Mindi Abair – HuffPost 4.18.14

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

Mindi Abair: What advice? Hmm, that’s a really good question. I learned a lesson pretty early on that was great for me to learn: When I was in high school I wanted to be in the jazz band, the Florida All-State Jazz Band–I’m from Saint Petersburg, Florida–I thought, “All the cool kids are in the rock band or the jazz band,” so I wanted to try out for it. I started practicing, but I kind of psyched myself out and I figured, “Wow, all these kids are going to audition for this, and there’s so many people that are better than me in Florida, I just know these guys are going to eat me alive, so why am I even trying for this?” I just totally psyched myself out. You know, you’re seventeen years old, you’re going to psych yourself out. So I quit. I was just like, “I’m not even going to do this, I’ll just stay where I’m at, I’m cool.” My father came in and he was like, “All right, you’re going to quit? All right, sure, just quit.” I didn’t like it said that way, so I went back to it. I was like, “All right, I’ll just do it. I’ll go in and I’ll audition.” I went in and I did the audition and I got first chair alto saxophone in the Florida All-State Jazz Band. I came back and I’m like, “Dad, I got it! Oh my God! I got it!” and he goes, “This is a good lesson for you. Sometimes it’s not the most talented people that get what they want, it’s the people that go out there and put themselves on the line and go for it again and again and again that get what they want.” I thought that was the best lesson in the world. I’ve always lived by that. I wanted Gregg Allman on my record, so I asked him, and he said yes. I wanted Booker T. Jones on my record and I could’ve just said, “Oh my gosh, he’d never be on my record.” But I asked and he said yes. Sometimes you just have to go out there and put yourself on the line and believe in yourself and magical things will happen.

MR: I didn’t expect to go into this, but let’s do it. With the sheer amount of people trying to be musicians on a local level or online has so exponentially exploded from the days when the music business started. I don’t think anyone could have predicted it. Boys and girls are introduced to playing instruments now as a natural part of growing up. And that leads to a very visible percentage of the population who have dreams of becoming famous professional musicians. It seems like there’s nothing going on to really help your standard-issue musician who hasn’t broken out yet. What do you do with that huge amount of people out there?

MA: You bring up a great point. Technology has come to the point where we can all make records in our bedroom. We all have the apps, we all have the technology to multi track and to mix records and burn CDs and digitally upload them, so everyone can be a musician, whereas even thirty years ago that technology didn’t exist, people couldn’t make records in their bedroom, they had to get the chance to be signed by a record label, go into a studio, it was a much different path that you had to take. This has opened music and music creation up to the masses, which I think is a beautiful thing. It can only help creativity. It’s a revolution of possibility. But with that revolution of possibility in my estimation comes, “Oh, well how do we get our music heard? How do we get it seen?” That’s what we’re going through right now that people are trying to figure out. “Do I just put it on YouTube? How will someone find me? How will people make it to my music?” There are lots of different philosophies on this. For me, I think that if you make great music, people will find you. I think it’s less about the marketing and the self-promotion and the social media. If you’re great, people will find you and you will rise to the top. Cream always rises to the top. But it is an interesting time in history. Everyone has the same possibility, it’s a level playing field of, “Go make your record, put it on the internet, go play live, go do this or this or this and see what happens,” because those huge machines are only in place for a couple really huge pop stars. Really, it’s mostly indie apart from that total top of the heap Top Forty market. I know my chapter of NARAS does mentoring sessions all the time, we do events that have professional development angles every week and make them available to our members, because that’s something all these members coming in and new artists, people who want to be in this business, didn’t have access to some of the stuff that we did with school band programs or how I went to college for music at Berkeley College Of Music, so we really try and offer that and up their game. It’s only good for all of us that everyone has the tools to succeed.

MR: What about those with the amazing creativity but aren’t great at marketing themselves? It seems like the culture has turned away from allowing artists to be artists and is now asking them to be marketers and producers as well.

MA: It’s very dangerous, because we should be artists and we shouldn’t have to worry about that, but I almost feel like, “Find a best friend who’s a techie. Don’t try and be all things to all people, you’re just going to stifle yourself, I think.”