The underlying theme of a lot of things I did (and a lot of the other musicians were doing) at NERFA is how to manage your own music career. One of my mentoring sessions and three of the workshops I attended touched on that in some way. There is so much to do in being an independent musician and I keep looking for someone to make it easy (which is why I keep going to these workshops). No one has, yet, but I still learned both some practical ideas and some useful perspective this year at NERFA. Most useful, I think, was the mentoring session I had with Tracey Delfino, who runs Tresspass Music, a management, booking, and radio promotion company based on Cape Cod; I know a number of musicians who have worked with Tresspass in one capacity or another, and have seen Tracey on panels for the past few NERFA conferences. The most helpful thing I took from the discussion with Tracey is the idea that I should, when push comes to shove, be myself. Which, yes, sounds like the kind of pabulum people always preach, but in this context, at this moment, it resonated. So much of what I heard on panels throughout the weekend involved all the things you should do to sell yourself in one way or another, which can often feel inauthentic. What Tracey suggested, though, is that however I come up with to “sell” myself should be based in who I actually am, and who I intend to be. My bio – even if I come up with an interesting hook – should be based on how I actually am happy to see myself. My messages to people about booking or whatever should have my personality. That’s an extremely useful reminder, in the middle of all this selling. Speaking of who I am, one of her other suggestions was to use the fact that I’m a college professor as a hook to interest people (“college professor and environmentalist by day, folksinger by night”) – because you should use whatever you have that makes you different to interest people in who you are. That’s something I’ll have to think about; although I shy away less than I used to about letting each of each side of my life know about the other one, I sometimes fear that I’ll be taken less seriously as a musician if I reveal that I have a serious day job. On the other hand, I do know that people in the music world are often intrigued when they find out about that side of my world, and more than one presenter has – upon discovering it (and not from me) used it in introducing me during a show. So it’s definitely something people take note of. Also on the DIY management theme, I went to parts of two panels (left early in one case for mentoring and in another to play a showcase) with some version of that as a title. In the first one, some of the useful suggestions included a) bringing new people into hosting house concerts – people you know or people from your mailing list – to expand your audience in a new area (I’m doing something like that with a house concert this weekend in DC!), b) playing open mikes in a new town in order to find the community to be able to play real shows your next time through, c) that being quirky and memorable in a booking-inquiry email can be useful, d) to check back in with people who have presented you awhile back – not as a booking inquiry, but to keep them up to date one news in your musical life every once in awhile, and d) to host an open mike or run a concert series, both for the good karma and to have something to trade or use to pay back musicians who have helped you out in other parts of the country. The second one reminded me of the usefulness of a) advancing shows – having clear communication of what is expected/needed at all stages of the process, and confirming that again shortly beforehand, b) sending a thank you after a show, and c) having a page on my website targeted at media (with a high-res photo, bios of different lengths, etc.) – something that just came up when a venue needed a high-res photo quickly and I wasn’t at my home computer where those live. The third workshop I went to was on branding. That was a mistake – not because I don’t think branding can be useful (I ran into Amy Campbell at the conference, who I barely know, and immediately thought “Amy Campbell’s songs are nice,” because that used to be the name of her facebook fan page – so clearly that branding worked), but because no one at any point explained what branding is, or how you do it. Perhaps everyone there already knew, but I felt completely mystified throughout and so didn’t get much out of it. (Or, rather, I got lots of general stuff – branding is “about connecting,” “about making things recognizable,” about “making it easier to connect” – but none of it gave me much to hang anything on.) I guess the one moderately useful suggestion was an exercise about how you think you are perceived and how you want to be perceived, although even then I’m not sure what to do with that information. And the idea that even with branding you should take the long view. My takeaway from all of these (with the exception of the branding workshop) is about being yourself – even if it might be a slightly braver version of yourself willing to approach near-strangers to ask if they’ll host house concerts – because the music business is built on a long-term set of connections. Cultivate them authentically and it will work out. That’s a message I’ve probably heard at various points over the years, but this year was my year to be receptive to it, possibly because I’m too exhausted and busy to be anyone else with any degree of success.