Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#296: Jordan Perlson (Drummer, Percussionist, Producer, Educator) (pt. 1 of 2)
Today we released part one of our interview with Nashville-based drummer, percussionist, producer, and educator, Jordan Perlson. He’s a busy musician who's performed with well-known artists such as Gary Burton, David Liebman and Snarky Puppy. He’s been on over 100 recordings, and has composed music for national ad campaigns for companies such as Netflix, Powerade, and Nissan.
Jordan is also an Adjunct Professor at Middle Tennessee State University, and his books have been translated into several languages. Anyone with an interest in a portfolio career will benefit from Jordan’s insight on a variety of topics such as self-employment, planning for retirement, and more! www.jordanperlson-music.com
Hi everyone, nick Petrella here. This episode is sponsored by Steve Weiss Music, percussion specialist since 1961. If you're looking for a rare piece of sheet music, a specialty gong or anything percussion, steve Weiss Music will have it. Please visit steveweissmusiccom or click their link in the show notes. That's S-T-E-V-E-W-E-I-S-S musiccom our percussion series.
Announcer:Sponsor. Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. Any reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick.
Andy Heise:Petrella Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. I'm Andy Heise and I'm Nick Petrella.
Nick Petrella:Jordan Perlson is joining us today. He's a drummer, percussionist, producer and educator. He's a busy musician who has performed with well-known artists such as Gary Burton, david Liebman and Snarky Puppy. He's been on over 100 recordings and has composed music for national ad campaigns for companies such as Netflix, powerade and Nissan. He's a passionate educator and has taught at Vanderbilt and NYU, and his books have been translated into several languages. His website is in the show notes, so make some time to check out all that he's doing and hear some great music. Thanks for coming on the podcast, jordan.
Jordan Perlson:Thanks for having me, guys.
Nick Petrella:Let's start by having you recall what it was like right after you graduated Berkeley and how long it took you to become established as a working musician.
Jordan Perlson:Yeah, so while I was at Berklee I started playing a lot of gigs and working a lot in Boston and my bread and butter was kind of playing a lot of weddings and corporate events and things like that. And so as soon as I graduated I moved to New York but I was commuting back to Boston. For those of you unfamiliar with the Northeast, that's about a four hour drive without much traffic. Uh, so I was making that drive way too often to start and then, as time went on as living in New York and getting more established there and making more connections and building up my network there, I was doing the drive less and less till finally I just wasn't driving up for for working gigs anymore. If I was playing with an artist who had a gig in Boston, that was one thing, but I wasn't going up for for, you know, weddings and stuff like that, and I would say that probably took about. I mean, that probably took 18 months to two years to really siphon that out of my schedule and my workflow.
Nick Petrella:So you were doing a lot of traveling in that time.
Jordan Perlson:Yeah, in a very not fuel-efficient car in a time when gas mileage was not incredibly inexpensive, so I don't know how efficient the whole thing was. In incredibly inexpensive, so I don't know how efficient the whole thing was in the end but that's how I did it.
Andy Heise:We won't do the math on that yeah let's not. You're hauling your drum set back and forth as well.
Jordan Perlson:It depended on what the kind of gig was, but if I was doing the drive it wasn't any more uh, it wasn't any more laborious to bring a drum set with me, you know yeah, and so was there a moment when you realized, okay, this drumming thing, it might work out, I might be able to do this as a living yeah, I, I feel like it was sort of slowly ramped up while I was in b Boston and I was starting to get a little more confident that this, this, you know, this might be a viable venture, uh, but you know, and I had plenty of doubts along the way, both while I was in Boston and my early days in New York and not, you know, and further, further along, not just my early days in New York, but uh, I don't think there was a specific moment, I think it was more that every time I considered if I had, if I was going through a period of extreme doubt and I would start to wonder if I should, if I should pivot somewhere else, I couldn't think of anything that you know would.
Jordan Perlson:I was like, well, that that sounds viable, but just so miserable and I would never. I would never not be able to like stop thinking about drums and music and practicing and things like that. It's like it's just so hardwired into me that it was more like I could try to choose something else. But this has chosen me. So there's no, there's no real other, you know, logical option.
Andy Heise:Yeah.
