By: Ken Boone Christmas Eve 2013, Celia and I were playing at an otherwise forgettable Christmas Eve service at a mid-sized church, doing an up-tempo arrangement of “The First Noel.” I usually do our arrangements, but this one was Celia’s, and quite good! The church offers two weekly services. The contemporary one had a Worship Team/Band that played CWM classics. They had a few good musicians and a lot of not-so-talented musical enthusiasts vying for stage time there. The church’s best musician had been lobbying Celia and me to “help them” with their music for months. After much consideration, we agreed to help for a limited time. Then we learned that, in order to offer our help, we first had to “talk to” the guy in charge of the music program. After a lengthy interrogation by the self-appointed boss of the music program, along with learning his long list of “must follow” rules, we decided to pass. We did learn that the traditional service needed help, so we agreed to work with them for a limited time. The traditional audience loved our music and regularly raised the roof with their voices. Attendance soared at that service. Another good musician joined the church and started a choir. We did what we intended: Help them with music and motivate/inspire other musicians to help as well. It was during that time period that I was seriously considering starting a band that would play a collection of originals and cover old, familiar, inspirational Christian songs. Earlier in life, I started over a dozen bands, vocals groups, and choirs. Some were long-running, while most were short-lived. But all of them were good! On the other hand, Celia, the brains of this operation, insisted that we didn’t need to go through the rigors of recruiting, auditioning, and recruiting musicians. She felt that we could do this music thing by ourselves with piano, bass and Celia singing lead with the congregation singing background. I, however, was dubious. Even though the band at that church had a roster of over 50 musicians, they typically staged a maximum of seven players per service. I knew from experience that the 43 players sitting out those weekends would usually look for something else to do musically. Not these guys. It was as if they had signed non-compete agreements. But I digress… As I’d mentioned before on several forums, I fancied myself a pretty decent gospel pianist. I hadn’t performed in years, but could still block out some pretty chords. When I met Celia and heard her play, I realized I’d have to find another instrument. What’s the learning curve for the tambourine? I chose the bass. I could hear bass parts in my head, now just needed to teach my fingers how to play them. Two weeks before Christmas, the coordinator for the service called Celia, asking for our help and suggested several musicians in the praise band who would probably be open to play with us. Celia offered that we could put a nice musical Christmas Eve service together for them. I thought, wow! This may be the debut performance of our new band! Or so I thought. A week later, we learned that we would not be putting together the show. Instead, the praise band would be putting on a CWM service and we were asked to do one song. On one hand, I was a little relieved because I’d only been playing the bass guitar for six weeks, and none of the musicians we asked were available to rehearse with us. On the other hand, it was weird. We showed up, found ourselves scheduled to play second in the line-up, and with the help of a couple of singers, performed our song, which was a big hit! For the rest of the show, the praise band struggled to get through about eight barely-rehearsed CWM songs, none of which were familiar. It got so that no one applauded, not even their family members. It was bad. Okay, who needs a band? The morals of this story are: 1) Less is more, especially if your “less” is with a trusted source, and 2) Husbands, listen to your wives! They always know what’s best! But wait... there's more!
0 Comments
By: Ken Boone I remember watching a congressional hearing a few months ago, when a senator opened his line of questioning with an admission that it took him over 15 years and three colleges to get his bachelor’s degree. Although he isn’t a guy a voted for, I applauded his candor. How relatable. It took me almost that long to get my degree. My excuse was deep-seated fear that I wasn’t smart. And if I’m not that smart, any expenditure for my education would be a waste of my family’s scarce resources. Funny thing is, I was a sharp cookie. I remember winning spelling bees, acing tests at will, even being one the teacher asked to help classmates with their homework. What happened to that guy? I’m a guy who entered this world full of a thirst for life, wanting to do everything, try everything, be everything. Nothing was going to get in my way. No one was going to get in my way. Except me. Painful experiences chipped away at my confidence, slowly but surely. Although my self-assurance was waning, it didn’t die. A small voice kept telling me that I could still do anything I wanted. When I moved to Rochester, NY in 2005, I was a widowed father of a 15-year-old son who was trying to cope with the unexpected death of his mother. He was and is a very smart boy who sometimes had trouble applying himself. It looked like he had the same self-defeating behaviors that I’ve had. Why couldn’t he have just inherited my eye color? By the time I got to Rochester, it had been 18 years since I’d made any music. By then, I doubted I would ever do anything musical other than listen to CDs in the car. What a waste. What a shame. I talk often about appreciating the value of a closed door. In fact, that’s the topic of the first podcast that I host, beginning in May 2019. I used the time that I was away from music to earn a degree in Economics. That was challenging but a lot of fun! It made me marketable. It even paved the way for me to land squarely in the music business, which fulfilled a life-long dream! Now, why did I use a picture of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs at the top of this blog post? It’s because in business classes you’re taught to aspire to reach the pinnacle of the chart. In fact, you’re taught that it’s a slow, steady, a noticeable climb to the top. You’re also cautioned that not everyone makes it to the top. An interesting thing happened to me on my climb. I realized I was very close to the top! I was reaching a state of self-actualization. While I may never reach my full potential, I’ve hit every other milestone. Did I skip over some steps? No, I never had the big job, corner office, golden parachute. Maybe I wasn’t seeking that. What I was trying to do was to continue to swim upstream, against the tide of self-doubt. I guess I was successful. We are products of our environment. Nature and nurture are in a constant tug-of-war to see which has the greatest influence over our development. We have a revolving door of naysayers, many with good intentions. They are ruled by fear seemingly love to share it. So listen small voice that tells you to keep moving forward, to keep taking well-calculated risks, to get the big rewards. When I coached youth baseball, I would tell a scared kid that the toughest thing he did up to that point was learn how to walk. He fell a thousand times, got up a thousand one times. He went from teetering to walking upright, then he ran. As for me, I’m off to the races. Keep running toward your dreams, they are probably within reach! But wait... there's more!
