Jerry Douglas – HuffPost 8.6.12

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

Jerry Douglas: New artists? It’s tough out there. It’s tougher than it’s ever been, there are so many people out there trying to get record deals and plus there are so many ways to promote your music. The internet has opened up so many things that weren’t available to me as a new artist. There are all kinds of ways to raise money online to get a jumpstart on a recording budget to allow you to buy some equipment to record. There all these new ways you can record at home, digital equipment that wasn’t there when I started playing. The analog tape machine, which cost half a million dollars, was a little cost prohibitive. But now, the same quality studio that we were using, the same quality of recording, you can get for under $10,000. The equipment that we were working on was 2-3 million. You’ve got that, but you really need to have some belief in yourself, some real talent, and some other people. Surround yourself with who really believe in you and can help you in your endeavor. It’s really important to have a good group of people behind you that can do part of it. You can’t do everything yourself. That’s what I would start out with. There’s a lot more, but just watching some newer acts come up and fall by the wayside, some really talented people that shouldn’t disappear, but do… The reasons that they do aren’t because of them, but because they didn’t have the help they need.

MR: That’s really beautifully said. I dipped my toe into the management field for a while. Things didn’t work out, but I got to see what was coming down the pike, the barrage of things that had to be juggled.

JD: It’s a business, a cut-throat business, actually. I wouldn’t say that to discourage anyone by any means. If you’ve got talent and you want people to hear you, the thing you can do to help yourself is to surround yourself with some really nice people, but play in front of as many people as you can, as often as you can.

MR: It’s like trial by fire or better yet, molding the weapon in the fire.

JD: It is. You find out who you are while you’re out there. You don’t really know until you get out there. You can think you’re the greatest thing in the world and you might find out that it’s really not for you. But you might also come into your own while you’re standing there.