Nick Petrella:So when you mean pivot into something else, you mean non-music or say like mallet instruments or something. No, no, no, non-music. Yeah, when I you mean pivot into something else, you mean non-music or say like mallet instruments or something.
Jordan Perlson:No, no, no. Non-music, yeah, when I, when I like I said, when I was going through periods of extreme doubt, that that you know if I their own perceptions of how the music industry has evolved over time. But, kind of, my opinion is 2001 or two is when things really started to fall apart. Business wise, yeah. But put the romantic word of dreams aside.
Jordan Perlson:All the preparation I was doing to try to do what I wanted to do was starting to feel like you know what is this even like? Why did I prepare for you know? Like I wanted to be a session in the back of my mind that was hard to get out of the forefront of my mind for a long time. You know when the doubt would really creep up. I would, you know, yeah, I would. My mind would wander to like, should I get a degree in something else or that sort of thing. And then the following thoughts were always just like well, would I still have time to practice if I was a CPA or whatever. Like that. I was like, well, if I'm worried about practice time while I'm a CPA, I should probably just not be a CPA. Yeah, right, yeah.
Andy Heise:Do you come from a musical family or anything?
Jordan Perlson:Basically the opposite. My brother did play guitar and was very passionate about it, and when we were kids he's five years older than me so when I was a really little kid he was learning all like the Steve Vai solos and the Joe Satriani stuff and Van Halen, which is quite challenging and a lot of commitment goes into that. But my folks I think between the two of them they owned like four CDs in the 90s yeah, you know, when I was kind of coming of age, and they were mostly cool CDs, like my dad had an Aerosmith Greatest Hits and a ZZ Top Greatest Hits and my mom had like a Motown collection. So it was good stuff but very limited and, uh, other than that, I have two distant cousins who were professional musicians but I had the the little bit of relationship I had with them was them discouraging me from pursuing?
Nick Petrella:music yeah right. So were your parents CPAs. Were they pressuring you into the CPA field?
Jordan Perlson:No, my dad was a doctor and he was. He was pressuring me into doing anything but music or being a doctor, Right.
Nick Petrella:Has he accepted it now?
Jordan Perlson:He has, he has, he's there, they're very they've always been very encouraging and and and supportive, but they were both very leery, uh, you know, and rightfully so of because they all not not only is it famously a fickle, uh profession, but they just knew nothing about it and they, they were worried they weren't going to be able to help, guide and be and be, you know, just be helpful in general, which I, which I totally get, you know, yeah, absolutely every parent, everywhere, exactly.
Nick Petrella:Well, the nice thing is, you, you're, you're, are you teaching at vanderbilt now? Which I totally get, yeah, absolutely Every parent, everywhere, exactly. Well, the nice thing is, are you teaching at Vanderbilt now currently?
Jordan Perlson:So I've done a series of master classes there kind of an artist in residence kind of thing and I'm currently on faculty, starting this semester at MTSU here in Nashville. Oh, okay, which is technically Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which is just outside of Nashville, and and I was on faculty at NYU when I did my master's there.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, and the reason I asked is because you know, I've been teaching at universities for a long time and one of the things that parents talk about hey, is my kid going to be able to make a living and the fact that you've gone through that you understand the business. I think they need to hear that you can.
Jordan Perlson:Absolutely and, I think, the hardest thing to tell. I was just having a chat with a Vanderbilt senior. He started his senior year this year and he was asking how do you get gigs? It's just like the question, and such a hard one to answer.
Jordan Perlson:And the thing I try to remind people in that position and their parents, if I have the opportunity to speak with them, is, like, what's so different about what we do is there is no manual. You know you have to. You have to write your own manual and create your own atlas and get your own google map for your career. There's no typing in a destination and get your own Google map for your career. There's no typing in a destination and something just populating it for you. Uh, which is both terrifying and exciting.
Jordan Perlson:You know, um, if it was like I'm going to be a lawyer, then I'm going to work at a law firm, then I'm going to work my way up to be partner, and, like you know, I'm obviously oversimplifying I'm sure lawyers could could find lots of, lots of, say, a lot of similar things about their careers. We could, but at least from the outside, there are very obvious paths you can take in lots of other industries, whereas there's just really not obvious paths for us. We have to, kind of, you have to carve your own path, and I think, like I said, it's terrifying and exciting.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, totally, it's very entrepreneurial.
