Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#297: Jordan Perlson (Drummer, Percussionist, Producer, Educator) (pt. 2 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part two 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 steveweissmusic. com or click their link in the show notes. That's S-T-E-V-E-W-E-I-S-S music. c om. Our percussion series sponsor.
Announcer: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.
Nick Petrella:Heise and I'm 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:Since you do studio work from your home, I think it'd be interesting for those who don't know how music gets produced if you could go through the process. I bet most non-musicians think bands always get together in one studio at the same time yeah, I, I bet a lot of people think that is still how it's done.
Jordan Perlson:That was how it was done for many, many years and for a lot of reasons it is not only how very little of it gets done these days, it's almost the become the preference in a lot of ways, that there are a lot of great records that are made all in one room with everybody playing at one time and and that's magical and amazing. But uh, most music is made these days kind of a little more piecemeal, um, a little bit more like if you think about like you're building a house and you kind of lay the foundation and then you lay the framework and then et cetera, et cetera. Uh, in my case, when I'm recording remotely, I, I could it, you like the the ideal thing and you can check with other musicians and people who play other instruments with how they feel. But I think most would appreciate if the drums went first and then the bass player added their part and then you know the guitar player added some stuff and you kind of go from the bottom that that would be the bottom up. But in some cases I get a track that's pretty much done and they're ready to put drums on at the end and that's just how you have to do it. If you're wondering why it's preferred to go that way, it's because the drums tend to inform what the bass is going to do and then, once the bass and the drums are together, that will inform a little bit what the guitar will do, and so on and so forth are together, that will inform a little bit what the guitar will do, and so on and so forth.
Jordan Perlson:But uh, you know, because of the the amazing advancements in technology, we can, people can make music. I mean, we're recording like this podcast is a. You know, we're recording. It's audio, just like music is audio. And instead of having to go to a multi-million dollar studio in a major city, you know, to record an interview of high quality audio, we're just sitting in our own private workspaces. You know, with pr and, and you know with any of, I will call my setup affordable because I'm recording drums. You know, full time here, and when you record drums you need a lot of gear, but you can do this with very affordable equipment. That not only wasn't affordable, it didn't exist 25 years ago. You know, once the mbox came out in like 2003 or 2004, like kind of changed the entire planet and and when you think about the mbox versus what's available now and what things cost you, you know it's like that's even a joke compared to where things are at. So, going back to your actual question, yeah, it could kind of go in a multitude of directions.
Jordan Perlson:I had a client I've made many records with. He records a demo of him playing acoustic guitar and singing and he sends me the demo and I remember the first couple of times I worked with him I said so do you have any references? Do you have any bands or songs that you like, that you kind of want, because it's just acoustic guitar and voice, like I don't know if you're going to scrap the acoustic guitar and replace it with really distorted electric guitars and this needs to be really aggressive, or do you want to keep it kind of folky, like I'm not really sure where this is going? And he, he just refused to give me and he's just like whatever you want, man, like whatever you're feeling, you know. So I, I developed a really specific habit or tool or or whatever you want to call it when I started working with him, which was, if somebody gives me something on the vague side like that I always send them, when I send them my track, because all they're hearing is the drums. Yes, it's created a lot more imagery to the picture that we're trying to paint, but it really is only the background, you know, and the background can inform the middle ground and the foreground and anything you're looking at. But if you still don't have a middle ground and a foreground, you're not really sure what you're looking at, you know.
Jordan Perlson:So I would say like here's, here's the take that I, that I really liked the most, I was kind of thinking like a radio head sort of thing for this, and 100% of the time he's been ecstatic and really happy.
Jordan Perlson:And I'm also need to point out this is a very rare client. Uh, they're usually not this smooth and this open and this easy. But I make it a point unless someone says I'm really going for a radio head thing, if, unless they say that, and but if they leave it vague, I need to convey to them what I'm thinking. In case it's not super clear just from the drums, because a million other things are about to go on top of it. If they're just here like oh, I didn't, I didn't think the drums would sound like this and they don't. They can't hear it the way I'm hearing it. You need to help paint the rest of the picture, kind of fill in the blanks for them, so that they're like, oh okay now. Now I see what you're saying, now I can see where this could go um yeah, so that that's great, that's one what's that?
