I have been making a living doing music and nothing but music for most of my life, and I'm now at retirement age, but have no plans to retire. http://www.s-cats.com is my current duo. We do yacht clubs, country clubs, condominiums, private parties and other adult venues that want "baby-boomer" music. I have nothing against top40 but the young don't want to see a greying, balding, adult play their music.

I've never been burned out by it. I love playing music, I love the audience, I love my job -- being a musician is not what I do, it's what I am. I will continue to play music for as long as I am able, and hopefully that will be a long as I can fog a mirror.

I've played everything from bars where they passed the hat to huge concerts where I was in the warm-up band for the headliner and absolutely everything in between.

I was in a road band that almost "made it big" until the negotiations between Motown and our lawyers broke down. Right now I'm "making it small" in my duo with my wife. When I met her we were playing in two different bands, and when mine broke up, we decided to join forces.

There is an old saying that if you make a living doing something that you would do for free, you will never work a day in your life. Other than a couple of "day jobs" I've had while testing what the "real world" was like, I've never worked a day in my life.

Sure, others make a lot more money. But I pay the mortgage on a modest home in a good neighborhood, buy new cars (but drive them until they are dead), and have enough left over to take a vacation almost every year. I do without a lot of the luxury toys that others have, but I really don't mind that at all.

I also moonlight selling my style "disks" and fake "disks" for BiaB. It's not enough to make a living at, and perhaps if it were my full-time job instead of a part-time second job, I could. But life without live performance would not be as fulfilling for me. So the BiaB disks are mostly made during the summer slow gigging season here in Florida. But the fact that I play music for my living, and I play sax, vocals, flute, wind synth, guitar, bass, keyboard synth, drums, and computer is a contributing factor as to why my aftermarket styles are so well received.

So the Band-in-a-Box aftermarket products will remain a sideline, not my main occupation. But this also helps me make my own backing tracks for my duo. This is a downsized world, and I'm afraid the opportunities for making a living in 5 to 7 piece band are extremely diminished, and don't appear to be improving. So making my own backing tracks allows me the flexibility of doing the arrangements, tempos, keys, and everything else the way I like them, not how someone else thinks they should be, and not "like the recording" as playing live is not like playing on the record. Two closely related but different skills.

And I blame TV for the decline of live music and the downsized musicians' world. At one time a person had to go out to hear and see quality music. The audio bandwidth on the Video signal was narrow and low-fidelity, there were only 3 or 4 TV channels, and the picture was bad. It was also free. Now we have 7.1 surround sound, huge hi-def screens and a cable subscription that can easily run a couple of hundred dollars per month (there goes the entertainment budget).

I was lucky to have grown up when every town had a few bands playing live, when every motel/hotel from a Holiday Inn on up had a live band, and when people came out of their housed to be entertained.

I'm not so sure that it is as easy to make a living now as it was then. I see HDTV, higher alcohol prices/taxes, increased DUI penalties, and numerous other factors competing with live music making the market smaller.

I suppose musicians can still make a living doing what we love, but I think a smaller percentage of the population will be able to do so.

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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