Jordan Perlson:I agree, yeah, totally, it's very entrepreneurial. I agree, yeah, you are simultaneously a freelancer and an entrepreneur, all at the same time doing what we do, whether you like it or not, and a manager, you're managing your daily schedules and gigs and everything. Unless you ascend to a place where you can have a manager.
Andy Heise:Have someone else do that for you Exactly.
Jordan Perlson:I'm not there yet personally, if there are any managers interested in doing any pro bono work.
Andy Heise:For experience and exposure. Right, Exactly.
Nick Petrella:Right up until the point you said pro bono, we might have had somebody. So, jordan, you have a substantial portfolio career. You perform locally and tour with well-known musicians. You record, teach, you give online lessons, you give masterclasses and so on. You're also a producer and have composed music for commercials so a lot of activities. Are your varied offerings part of a risk management plan, so you always have revenue coming in from various sources, or is it simply you just like doing different things?
Jordan Perlson:uh, yes, the answer to next question exactly I, I, it's all, all of that. I I'm, I'm a very I like doing lots of different things. I, I, I worked at a drum shop when I was in high school and I learned a lot of really valuable things about music and about business and people while I was there. But the most important thing I learned was I don't want to work anywhere this. I don't want to be in the same, within the same four walls, every single day.
Jordan Perlson:I want to do different stuff with different people as much as I can, so that the, the desire to have a varied stream of income is partially influenced by that and also partially influenced by my extreme, innate skepticism of all things. Pretty much and I don't trust that, you know like if I, you know, if I, if someone offered me some gig that was going to eat up all my time and it was going to pay great, but like this is the one thing that I do, it would be a very, very difficult decision for me to make, because if that were to go away and all of my other streams of income had to be, you know, paused to the point where I wouldn't be able to pick them up where I had them before. That would make me very uncomfortable inherently. So uh, yeah, the the answer to your question is yes to all of the above.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, so the playing and the teaching and the recording, that all makes sense. Has, what about composition? Is that something that you pursued or that just happened for you?
Jordan Perlson:Those things just sort of happened. I don't have a a extensive background in composition when it comes to the, when it comes to jingle stuff, stuff. Usually what happens there is like I've played on dozens and dozens of jingles. But when I get a composition or a production credit, it's mostly because a producer that I work with in that world has a project that it just makes more sense for me to take on that role or co-compose or co-produce with them, because it's very drum heavy or it's there's some specialty aspect of it that they say you know, like I'm taking on this project but really I'd love to just essentially subcontract it from that perspective out to you and we'll do. You know, you'll kind of take the reins and I'll oversee it with you. And that's how stuff like the like the netflix project and the nissan project, powerade like that's. That's how stuff like the like the Netflix project and the Nissan project and Powerade like that's that's how those came to be.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, Do you see yourself doing more of that? Uh, more of that in the future.
Jordan Perlson:Um, if, if the people in that world I only, I think only in that context. I'm always happy, I'm happy to play most, any session, but from a production and composition standpoint it would need to again come through somebody in that world who wants to kind of take me on as a partner for the project.
Andy Heise:Yeah, well, and a lot of this, a lot, of, a lot of your gigs, a lot of the things you do, um sort of hinges on. You know, I want jordan perlson to play on this, um. So how do you um, as a self-employed musician, how do you go about building and maintaining that brand of jordan perlson the drummer? What are some things that you've done to make yourself more available for hire? And I guess I'm assuming that it's, it's built, it's all part of that brand, jordan Pearlson.
Jordan Perlson:But yeah, it's interesting. Did you ask me that question? I have a I've. I, like a lot of freelancers, have inherently had a hard time saying no to things and uh, as I'm sure just about everybody listening to this can probably relate to on some level. I would assume if you're listening to this podcast and I still have a tough time with your question in general, how to direct. You're basically saying how to direct one's career and build a specific kind of make, make yourself known for specific things and get called for those specific things. That's what we're talking about, right.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah, I think it's kind of that brand identity, right, oh, this is oh we. We got to have Jordan for this track, or?