Jordan Perlson:that's a great analogy yeah, I, I think I think that's that's. That's a great analogy. Yeah, I think that's a big part of this game and I learned that lesson kind of long form from a really incredible drummer. Most drummers any musician current musician listening to this will know a drummer named Aaron Sterling. He's probably the most recorded drummer of my generation and he does most of his stuff remote. It's pretty wild. He's played on some of the biggest records on planet earth from his house and, uh, he's an incredible drummer, incredible engineer, um, but I did a masterclass with him and my approach to recording remote previously was just get really really clean raw drums that a mixing engineer will then have an easy time mixing and doing whatever they need to do to them to make it fit in the mix. And when he opened up his computer and started playing some sessions for us all the drums were fully affected.
Jordan Perlson:You know there's reverb here and like lots of compression sometimes and you know he put people like really heavy delays on things and somebody asked but you don't send them the stuff with the delay, right, like that's, that's for somebody else to decide. He's like no, how else will they know what I'm hearing if I don't give them what I'm hearing. You know. If they really want it unaffected, I can send them dry files, but like they need to know what I'm thinking. And that kind of changed my entire perspective to how I approach the process.
Jordan Perlson:You know, especially working remotely, especially with people, it's one thing if you know somebody, you work with them. A lot you've done, you have a whole rapport, you have a whole background with them, but most of the time you don't, you know, and you have to kind of like, like I said, fill in those blanks for them for how you are approaching it. That way, if you do give them a really specific image, they're like this sounds really cool, but it actually isn't the image we were going for. We really need you did x, but I need y. You know, going from x to y. What one thing I always say is it's way harder to go from zero to one than it is from one to two, you know. So if you can get it to one, getting from one to two will be easier because you've already gotten. You know, you've already put something on. You know you've already laid some track. You now you just have to redirect it.
Andy Heise:You know, yeah, yeah yeah, well, and you you bring up. A another interesting point is you're you're not just a drummer, you're, you have to. You know now you're a recording engineer, thinking about mic selection, mic placement, all of these different things that you know. A session drummer that walks in to a recording session isn't really concerned as much with that absolutely, and not just mic selection, and you know.
Jordan Perlson:Then you get into plugins and how you're, how you're affecting all these things and and your your choices musically. You know you're also it's, it's, it's become a, it's become a touchy subject with some people. But like we're also sort of co-producers in these songs, you know, if someone sends you a really kind of blank ish track, uh and says do whatever want and you're the drummer, you're going first. You're kind of creating some real you're creating the framework and the direction of the track, and some people are not okay with that not receiving a production credit or that sort of thing, and you know those conversations should be had. You, hopefully, are working with people that are open to those conversations when you're in that situation.
Nick Petrella:Do you have an agreement you work with, or do they send you an agreement? How does that work?
Jordan Perlson:I actually don't push too hard about that sort of thing. Maybe I should, but if a client wants me to sign a work for hire and it's appropriate for me to do that, I usually I'll broach that subject. I think, uh, it's. I try hard not to work with people you can't have conversations like that with. So luckily I haven't had any pushback when it comes time to like have a have a conversation on a topic like that. But I also don't feel the need to broach that subject very often. I'm not in that situation that much, but I have some friends that are a little more sensitive about it and they need to, kind of they push back themselves and I think that's okay. I think whatever makes sense for you to do the work you need to do, you need to do just that, you know yeah do do just that.
Andy Heise:you know, yeah, are you a member of any musicians unions and or?
Jordan Perlson:and, if so, can you talk about the pros and cons of of doing that? Yeah, so I am a, uh, a member of the musicians union here in Nashville. Uh, I lived in New York for 12 years and was never a member there. Uh, from what I could tell and from from most of my peers and friends in new york, you would only join the union and maybe I'm maybe about to make some enemies but you mostly only join the union if you're playing on broadway in new york or if you have a tv gig or something like that. Uh, if you do like, if you, if you say you, you don't have TV gig but you're playing with an artist who plays on Fallon or whoever I'm spacing on every other person who has the name of someone who has a late night show yeah, jimmy, somebody, yeah, exactly there you go. There you go, um, like I play. I played on a handful of tv shows with artists that I worked with and you get paid through the union and they, uh, they, they.
