Why I Do This….

 
I usually blog about marketing and PR tips but recently, Kaiser Cartel came to my office and we got into a deep yet brief discussion about children and how they learn (Courtney teaches music to children with special needs) and it struck me that I have never really talked in depth about Why I work in music for a living and I want to share my story.

 
I often get asked why I’m in this business and what draws me to it, and I jokingly say that I dated a bass player in college…which is true, but my love of music started way before that, back farther than I can even remember. And I have a visceral connection to music. In my 15 years since I’ve worked in this industry and of the thousands of people I’ve met, from promoters to radio DJs to club owners to label owners to marketing people to publicists, you may have different philosophies and different income brackets, but one thing bonds everyone that I’ve met. We all love music…. But we all have very different reasons for being in this business. My Reason – music makes the world make sense….

 
At age six, I was thrown out of a prestigious private school on the Upper East Side called Dalton, where New York City’s celebrated intellectuals, and rich and famous send their children. Diana Ross’ daughter was in my class, as were members of Ralph Lauren’s family (and many more) and I was very happy there. In the middle of second grade my parents got bad news - I was not going to be invited back for third grade, due to the fact that I was not learning as fast as the rest of the class. My reading and writing skills were below average and Dalton couldn’t keep me. In a panic, my parents began a long journey to help connect me with someone; a tutor or a teacher who could help get me up to speed, and I spent countless hours with tutors learning things that most other kids were picking up naturally in school.

 
This pattern went on for years and even after my parents enrolled me into a less competitive grade school, I spent my lunch hours and my after school time in tutoring. One of my tutors discovered something that changed my life; I couldn’t memorize multiplication tables or understand how to conjugate French verbs and reading was an absolute nightmare of a struggle, but I could retain lyrics to songs – lots of songs. Music class was the only thing that I did not struggle with because I had dead on pitch. I couldn’t read music, but if it was played once, I could sing it along with the rest of the class effortlessly. As soon as my tutor began to teach me in singing, I began to catch up with the rest of my classmates. I learned to rhyme my times tables to my favorite song and that made it easy to memorize. Singing and rhyming everything, from the state capitals, to proper grammar got me through. I graduated high school as an A student.

 
I stopped singing the day I finished college, but throughout my university years I sang in two campus a cappella groups and I was the only one in both groups who couldn’t read music.

 
My connection to music, to listening to music, to seeing music played live, and to being in community with artists that create music totally drives me. I moved to Boulder Colorado in 1994 because music there took me there – the artists that were playing live there, the venues that they were playing in took me there (and I had the privilege of working in those venues) and my whole life at that time centered around building a business that could support me in that community.

 
My natural underlying talent was always communication. My current passion is learning and teaching others how we can all use social networking and Internet Marketing and community to increase our footprints and to make more money. There is no magic pill that can solve the quandary that the “new” music business has presented us with but I’ve overcome some seemingly impossible personal battles and I’m up for the challenge.

 
There’s one thing I learned through having the life that I’ve had: Everything is learnable and achievable if you set your mind to it and you work to get there. It is critical that you insert your piece about joy and expression – if you are playing music that’s the easy part. If you are a musician, it is a calling, and making music is not a choice. It’s what you have to do. And I can’t imagine being around people who do anything else…