September 2015: Wombourne School of Music, Saving Money and a Year with No Questions Asked!

Well, I missed last month’s post, sorry about that. September was something of a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows for me, and that got in the way of having anything remotely resembling the kind of focus I needed to get my thoughts together regarding what to write in a blog. By the time my head was in a clear enough place to write a blog for August, I was also ill and it was nearly October, so I thought I’d just leave it until then and cover both months. The fact that I’m two weeks late with this is not helping matters.

I’m enjoying teaching for Wombourne School of Music, it’s a great team to be a part of. It’s a lot less intense than I’m used to with Dudley, since almost all of the lessons are one-to-one and are a lot easier to pace for that reason. I also had a good gig with them on the second Sunday into September when I played an acoustic set at their ‘Concert in the Courtyard,’ and accidentally started a band with Andy and the other Matt who teaches there. We jammed out a few songs on guitar, bass and drums and nearly ran away with the whole afternoon! It’s also a much wider range of ages and motivations than I’m used to, because I teach a few adults there as well as some children of a younger age than I would normally deal with in Dudley.

I did a lot of gigs over August and no small number of them in September and I’m starting to wonder now whether it would be worth investing in a small P.A. system and doing some gigs for myself. At the moment they’re mostly open mics, and while I usually enjoy doing them, they’re not usually worth any money (except for my PRS claims and I don’t know what that’s going to look like until my first one comes through, hopefully at the end of the month!) and I think I could be doing more to make it worth my while.

Of course, it’s easy enough to say that I should be doing this because I enjoy doing it; it shouldn’t be about the money. I would challenge that; for one thing teaching guitar is my main source of income so to a certain extent it does have to be about the money! But here’s the thing: I don’t very often spend any of the money I get from music. I save it instead.

So, for example, I get £20 from No Questions Asked from doing the Jam Nights in Wombourne on the last Tuesday of every month. That can by me lunch for a few days – or I could save it. I choose the latter, because I’m saving up for a few things – a deposit on a house, fixing my car when it goes wrong (it might) or even just a rainy day. If I put the money I get off making music to one side and save it, then what I’m doing with the band has some mid-long term value for me. The value is always there, don’t get me wrong. I always enjoy playing live and it’s never a bad thing to meet new musicians and make new contacts. But things either happen from it or they don’t. If I save the one reward I know I will receive, there will always be a point to the gigs I’ve done that I’ve been paid for. How much money have I made from doing this? Well, that’s for me to know. It’s never been enough to sustain a living, but over the last few years, the money I’ve been putting aside has run in to quite a significant amount – and has been at least a part of the reason that I still consider this worth my while after doing this on and off for the last 12 years.

Incidentally, it’s been a year since I started my tenure with No Questions Asked, and while we’re not too busy these days as we still don’t have a confirmed singer, it’s nice to be able to say we’ve kept it together all this time.