Bad Books’ Kevin Devine – HuffPost 10.23.12

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Kevin Devine: My career has been a strange one, and in retrospect I would call it a lucky one, and even a charmed one on some levels, but I would say in the traditional music industry I would be a never-was, or a has-been, or a non-starter. I had an opportunity to make a record for Capitol, and it didn’t go. I was part of a wave of people that got dropped pretty quickly after they got merged with Virgin records. I’m sure there were people in the music industry who, if they were tracking my story, that’s where it ends, but I’ve had a really lucky, vibrant and lush career independently since that happened. The last five years have actually been the best years of my career. So, what I would say, in-so-far as someone would want to model their career one someone like me, is that for me the abiding principle is that you have to look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day about the choices you make, so take them seriously, but also have fun with it. For me, it’s a really great time to be a musician because you don’t have to define your successes with this metric that is sort of crumbling around us all the time now. The main stream music industry is in chaos, and I think that’s a really good thing for people who want to make interesting music, and who can figure out a way to have a career that isn’t contingent upon their metric. The days of bands selling millions and millions of albums and demanding millions and millions of dollars in corporate record money are almost over unless you’re Jay-Z or someone like that. Now, my advice would be to follow your gut and your ideas about this stuff, make stuff that’s interesting and work your ass off because people aren’t going to just give you anything, but you can work your way into a really good relationship, if you’re smart with your audience, in a way that really gets around the business. For me, I wouldn’t have a career if I hadn’t been willing to go play like a hundred shows a year for a long time, and still I tour quite a lot. The best advice I could give is that you’ve got to be willing and ready to work, and if you get lucky and some things break your way, then the work will be the foundation on which you build something special. If it’s something you’re interested in, then the work you do will still be more rewarding than anything else you could do. Any of the work I ever did before, I’d much rather work two-hundred-fifty days a year playing shows and recording music, and I feel like it’s a gift that I get to. So, do the work. Don’t trust that you need these big companies to help you anymore, because you don’t. And try to remember that anyone you act like a jerk to on your way up or around, that’s one less person you’re going to have that would be willing to advocate for you when you’re on your inevitable way down. So, treat people well, not because you want your career to succeed, but also because there’s no reason not to. I guess that’s the best stuff I could say.