11 Tips for Songwriter Survival

Lindsay White

My friends and I are thinking about starting a survival club, working title: SPRIGS, which stands for Super Prepared Really Impressive Gals/Guys/Gays Surviving. As we watch the inevitable implosion of this country’s corrupt systems against the backdrop of an ongoing climate crisis and unrelenting state violence, it becomes increasingly clear to me that I don’t know how to do shit and I am not prepared for shit. For example, the power went out for 30 minutes during a blazing summer afternoon last month, and I was awash with guilt as I realized with shame that not only would I likely die in the wake of a serious collapse (no biggie), but I would also be helpless in protecting my child (big biggie). I haven’t stopped thinking about all the parents here and abroad trying to protect their sweet little babies from the serious collapse that has already reached their doorstep and destroyed everything inside. They certainly didn’t have the luxury of a silly little survival club.

I know I need to become a more self-sufficient person, less reliant on the profit-based systems and corporate-owned government bodies that are trying to keep our labor and our dollars beholden to them, that are trying to manufacture consent and literal investment in their endless wars. But the very thought of trying to learn survival shit or prepare for catastrophic shit amidst all the other piles of shit I’m responsible for in my household feels like an impossible chore and I. DON’T. WANNA. But I know I need to. It’s a matter of survival and solidarity. So, my thought is to gamify it by adding a social aspect to make it a little more fun and less overwhelming. Community care for the apocalyptic win, baby. (Should we drink every time I mention that phrase in this column?)

I initially joked to my friends that my skill set is pretty useless for the club. Many of them grow, sew, build, cook, camp, and I just…think critically about the world and word vomit into an abyss, sometimes with a guitar? Songwriters can barely even survive now—how are we supposed to get it together in time for the end times?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. And the answer is, of course…community care. (Drink!). The more I think about it, the more I realize how much we do need art and artists to shepherd us through times of great instability and evolution. We need hopeful visionaries who can ideate, design, and execute new systems where everyone is safe. We need silly geese with guitars to entertain the children when the grid goes haywire. We need introspective innovators who aren’t afraid to go back to the drawing board when the first 700 ideas don’t pan out. We need pensive poets who can distill sweeping events down to succinct handwritten stanzas that fit on thin pages in light journals when all the bulky hard drives and data turn to dust.

Not saying all this will happen overnight, but empires do be collapsing, as history shows us, and artists are one of the main reasons history shows us anything.

Did we not learn during the first years of the Covid-19 pandemic how much we need and appreciate and crave our spirits to be stirred by the arts? How profoundly disconnected we were from the divine creativity bubbling within ourselves? How parched we were for the community that pours from artistic endeavors? We swore up and down to not take it for granted. So why is it even harder now for artists to make a living than it was then? And how can we change that? Get your drink ready…

It’s harder because corporate greed knows no bounds. The whole system will eat itself alive before it ever dares to put people above profits. Which is why we have to put people first. In other words, community care. (Drink!) Since this is a column about songwriters specifically, I’m going to suggest some tips that readers can employ to help their favorite local songwriters survive right now. Drop me a line and let me know which one(s) you’re practicing or if you have any ideas to add to the list:

