Dry The River’s Peter Liddle – HuffPost 8.27.14

Mike Ragogna: What is your advice to new artists?

Peter Liddle: We were talking about this in the van the other day, trying to dissect the various factors that allowed us to become a full time band, trying to figure out a formula. Sadly, although hard work and conviction turn the odds in your favor, it ultimately comes down to chance. Anyone who convinces themselves otherwise is misguided, I think. You hear successful musicians saying they always knew they would be successful, that they were born to do it and didn’t stop until they achieved their goals. In hindsight, it might look that way, but there are so many factors that have to coalesce to make any kind of career in music. Dry the River were lucky to be using acoustic guitars, violins and harmonies around the time that labels were looking for the next Mumford & Sons, but we’d been doing a similar thing in other bands for years before that without a single label rep at any of our shows. We’d worked weekend jobs to buy gear and pay for practices, played in pubs and slept on sofas for ten years in school holidays and university breaks, and it could just as easily have amounted to an expensive hobby. Even now, we feel truly grateful to be in the position we’re in, but we have to be very careful with cash flow…we walk a thin line between solvency and insolvency! It’s increasingly rare to find any kind of financial security being in a band.

All that said, I’m not saying don’t do it, and I’m not saying don’t be ambitious. For us, it’s the best profession we can imagine, and none of the effort has been unrewarded. The point is, don’t form a band for the purpose of having a career in music – form a band because you and your band mates love playing songs together, and would want to do it regardless of whether you could make a living from it. That’s without a doubt the best mindset to be in when you start out.