I find more and more that as I go on as a musician that almost everybody has to have a few hustles to survive, in this incredibly difficult time for the arts and entertainment world...a Secret Identity if you will. I've had many periods where I made my living just playing, but usually that's when you're on the road for 200+ dates a year, which kind of makes having a home life out of the question! So most of us have side gigs or day jobs. I remember playing a show with the keyboardist from Molly Hatchet, who was working a furniture delivery business between tours...and I understand that Colin Moulding was driving a lorry even during the glory days of XTC! So glamour be dammed, I have to pay some bills. Over the years I've done such jobs as House Painting, Psychedelic Drug Reviewer (really), Flower Delivery, Library Clerical, Nude Art Model, Record Store Guy and Prep Cook. I do teach and I do recording, engineering and production for people, but the studio is still just getting off the ground (except on Friday nights, when it is sometimes at an altitude of 40,000 feet). So Cynthia and I own a cleaning business, where we and our associates hop into people's McMansions and office buildings and chase the fearsome dust bunnies around. There are many worse fates!!
The other day we were headed off to one such gig, a summer lakefront cottage rental that we brush up every week. I like to take the back roads out there just because it's such a pretty drive, and we were in no particular hurry. I was turning onto a side road when something ran up from the bushes and stood watching me in the middle of the road. It was a huge coyote! I know that the ones you see out West are little guys, but these Michigan coyotes are really big, as big or bigger than a German Shepherd. I stopped the car and we watched each other for a while, and then he ran off into a field of soybeans on the other side of the road. Cyn and I could see his head appearing and disappearing as he jumped up and down through the beans (I guess he couldn't see where he was going) till he was gone. A nice nature moment!
We finished the cottage and started driving back to town toward our next cleaning gig, and were on a dirt road next to a wheatfield, where we had our next cool animal sighting. Four Sandhill Cranes were in the field, gleaning the leftover wheat and walking about in their weird prehistoric way. I see these guys (I don't know if they're always the same ones) occasionally out by our house, we're out in a major wetlands area (OK, I'll admit it, we live in a swamp). Again, we stopped and sat and watched them for quite a bit...I never really get tired of checking things like this out...
It occurs to me that my Secret Identity allows these kind of moments probably better than most jobs would...we're traveling in rural areas a lot, and we don't have a terribly fixed timetable most of the time, and we both really revel in this stuff. I certainly never had experiences like this when I worked at the record store! The animals there were of a quite different sort. I wouldn't trade the experiences I've had touring in Europe, Canada and the States for anything, and I'll be doing it again I know, but right now things are pretty good. My new CD's getting really good reviews, I'm having fun working on the next one in the studio, my new band is shaping up well and I'm playing out on sub gigs here and there when I want to. Plus, I work a day job with the coolest Redhead ever, and I get to see Coyotes and Cranes!
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