Jordan Perlson:whatever. Right, I, honestly, from a, from a purely artistic perspective, like the way that I play and things like that, that happened very organically I I've actually never had. When I remember, when I was in my early 20s and I was at berkeley, there was a lot of talk amongst my peers of, like the division of be very uh, be very intentional about your path, your path either being be unique and be known to do this one thing really really well, or be incredibly well-versed in as many things as possible and just be super, super hireable. You know, and maybe be faceless. You know, quote unquote faceless as you pursue that path. As you, as you pursue that path and it wasn't like I was again going back to your question of a few questions ago is, like, did I make this, this choice, intentionally? It really just a rock drummer or just playing R&B or whatever it was. I just like like I listen to all that stuff and when I listen to great music, like you know, like any musician, you kind of put yourself in the shoes of the music you're listening to and you want to be a part of it most of the time and and I still feel that way.
Jordan Perlson:So it took I think it actually took a little longer for me than a lot of my peers to establish an identity and, like I never you know, knock on wood, and I'm not, I'm not saying this is a you know, I'm not patting myself on the back but there was never a lack of work. You know, I'm very blessed to be had to have a very busy career throughout my life, but it was always very varied and I think because it varied stylistically, and I think because of that, it took potentially a little longer for me to, kind of like, maybe establish my brand and make it a little more known in the community than some of the other folks that we were all kind of, you know, bouncing around New York and the Northeast, uh, doing similar things at a similar time, right, um, but yeah, yeah, I don't know if that answered that question in any way to more of a tangent, no it no, it, it, it totally does.
Andy Heise:And I, I, I think your point about, um, you know, sort of walking that line of, okay, which way do I want to go? Do I want to be the I think, as you said, like the really good at one thing you know, specialist, or the general, um, generalist, who's good at a lot of things, Um, and, and to your point, sometimes that's a conscious decision, sometimes it isn't, it's just sort of happens, sort of happens with your circumstances and what's available to you at the time.
Jordan Perlson:Yeah, yeah. And actually, if we have time for a quick story, I remember when I was at NYU, kenny Werner was on faculty there and I got to do. If you're not familiar with Kenny, he's a legendary jazz piano player. He wrote the book Effortless. He's, he's incredible, he's, he's an absolute legend.
Jordan Perlson:And I got to play in an ensemble many, several semesters with him and he I was super lucky for him to he hired me for a few gigs when he needed a sub for a few different projects at the time and I remember he like kind of looked at me one day. He's like so what's your plan, man? And I was like what do you mean? Like what's my plan? He's like what? Like? What's what's the plan? Like you're not just gonna just be a drummer, right, like drummer for hire. You got to have something more specific in mind and in my mind I was like that sounds pretty specific, like I don't know, like I was as specific as I had ever thought about it and he said you know ari honig, who was his drummer at the time and still plays a lot with him and is a generation older than me and an extremely established and well-respected and, you know, kind of living modern legend of the jazz drumming world.
Jordan Perlson:He's like when I met Ari, when he was like 22, he knew what he wanted. He was like I'm going to be a band leader, I'm going to play with these specific kinds of people, I'm going to pursue these kinds of gigs. And he really pursued that path. You need a plan and I heard what he was saying but I just was like I don't know. I think I just for now, I'm just going to play drums and hope for the best.
Jordan Perlson:And I can't tell if I'm regretful. I should have come up with something sooner or something. But I, if I'm just kind of being true to myself, like I, I just couldn't think of a specific, something as specific as that to, to, to align myself with and, as you know and it's certainly not a knock on Kenny or Ari, they're two, they're two people that I respect to the highest level and it really took for my son being born almost two years ago for me to be like, okay, I'm going to really learn how to say no now and be a lot more specific about what projects I take on, where I attach myself and where I spend my time.
Nick Petrella:It really comes down to time spent for me right now, as any parent can relate Sure, sure, yeah. But think about how much you learn playing not just one style or a couple styles, but a myriad of styles that you can pass on when you're teaching or giving masterclasses.
