In 2018 I decided to give up my corporate job to pursue music full time. I found myself chasing the next pay check, without really giving any thought to if this is what I wanted. Then all of a sudden I found myself 10 years down the line, with no real clue as to how I got there. The lyrics of Pink Floyd’s song ‘Time’ from ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ resonate a bit too clearly:
“And then one day you find ten years have got behind you, No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun”
‘Time’ from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon released 1st of March 1973
I’d just got married and was travelling the world on a 6 month honeymoon, which gave me some time to think and reassess where I wanted to be in life. I knew something had to change, so I quit my job.
What the hell do we do now?…
That was it, I’d done it and I was ready to pursue music full time. My wife Laura was also in a similar position; she’d been made redundant. However after the initial euphoria, the reality set in. We needed to set up a business and make some money from music pretty fast. We’re both accomplished musicians, so we decided the easiest way to make money from music would be from covers. I think every musician knows that people want to hear songs they know; covers are a sure fire way to make some money. So we set up a professional covers duo called ‘The Love Rats Duo’. We focused on mostly pop and rock covers, and set about getting gigs across our local area.
The reality of playing in a covers band….
I’ll level with you, I did not quit my job to solely pursue performing in a covers duo. The real excitement and passion I get is from making original music, but, let’s be honest, I also need to eat. The original songs are not paying the bills just yet! My first instrument is drums and I’ve been playing them since the age of 11, my second instrument is guitar and then voice. For the covers duo to work I had to learn a ton of songs on the guitar. I was also in charge of playing percussion and sharing vocal duties. This was no mean feat and I quickly became some kind of ‘Bert’ character from Mary Poppins!
“You quickly learn that unless it’s a private gig the punters aren’t there to see you, they’re there to see their mates, have a beer and hopefully stay for the music.”
Lawless Luke
If you’ve ever set up a business, you will know that it takes a lot of time and energy. We spent two years purely focussing on the covers duo; trying to get a pipeline of work and creating a name for ourselves. I really got to learn my guitar chops during this time. Performing night after night in a live setting really does sharpen your skills. The reality however of playing in a covers band, is that some gigs are just fantastic, whereas some really are not. You quickly learn that unless it’s a private gig the punters aren’t there to see you, they’re there to see their mates, have a beer and hopefully stay for the music. This certainly teaches you one thing as a performer – Resilience, and this will be the subject of my next blog.
The way out is through…
The covers duo has been a blessing though, and has taught me a lot. It has also paid my bills for the last couple of years and kept a roof over my head. The challenge with doing music full time is that it’s very easy to lose motivation; you can forget why you started it in the first place. I started doing music to create original music, and I wasn’t doing much of that. I knew that in my spare time I would have to focus and work hard, to get my originals project off the ground.
With some discipline and a huge amount of effort, my debut EP is ready for release. If you subscribe to my mailing list, you will get to hear what I’ve been working on free of charge when it launches. In my next blog I’ll talk about how my debut EP was ready for release, and then COVID happened. Delaying the release and taking out all my live bookings for the year, in one fell swoop.
Until then take it easy,
Lawless Luke
