[Harp-L] Re: Reality Check

[Steve Baker <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well since you asked, Larry, here's my personal take on the European  
reality:

It may be slightly easier to survive as a pro musician in Europe than  
in GB or the USA, as the clubs generally pay better. Even though  
times are tough (and when weren't they?), the middle ground here is  
larger and musicians are more likely to be respected as "artists"  
than regarded as losers. You don't tend to hear the question "yes,  
but what do you do for a living?" quite so often here. However, it's  
a very tough life for a working musician who just lives from gigs and  
the majority of those who manage this are either poor or work as  
sidemen with successful touring acts, basically living from one tour  
to the next and teaching in between. Musicals also offer regular  
employment with health insurance and the rest, so in a city like  
Hamburg (my local town) they offer work for a substantial number of  
musicians. There is a great state institution called the Artists  
Social Fund, which pays half of your health insurance and pension  
contributions, so almost all professional musicians have health  
coverage and can look forward to a meager pension (ooh, the evils of  
socialism!).

My own story is that I'm entirely self taught and had never really  
imagined I even could become a musician. After joining a band in  
London and not earning enough to live off, by chance I came to  
Germany to tour in 1976 and eventually landed in Hamburg (the town  
where British beat music really originated). We had a dynamite act  
which went down well on the local club scene, and were lucky enough  
to hook up with a booker, so we soon had regular work. It wasn't much  
money, but a lot more than we got in the UK. This went on til the  
band broke up 2 years later. For a year or so I scraped a living from  
small club gigs, then two things happened:

On the live front I was asked to play with a well known German singer  
who offered me two tours a year for reasonable money as a sideman. At  
the same time I started playing with rock'n'roll legend Tony  
Sheridan, who played with the Beatles before they became famous. The  
second thing is I got offered my first studio jobs. This combination  
got me through the next few years and I realized a very important  
thing, which is, you have to diversify. After some years of doing  
club gigs with my own bands and tours with the better known artists,  
plus an increasing quantity of studio work, I began working for  
Hohner in the mid 1980s. I had endorsed their instruments for some  
years and our association intensified with time. Indirectly this led  
me to start both writing and teaching, my first book The Harp  
Handbook came out in 1990 and others followed. Though the sideman  
work tailed off in the early 1990s, digital technology made it much  
easier to make records and I began releasing CDs regularly with the  
acts I performed with. CD sales started to become a significant  
factor in addition to the other stuff. We're not talking big numbers  
here, mainly live sales, but with about 100 gigs and workshops a year  
it all adds up.

What I'm trying to say is that I've been lucky enough to make a  
career from playing the harmonica by hanging in there and by  
diversifying into related fields whenever an opportunity presented  
itself. My involvement with the "music business" as such has always  
been peripheral, as I've never in 33 years had a major label record  
deal or appeared with big time acts. I've seen enough from my  
experience as a studio musician, however, to have very mixed feelings  
about the industry and am happy to have been able to survive without  
really being part of it. My reputation, such as it is, has been built  
up by continual live and studio work over the entire time and of  
course the books and records have helped, but it doesn't come from a  
publicity machine, it comes from individual people who often know me  
personally and who I'm happy to see again as a familiar face at a  
gig. This fan base is smaller but is more reliable than the fickle  
media.

Songwriting is important, as others on the list have observed, and  
the people in the music business who make the most money in the  
pleasantest possible way are definitely composers. Even on my modest  
level I receive a small income from performing rights and I know  
enough people in the business who have become extremely wealthy  
through this.

The only reason any of this has worked for me is because I'm totally  
passionate about my music and have always given the absolute best I  
could in any situation, whether it was recording a cat food jingle or  
playing the music I love on stage. I've never had to do any gigs I  
really didn't like, so the tedium of performing stuff you don't enjoy  
night after night has never been my problem, because there aren't any  
Top 40 band gigs for harmonica players. You can believe me when I  
tell you I'm extremely grateful!

At the moment it's too early to say how the collapse of the financial  
system will impact on my situation, but I've weathered enough crises  
in the past to be fairly optimistic.

Steve Baker
steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.stevebaker.de
www.bluesculture.com
www.youtube.com/stevebakerbluesharp
www.myspace.com/stevebakerbluesharp