Jordan Perlson:Oh yeah, 100%. I think it's incredibly valuable to Like. I did a masterclass in Georgia with Jeff Coffin's band last year and you know it was a jazz program and mostly jazz players in the band and some I don't even remember what the question was, but I referenced a drummer. I really love this guy, matt Garska, who plays with a band called Animals as Leaders which is, you know, one of the biggest kind of like prog metal, kind of math proggy bands that's around right now. And he's just he's, you know he's, he's kind of my, you know, he's really maybe potentially a generation younger than me, but he's sort of the next generation's Vinnie Caliuta.
Jordan Perlson:In my opinion, if you guys, if the listeners, are familiar with any drum nerdery, matt is just unbelievable. And I guess in the same question I referenced Matt Garska and Philly Joe Jones and several people came up to me afterwards and were so appreciative that I was not only drawing correlations between these kinds of players, but I had the knowledge of it and was willing to go there, whereas if other people only want to talk about whatever Bud Powell, and it's just going to be Bud Powell for the whole masterclass and it's not necessarily a masterclass on Bud Powell it makes it harder to relate to, but if you can widen your delivery, you can help people catch what you're trying to explain to them a little easier.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, life's not one-dimensional Exactly.
Andy Heise:Yeah, and it totally just comes back to what you were saying earlier. And the reason we started this podcast really is there is no one pathway, right, there's your pathway that you can explore and find.
Nick Petrella:but anyways, agreed, agreed so, jordan, one of the questions I asked once in a while is about retirement, because young musicians don't think about that well, for far too long, in my opinion. Since you don't have a w-2 job with 401k contributions, would you mind telling us how you're planning for retirement?
Jordan Perlson:Sure, I well I was I'm lucky enough to come from a family that is very minded about such things and I think financial literacy can be a hard thing to kind of pick up from from, from scratch. I have friends that you know have parents that haven't saved much or anything and they're trying to change that for themselves and their families and it's, I think it's a much bigger. It's a much bigger lift when you can't just like pick up the phone and call somebody you trust, like that's really what it is. If you do, if you're trying to get advice on something like this, it has to come from somebody you absolutely trust. And, like I said, I'm lucky to come from a family that's been minded like this. So we've actually my family's actually worked with multiple generations of financial advisors, like a father and son were advising my grandfather and my father, and now I'm working with them too, and so to me that's the first step. It's like you got to find somebody you trust to kind of point you in the right direction. And it doesn't need to be a complicated direction, it doesn't need to be you know this like diversified. You should diversify, but you shouldn't. It doesn't need to be a hundred million different things. It can be four things you know, but you need to know the right four things and need to know the right four things.
Jordan Perlson:And uh, and so I, like I said, I have I'm very lucky to have some great resources, but as far as what I put away and how I put it away, it really varies. Like I, I've had a couple really good years and I started to get a lot more, uh, aggressive not with my. I'm actually a very not aggressive investor. I'm not a bull at all when it comes to these things. I take the slow and steady approach again because I'm very skeptical and very worried everything is going to fall apart at any moment. So I just take the slow and steady approach. But I was putting away basically every month as much as I possibly could for the last few years. And then my wife and I just have had a very expensive year. We renovated a house and we are sending one kid to college, one kid to private school, one kid to daycare right now and uh, and so I was just like you know, I've got to pull the plug on putting some money away for the moment, but I I think we might be digging our way out of this, this uh chapter, and can get back to it. But, yeah, so I put away as much as I can.
Jordan Perlson:I was also very lucky to be in a very unique situation to buy a property at a fairly young age and I jumped at that and also approached it from a very skeptical this could fall apart at any moment. So I should be very, very careful about how I take care of it and I have and like, basically, I was one of the last people in america to get a mortgage before everything fell apart in 2008 and I was absolutely, from a demographic perspective, who they were talking about in the big short. Uh, like, I was one of those people. I wasn't a, I wasn't a cocktail waitress buying five properties. Demographic perspective, who they were talking about in the big short. Like, I was one of those people. I wasn't a cocktail waitress buying five properties in Florida, but I was a freelance drummer buying a property in New York.
Jordan Perlson:Right, but again, like, I think, from a intellectual not intellectual, but from a mindset standpoint a lot of those people went into it going well, this will be fine.