1. Share. It’s so easy to press all the buttons. Follows are important, likes are great, comments are better, shares and saves are gold, and consistency is key. Many of us truly loathe “creating content” but it’s become a necessary evil for us to be taken seriously by the people who have the opportunities we want. The algorithm cares less about what we post and more about what you do when we post. Action: Pick one artist this month and engage with every single thing they post.
2. Listen/Watch/Pre-Save: Everyone knows streaming royalties are horse shit. Execs running off with the bag while creators scrap for crumbs is a tale as old as time. But we need those crumbs. Even more than the fractions of pennies your streams afford us, we’re after an increased number of listeners, number of pre-saves/streams/downloads, number of playlists, and length of listen. It all matters. Why? Because it helps legitimize our “brand,” which can translate into increased playlist adds, media opportunities, and paid bookings. Action: Make a Spotify/Apple/YouTube playlist with songs by all your favorite local artists. Listen to/watch it when you do routine things like fold the laundry.
3. Invite a Friend to the Thing: Begging folks to come to our shows is the pits. We know you’re busy and you don’t wanna people sometimes. We feel the same. But if it’s a big one where ticket sales reeeeeally matter, please try to come. Invite your friends or neighbors or coworkers which will feed two birds with one worm: quality time with friends + supporting a local artist/small business owner. Action: RSVP for two tickets to your favorite local artist’s next show right meow. Share the link on your socials—“who wants to come with me to…” OR If you can’t attend, send those two tickets to the artist to use as a social media promotional giveaway.
4. Go to the Merch Table: Sign up for the newsletter, take a card, put a dollar in the tip jar, buy something if you can. Sometimes just your presence triggers the FOMO in other attendees and gets the line forming. Action: Take $10 to the next local music show you attend and buy some merch or tip with it. Be very conspicuous so other audience members can see how it’s done. Bring a foghorn if you have to. 🙂
5. Become a Patron: You have NO IDEA how big of a deal it is to contribute to some semblance of ongoing financial stability for an artist. I don’t have a huge Patreon following, but the folks who have supported me on this platform have SAVED ME AND MY FAMILY on multiple occasions. I’m using a LOT OF CAPS so you know what a BIG DEAL IT IS. Action: Find one or more of your favorite local artists and contribute to their campaign at whatever tier makes the most sense for you—bonus points for engaging with their posts on the platform. No funds? No worries! Simply sharing the link with your social media networks is a big help too.
6. Contribute to a Project/Fundraiser: I’m just going to go ahead and speak for most of my songwriter friends when I say that launching a fundraising campaign makes us want to crawl in a hole, shrivel up, and die of embarrassment. As we move through those never-ending campaigns, we fight the algorithm and imposter syndrome and the cringe and all the other social media noise vying for your attention, and we question our life choices and we almost quit music 14 times an hour. But asking for help (aka community care) (aka Drink!) is a huge part of making art, so we publish those GoFundMe/Kickstarter/Indiegogo pages or we tell you about some limited edition item we’re selling and we hope and pray that we can reach our goal and it will all be over soon so we can get back to doing the thing we love to do. Action: Think of yourself as an arts investor and create a monthly budget for investing in your favorite songwriters’ latest projects. Even if the budget is five dollars, that is five dollars closer to the finish line and the end of the painful journey that is fundraising.
7. Resource Share: Use whatever asset, power, position, relationship, skill, property, etc. you have to help generate income or offset expenses for your favorite artist. Know someone with a kickass house/backyard? Help connect them for a house concert. Know someone getting married? Ask them to hire your favorite artist for the gig or to write a custom song. Is your company organizing an event? Volunteer to source the entertainment. Accountant skills? Do their taxes on the cheap. Grant writer? Help them find and apply for funds. Good communicator? Help them book and/or promote some gigs. Have a rental property or spare bedroom? Rent it to an artist at slashed market rates. On the flip side, get to know your favorite artists’ side hustles (most of us do about 28 other jobs to pay our bills) and try to generate similar connections and opportunities. Action: Ask your favorite local songwriter(s) to list what support looks like to them. Cross-check the list to see if you are able to leverage any of your resources to their needs.
8. Advocate in the Community: When engaging within your community, think about issues affecting local artists, many of whom are low-income and barely surviving in San Diego’s obscene housing market. There are many, many avenues to get involved, but here’s an big ACTION: Rent your Airbnb to a local artist. Ask your friends with Airbnbs to do the same. (I’m all for a fun sleepover in some stranger’s granny flat; I just think we should make sure local folks are housed affordably first).
9. Be a (Friendly) Bug: When we hit up all the gate keepers to promote our own work, it can come off as desperate and uncool. When you do it, we are top of mind and in-demand. Share your favorite artist’s latest single and tag the publication, music supervisor, DJ, etc. you’d like to see feature it. DM the cool new venue or promoter about booking your favorite act. It’s hard to keep tooting your own horn in this biz—sometimes those toots mean a lot more coming from you. There’s a fart joke in there somewhere but I’m too tired to find it. Action: Remember that show you bought two tickets for on action item #3? Okay, nowwwwwww, (*in my best Garth Algar voice) set an alarm in your phone for the day after the show. Thennnnn, reach out to the booker/promoter to let them know how much you enjoyed the performance, to thank them for hiring local talent, and mayyyyybe even ask them if there’s any way you can help ensure the continued success of live music showcases in their venue. It’s almost tooooo easy.
10. Invest in the Investors: There are so many movers and shakers in San Diego who are invested in uplifting the whole scene. These are the people who create the ripple effects and spend much of their unpaid time and energy ensuring all that good music community energy is swirling around so it touches everyone. Make sure those people can keep their own lights on, and then find a way to invest (time, energy, money, etc.) in their community projects, which positively impact everyone. Action: Invest in Liz Abbott and The Troubadour, for starters. 
11. Don’t Sleep on Songwriter Sanctuary: I keep telling y’all. This series is not a good thing for the community, it’s a GREAT thing for the community. Three incredible acts performing in a gorgeous sanctuary space, splitting 100% of your donations—making it the best date night and door deal in town. Myself, host Jeff Berkley, and our incredibly gracious partners at Normal Heights United want to send each one of these amazing artists home not just with gas money, but with rent money. But we can’t do that without your literal buy-in. Action: RSVP with a donation when you can come. Annnnd when you can’t come. 
    

August Songwriter Sanctuary Artists:
So, can we count on you to help the series survive? To help songwriters survive? I sure hope so, cause you’re gonna need us when the deal goes down. Complete those action items above and perhaps I’ll sew you a merit badge for your achievement in community care. (Drink!) Once I learn how to sew, that is.

Here’s what’s on deck this month in the sanctuary:

Veronica May is a blend of music and madness. Plugging in and digging in on her electric guitar or dragging her fingers across sandpaper on the body of her acoustic guitar. She builds layers of acoustic elements not often heard from the instrument. She’s a multi-instrumentalist and she also has Bipolar 1, two facts that combine to produce a unique musician whose life work of destigmatizing mental illness is set to music.

Julianna Zachariou is a full-time musician out of Southern California. She is a producer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter. She loves writing about the small things that make people special. She also has a fundraiser going on right now if you want to pull an Action Item #6 before you even get done with this article!

Emily Afton is a queer multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter and performer with roots across California, in Oakland, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Her nostalgia-infused alt-pop has been described by NPR as “…wonderful, wonderful electro-pop that’s weary of life, but positive,” and draws influence from a wide musical spectrum including the likes of Fiona Apple, Frank Ocean, and Robyn.

Thanks for Talkin’ Craft with me!