Taking care of business

I'm at this weird point in my music “career” where doing it all myself is getting hard to maintain. I'm naturally cagey about involving anyone else in my stuff but it's probably time to delegate some of the things I'm not good at (booking, promotion, talking to other human beings).

I've been attending workshops put on by Live 88.5, a local radio station, and it's been helpful – mostly in that it's shown me what I don't want.

Not to bag on the panelists because it was very informative and they're all successful, but I felt like a big dumb outsider. Things I heard: “What the fuck is a twitter”, “I get my son to show me how to work Facebook”. The preferred strategy was generally:

• Tour endlessly
• Lose money/go into debt
• Chase radio play
• Wait for it to eventually become profitable

This obviously can work and that's cool, though the scale seems impractical to me.

I'm not unique in having put together a modest fanbase and income from music, and that strategy feels like a tremendous step backwards. And for what? All I can think of is the promise of fame, but sustainability's always been more attractive to me.

Last night I asked a long rambling question focusing on the Internet, but I think the larger question is: where do I find people who can help me grow from where I am, not re-start my career in some traditional way?