with rewards ranging from $1 digital downloads to an artbook, vinyl packages, 'mailbox invasion' art packages and the list goes on. That's right, we could CHOOSE how much we wanted to pay for her music. And you still can on her bandcamp. And you can on ours.
By not having a hard sticker price on our music, both Amanda Palmer and us kids at Honeybone have found that people have an overwhelming streak of generosity when they are given the CHOICE to pay for something or not. When we put our single 'Don't Need You' up on our bandcamp, we made it a 'pay what you want' option. We knew we wouldn't get many downloads if we made it a set price, so we decided it should be free. And guess what? People paid for it! Mostly they were our mates, but one lovely lady whom I have never physically met paid for it, purely on the basis of the music. And that feels good. Because we didn't MAKE her.
Think of that feeling you get when you give your last $2 coin to an awesome busker or street performer. Knowing the money goes directly to them makes you feel a bit good, doesn't it? No one's making you pay. So is it shameful that they are on the street, performing for passersby and loose change?
Amanda Palmer says her days as a Living Statue in Harvard Square, Boston taught her a lot about being a professional musician. Especially how to deal with the people that did and still do yell at her 'Get a job!!' from their cars/computer screens. She copped a lot of criticism for raising so much money on Kickstarter, and then asking her fans to come play onstage with her for tickets and beer and hugs. People thought now she's a 'rich rockstar', she should pay everyone who plays. Which is a fair enough point, to the people that don't know the relationship she has with her fans. She connects with them directly, through her blog, Twitter and her shows. She asked them to help her, and they did. Because she helped them. In so many ways.
 |
| An illutration form of Amanda's talk for those of you on the go. By Fever Picture |
So Honeybone had a crisis (in my opinion, I was FREAKING OUT) on Saturday night. We had a gig and oops, we left the van lights on. Classic error. Everyone does it once. Not many will do it twice. My mind was running over the possible solutions. We didn't need to take drums or a bass amp, so we could get a taxi? Shit, Drew's massive amp cab is in the van, parked 5 blocks away, not exactly feasible for a taxi (that may or may not show up). We had a battery charger, but there wasn't enough time to charge it up before the gig. And we don't have jumper leads. Fail.
Thus I proceeded to the depths of my phone contacts, feverishly scrolling, trying to remember who has a car, who would be home and who would have jumper leads. Enter drum extraordinaire and vintage radio collector Tom Hendry. What a champ. I called him up and ten minutes later he was jump starting our van. I asked for help and he helped us. Of course, he's an awesome guy so it's not a huge surprise he came and helped, but it's still fucking great. His band is called Son of Set, and they're playing tomorrow night at the Vineyard. You should go see them, they are awesome. We got to the gig a sneaky 5 minutes before we were supposed to start. Luckily the boys from headliner Cotangent (one of the best freaking bands in Melbourne) didn't mind in the slightest. And we played. And it rocked. And everything rocked.
 |
| Said rockage. Photo by Heath Gillespie of Cotangent |
We wouldn't have been able to play the gig if it hadn't been for Tom. Amanda Palmer wouldn't have been able to release her album if it wasn't for her fans. One example is small, and one is on a scale I can't even comprehend. But both have the same basic principle. Ask and you shall receive. Be a good person and you will receive goodness.
Asking for help, or monetary remuneration for artistic services shouldn't be seen as begging. Busking isn't begging. Playing gigs isn't begging. Crowd funding isn't begging. Let's stop thinking of it as begging. Let's think of it as what Amanda Palmer would think. ASKING.
And also we should all probably think about investing in a nice set of jumper leads.
X