By: Ken Boone I’m sitting here at my computer, going back and forth between typing this blog and checking my social media accounts. How many followers do we have on our Descant accounts? How many likes on my latest post, tweet, whatever? Is anyone out there? Oh yeah, Facebook changed their algorithm. That’s it! These days, social media is part news source, part “long time no see” and part popularity contest. I remember after one my early posts, I got a message from Facebook basically offering congratulations on the success of my reach. They then offered to help me reach 10,000 more people for only $20. So now I’m supposed to be in the business of buying friends? So not to overreach, I set a goal on adding just 100 friends/followers/fans on the platforms I use. Even with modest expectations, it was a challenge getting there. I felt frustrated, disappointed, and abandoned. But feelings aren’t facts. A week after Celia and I married, some musician friends stopped by. After eating pizza, we adjourned to our home studio to record a song or two. That was the genesis of Celia’s CD, “Songs from the Journey.” Making the album was a challenge and then it didn’t sell. Technical issues, (i.e. hard drive failure at the worst possible time!) copious fear and a big old-fashioned case of writer’s block made me seriously consider reneging on my promise to resume making music. At the time, it had been more than two decades since I’d been onstage or done anything of consequence in music. Celia and I were faced with the task of promoting this collection of songs, with no budget or plan. Enter social media. We couldn’t even pick up 200 followers on Facebook. Man, that sucked! We weren’t ready to give up, because music was the thing we would do if money were no object. What in the world were we going to do? We signed up on ReverbNation with much greater success. More about that later. As my Facebook and Twitter followers finally topped 200 on each, I peeked over at ReverbNation and was amazed to see that we had over 5,000 fans! How did we do it? We were nice! When someone “fanned” us, we fanned them back. We engaged by answering emails. We listened to each other’s music. We encouraged each other. And we made friends! These days, we’ve stopped recording albums. We’ve stopped giving concerts and tabled the plans to form a band and tour. Now we do podcasts. We scratch our musical itch by recording soundtracks for the shows we produce. One day we may make those jingles, bumpers, and stingers into complete songs. But not today! Now Celia and I are not interested in popularity contests. We are, however, passionate about our ministry of music, hope and encouragement. We have earned the respect and support of others. In fact, many times we’ve walked into a familiar church, only for many people to ask if we were there to play, or was Celia going to speak. I’ll take that kind of popularity any day! But wait... there's more!
By: Ken Boone Well, I made the move to Huntersville (just north of Charlotte, NC) in July 2009, and by the following February I was sitting in a Starbucks on my first date with Celia, my future wife. In the course of sharing our life stories, she asked me “what do you want to do with the rest of your life?” All I could say was “I don’t know.” It was a good question and required a lot of thought. I’d never had the luxury of doing what I wanted, so it took time. Once I figured that out, the next question was, “How are you going to do it?” In early March 2009, before I moved south from Rochester, I narrowed my list of southern cities in which I might want to live. I began eliminating them from my list. Raleigh, NC – OUT! Austin, TX – OUT! Virginia Beach, VA – OUT! They’re all great locations, but none of them felt right. Then I got down to Charlotte, NC area. HOORAY! At the time, I was an accounting consultant at a contact lens manufacturer. I was offered a staff accountant position, but the money offered, and duties required just didn’t sit well with me. I was over 50 and had a ton of experience, so “no thanks!” What didn’t factor in my calculations was the fact that we were in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression (which caused me actual depression) but I was moving south, one way or another. So I’m an average, non-descript kind of guy, but there are two things I’m great at: Shooting free throws and using Microsoft Excel. I’m too old, too short, and too slow to play in the NBA, but I knew I could hustle up a living crunching numbers. Since our first date, Celia and I have been practically inseparable. We got married exactly one year after the day we met. And remember when she asked me what I wanted to do and I responded that I didn’t know? Well, she helped me find out what I wanted to do, and more importantly, who I am! Together, we went on a journey. We made music, giving concerts, playing church services, weddings, funerals, outdoor festivals, and even a hoe down or three! Celia created and presented wildly successful mental wellness seminars, covering topics such as recovery from depression and abuse. We did a lot, and we’ll do more. Along the way, I found what I want to do. I learned how to do it by just doing it, and the things we did led us to podcasting, where everything comes together. Who are we? That was harder to figure out. But it did become clear. Everything we did was about inspiration, inclusion and recovery. Very early in our relationship, Celia asked me this question, which she cobbled together from various sources: “If money were no object, and you absolutely could not fail, what would you do?” For us, that is sharing hope and help with people recovering from life on life’s terms. So, my friends, find what you love. Do it well and with conviction. To badly butcher one of my favorite adages, “Doing what you love for a living means you’ll never work a day in your life!” But wait... there's more!
|
About the AuthorAs owner of the Descant Music & Media Group, Ken is a creator and producer of several podcast shows. He is also a music producer, as well as a writer and an accountant for small businesses and nonprofits. Archives
June 2020
Categories |