Jordan Perlson:The mortgage broker said it's going to be fine and the real estate broker said it'll be, so it's going to be fine. And being a freelance musician, nothing is ever fine. So I went into it, going like I don't care what these people say, like I got it. So similarly, uh, the, the place that I was able to buy was tax abated, so I didn't have to pay property taxes on it for a number of years so. But I decided I was going to pay whatever I was supposed to pay in property tax into my principal every month, that I could Things like that. I was just making decisions like that. Again, not because I'm some brilliant you know statistician or you know financier, it's because I was just scared out of my mind, you know, and still still, still spend a portion of my days in that mindset. So I kind of just approach, approach from that that standpoint and try to prepare as best I can.
Nick Petrella:So just a couple follow-up questions Was that a rental property or your own property?
Jordan Perlson:It was mine. I lived there for about 10 years before I moved to Nashville, which is where I live now, and it is now a rental. Yeah, again, like one of the choices. You know like in a lot of big cities, especially New York, you can buy a condo or a co-op, and co-ops are a lot more stringent about what you do if you're not living there, about what you do if you're not living there. So I very specifically looked at condos because I knew they would be more flexible if I needed to, you know, if I needed to jump ship and find somewhere cheap for myself to live but rent it out that sort of thing. I didn't want to be beholden to somebody else's rules. You know just decisions like that. You know putting up as many guardrails around my. You know my economic and income situation.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, totally. Then the second question is are you set up so that you have a solo 401k or something and then you could put money in pre-tax, or is this all after tax?
Jordan Perlson:I do actually have a 401k through a, so I actually do. For the last few years have had a w2 job which I know might might be. Uh, I don't know if that disqualifies me from the podcast.
Nick Petrella:I should disclose that ahead of time?
Jordan Perlson:not at all, yeah, but I have to edit this out, oh my I've been working remotely for a really great company called soundbettercom, which is a company that is a website that serves freelance musicians and engineers and producers and singers, and I am kind of the front facing voice for mostly for the providers, for the people that provide services on the website, and I do a multitude of things for the company. But that's kind of my role and where I am able to use my skills and my background as a musician via the career that I've had so far. So through that company I contribute to a 401k, I contribute to an IRA and a Roth IRA and putting money away for college things like that and putting money away for college things like that. So as far as tax and pre-tax, that's kind of the worlds that I dabble in, yeah.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, great Great.
Andy Heise:No, and the W-2 thing, it's totally fun. It's the portfolio career approach.
Announcer:Without.
Jordan Perlson:W-2, you wouldn't have some of those fringe benefits like retirement accounts and access to health care and stuff like that, and access to loans too.
Jordan Perlson:I mean, if anybody listening to this is a 1099 person and they haven't applied for a loan yet, I'm a firm believer in whatever it is that you want, whether it's out of your career or out of, you know, owning a home or something like that, it's attainable.
Jordan Perlson:Figure out a way like carve that path, find, like you know, find, find the direction you need to go.
Jordan Perlson:Like I'm not saying this to discourage you, but just to warn you when you show up to a loan officer's office or you just get on the phone with them and they say, send me your W-2. And you say, well, I don't have a W-2, but I have about 57,000 1099s from the last two years I can send you PDFs of. They're going to be really bummed out, they're not going to be really pumped to work with you, but there are loan officers who will do it and you got to find those loan officers and work with them and get it done. But yeah, so having a W-2 is really helpful because that just that reels them in a little more. My 1099 income and my cash income is still very relevant when it comes to applying for a loan, but at least with the W-2, they're kind of like okay, well, I know a little bit what to do with you, as opposed to I know nothing what to do with you you know Exactly.
Jordan Perlson:Yeah.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that's why, when you mentioned you were getting your first mortgage, I chuckled when you said freelance musician, because I could just imagine someone putting that on a loan application.
Jordan Perlson:Exactly. Well, like I said, lucky or unlucky for me, depending on your perspective it was May of 2007. So you know, luckily I don't think anybody was looking at that line of the application at the time, you know.
Nick Petrella:Yeah right, Unless you were the last straw. Yeah, they were just handing out keys and deeds at the time.
Jordan Perlson:You know much to most of the country's chagrin, obviously.
Andy Heise:But yeah, freelance musician versus drummer. I wonder what would happen if you put drummer on there. I feel like freelance musician freelance musician is.
Jordan Perlson:It has more mystique to it.
