It's often said that music schools should teach their students how to do business taxes, proper gig etiquette, or how to promote yourself but the best lesson we could be teaching the next generation of musicians is how to handle the dry spells.

I'm not talking about those couple weeks in January where there's not much to do, I'm talking about that middle-of-the-night panic attack that keeps you up in a cold sweat because you just realized you don't have anything on the calendar for all of eternity. Those dry spells can suck.

But we all go through them. One month you're juggling 30 students, a marching band coaching gig, and five nights of theater pit orchestras a week and the next month you have nothing. And it's not because you're not good it's just that people hate you, you offended them with that one greenroom comment you made, you're unpleasant to be around, and there's a line of better players waiting for you to finally have a full mental breakdown so they can steal your gig and you'll never work in this town again. Or so my brain says.

I moved here at the tail end of COVID right as theaters were beginning to do shows indoors again but it took a lot of resume submissions and a lot of waiting to land my first gig. I knew nobody and had zero connection to the music or theater scene in the area but I eventually locked down a gig which led to three or four more quickly thereafter. It felt like, maybe, it wouldn't be as difficult for me to establish myself at 40 as it was at 20 since I knew what I was doing and had a long resume to back up my “talent”. But then, I went a few months without a gig and I immediately assumed that my lucky streak was a fluke and I'd never work again.

I slowly built up my private student roster and figured if I just taught and recorded, that'd be enough for me and then, out of nowhere, I booked a bunch of gigs again. Suddenly I'm in demand and important people have my number in their phones. And a few of them can tolerate being around me for extended periods of time. I was a success again! I was working on great gigs that I truly enjoyed and, again, I felt like I had established myself in a new musical community. 

As a side note, this new musical community loves to wait until the last minute to book gigs which is something I'm not used to. In my old life, I'd be booked for most of the year by January but here it's not uncommon to get asked to do a gig with just a few weeks notice. It's not a complaint, just an observation and something I've had to adjust to.

That brings us to today. I've booked a few casuals but I'm firmly in the “I'll never work again” phase. Then, in the course of a week, a call for a very well-payed gig with some of my favorite players and a request to sub on one of my favorite theater books of all time and a couple more casuals and a youth theater production and possibly a handful of gigs for the new band. I guess I'll work again.

I wish someone would have warned me when I was first starting out that the ups were going to be exhausting but worthwhile and the downs were going to be a slog. It's not that I doubt my ability or that I think I'm not good enough to hire, it's that I assume everyone has forgotten I'm around. I could handle it if I just thought I sucked. Sucky players get gigs all the time but forgotten players never get called. It's kind of a dark side of the business that is rarely discussed but I'm sure I'm not the only person who struggles with it and we should all be teaching our students that this glamorous life we lead comes and goes like the tides and low tides stink.