The Millennial Musician Podcast

After wrapping up my first show at the legendary Bitter End, a visibly excited man rushed up onto the stage where I and my guitarist still stood. All he wanted was to take a picture of me wearing his sunglasses, a tradition he’d started amongst his favorite indie artists. That person was a guy named Mark McLaughlin, and unbeknownst to me, he had just become my first fan. Mark be

I'm guilty of it too... I've totally caught myself in a fantasy about how great it would be to sign with an indie label. In that fantasy, you're cared for, held in highest regard, and everyone at the label believes in your vision and knows how to execute it at a scale larger than you're currently capable of. But things don't always turn out that way, which is w

Every musician (especially their parents) has heard the classic "starving artist" trope, but there's someone on a mission to fix that. Meet Ryan McCurdy, a multi-hyphenate who amidst being a stellar actor+, musician+ is also a financial educator for artists. This conversation barely scratched the surface of all there is to discuss when it comes to finance reform fr

No matter where my clients have found themselves on their music career journey, we've always arrived at that question... "...but what's my genre?" And no matter the answer I give, these musicians are hard pressed to let the world stop turning until they can properly classify themselves and neatly fold up the box they long to fit inside. That's why I decided t

Thanks to our late friend, producer Black Panther, I had heard the sounds of Maya Azucena on their song, "The Half" before I even had the honor of meeting her. Once that changed and I saw her perform, I was floored. She was an absolute force, and I had never seen or heard anyone do what she did on that stage. Since that day, Maya has become my mentor, my boss, and my frie

I am absolutely (proudly) dating myself with this reference, but any millennial worth their salt will know that "Cheers" was the bar where everybody knows your name. In each and every episode, Norm was the character who got acknowledged at the entrance - not once, did he hobble down those stairs and not get noticed and greeted by all the patrons. Well... meet my friend,

Sometimes inexplicably, our relationships shift and a connection we once thought was solid can seemingly disintegrate overnight. Our music industry network is no exception to this rule of human experience, so what should you or even can you do to fix it? In this episode, we discuss how to remedy a potentially broken industry connection or if it’s even worth trying to. This one i

We've all been there - our dreaded day job running us ragged, any home-life responsibilities, family, friends, and then... music?  And even once you get to music, there's so much unsexy work to do like metadata, registration, emails, oh my!  That's why I'm so grateful to have Suz back on the show who was kind enough to share a bundle of ways we can start automating our li

Have you ever wondered if you’re suffering from burn out? I know this phrase gets tossed around quite a bit in our industry to the point where it may feel like a casual occurrence, but today’s guest, Suz Paulinski shares why you should take heed and what signs to look for. She’s lived the life of burn out and thankfully found support to survive it and become an esteemed music

WARNING: ADULT TOPICS I felt it was important to share what happened to me this week when I decided to take control of my sexual narrative by way of a risque photo shoot and then subsequently sharing the photos online.  The photographer ultimately handled the situation and was extremely apologetic that my trust was violated in such a way, but it doesn't change the reality that