Andy Heise:If you just say yeah, if you just say drummer, they're like well, this guy's adult, we're not going to give him a loan, you know, but that's right but your point about the w-2 thing is, it's like when you think about your family situation as well, even even with spouses who maybe have a W-2 job or don't have a W-2 job. It's the same thing when you're applying for loans and mortgages and things. Sometimes they in my situation I know that this is TMI, nick can tell me to edit it out later, but my situation when we applied for a house, my wife was working all 1099 jobs and the loan officer basically said you'd be better off just you applying for this loan and you getting this mortgage. So it felt very 1950s sort of thing. But the reality of it was it had nothing to do with that. It had more to do with that. It had more to do with with uh, with the with the credit score situation yeah, I.
Nick Petrella:I reality is it's, it's yours anyway, both are yours.
Jordan Perlson:Yeah, of course exactly well and just just to balance, balance the, the, the, the gender tension there. I was in the reverse of that situation. My wife has a really has a really strong W2 job and uh, when we went to go refinance things and kind of start making some new moves a few years ago, we only, we've only been married for three years, we're both in our second marriages with each other Uh, and when we, when we started to kind of like focus our focus, our plan and and kind of make some specific moves to help benefit our union and our family, yeah, it was the same thing. It was like we submitted everything and they're like we're just going to use her info, right, and you know both your names can be on it, but it's going to be her info. So I totally get that. Yep, yep, yeah.
Andy Heise:How do you approach time management with all the different things that you do?
Jordan Perlson:Well, again, as any parent can probably relate, I'm open to suggestions. I've tried a bunch of different tactics, bunch of different different tactics. It could be everything from just a very, very detailed google calendar with you know, like when, when, the, when the bell rings, this thing is done and I'm moving on to the next thing to uh, this day is dedicated to this thing and I'm not touching it again for another few days because I've given it this whole day. Uh, it really. It really depends on what's going on with the family, and I know that's a very vague and not helpful answer, but if, like this morning, my stepson goes to a private school and there's no public transit for him to get there, there's no provided transit, I should say, and some days it takes 20 minutes to get there and 10 minutes to get home, but today it was an hour and a half round trip because you know, you just can't predict traffic. That's why I was like I said it was. I was made, it made it to this interview by the skin of my teeth, you know, just kind of coming in hot, uh, and that that changed my morning. You know, I had, I had all a bunch of other plans to get a bunch of stuff done when I got back and then hop on with you guys. But obviously I had to kind of rearrange everything.
Jordan Perlson:So I'm very intentional about what needs to be done in a day, but I've learned to become a lot more flexible with when and how it gets done. I'm lucky that very little of my days has to happen at a specific time. Yes, if I have a session or if I have a lesson to teach or you know what, or a gig, I have to be there at a specific time, right. But a lot of my other duties are asynchronous and I just kind of I always have what I usually have what I need to get most of what I need to get done with me. So if I'm somewhere and I just need to get bang out some work and get some stuff done, I can get it done. While I'm waiting for somebody to pick somebody up from somewhere, or, if you know, I magically have a little bit of extra time, I can run out to my studio and get get it done, even though maybe that was my time dedicated for something else. But I'm just trying to be as flexible as I can, which many years ago would have been really hard for me.
Jordan Perlson:I was a lot more schedule minded for most of my life and I was very kind of uh, I I hate.
Jordan Perlson:It's a huge pet peeve of mine when people throw around words like ocd and or terms like OCD and ADD and things like that, just casually, when these are like actual diagnosable, you know conditions. But I was a little bit on the OCD, uh, in the OCD neighborhood when it came to like practice time and like the time I'm going to spend working on these things and then eventually, like when it came time for like work, you know I discovered an interest in health and fitness. You know know I was. But you know those things all become pretty selfish once you have a family and you have to, you know, start changing your priorities. So I've just become a lot more flexible with not just the stuff that I want to do but even the things I have to do that have to take also have to take a back seat to my kids and my wife sometimes and that's totally fine and I think a lot of. I think I'm preaching to the choir and I'm preaching to people who aren't in those positions. That might learn about that one day.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, I joke around. I say I used to go to the NAMM show for peace and quiet.
Jordan Perlson:I'll have to go to the NAMM show for that.
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