Jordan Perlson:The new york musicians union was never too pressuring about joining. You know you had to join if you were going to play on broadway, uh, but I never I came close to subbing on broadway. It just never worked out. I played a lot of off-Broadway, which is not Union, and when I moved to Nashville I started playing sessions and Tennessee's a right-to-work state so there's not a lot of huge pressure legally to join the Union. But I did feel a little bit of pressure, kind of socially, when you start playing certain level sessions and everyone's signing the card that's the time card that goes to the union.
Jordan Perlson:When it's a union session they say it's on the card, which means you're going to get paid through the union, there's going to be a contribution to your pension. It's all above board. People like that, there's a whole community here. That of it's all, it's all above board. People like that. There's a whole community here that prefers to do it that way.
Jordan Perlson:You know, and I've been on sessions when the union here is very flexible. They also have, they opened up a whole kind of arm of payments where, even if it's not on the card, you can still submit the session and you know, have a contribution made to your pension through that session and you will pay, you will pay. You know, have a contribution made to your pension through that session and you will pay, you will pay. You know, a fee to the, to the, to the union, to do that. But it all you know you, you can take a, you can take an under the table situation and put it above the table if you want to. Gotcha, and uh, I, I joined, thinking you know I joined mostly as like in my mind I was like this is an investment in getting getting deeper into the session scene here, and I bet it has.
Jordan Perlson:It has worked for me in that way and I hope it continues to. There might be a time down the road where it feels less, less valuable, but for me uh it, it's been a good choice.
Nick Petrella:Jordan. People always hear that the music industry is very tough. Do you agree with that and what do you think is the toughest part about the music business? Oof.
Jordan Perlson:Yeah, I mean, I think it's a double-edged sword. I think you're doing something that's generally very fulfilling and it's a big part of who you are as a person, but you're doing it alongside of and in competition with so many people. When there's it can feel like I think the toughest part is it can feel like there's a very small pot to go around for everybody. Um, even though we are living in an age where you can be, you can take a more entrepreneurial approach, which obviously a lot of this podcast is about where you can kind of create your own, create your own. It's not about being in a band that gets a, gets a a contract anymore. You know there's so much more to it. But along with how easy it is you know to reference what we were talking about with technology along with how easy it is to make your own record and how easy it is to to put it out and you don't, you know you don't have to like go spend $5 million at a really high budget studio and then get somebody to press CDs and then get somebody to agree to distribute it to tower records and virgin records and things like these are all. These are, all you know, very dated words, words, obviously for the younger listeners, but, uh, along with the, how great it is, how accessible and inclusive it's become. It's also I mean, to call it oversaturated is an understatement, obviously, you know, like I think, a lot, you know. It's the same as the same with photography, right? More more pictures are taken in a day now than were taken in the entire history of photography before the smartphone, right, I'm sure it's the same way. There's more people trying to upload tracks to streaming services every day. I'm sure there's some I don't have the statistic off the top of my head than were tried, than were released, we'll say, prior to streaming, uh, you know, prior to streaming. So I think, uh, what, what is hard about it is you not to keep doing callbacks but needing to find your own path and figuring out your own way. There is no like. Well, if I just get a label, deal with Interscope, you know my life will be cake, you know, and a lot of cases, that's probably exactly what you don't want, you know.
Jordan Perlson:And, uh, you know, I, I I'm lucky to work with some amazing musicians, and a couple of guys who I work with down here in Nashville are two, two amazing guitar players named Guthrie trap and Tom Bukovic, and they're kind of legendary in the guitar world. If you're not familiar with them, but if you know some guitar players, they know who they are. And these guys you know they've had incredible careers as sidemen playing with you name it and they decided to start kind of investing in themselves over time. And, long story short, they have huge internet follow, youtube followings and things like that, and they decided to make a record together like release, a record like Co-Leaders, and I got to play on most of it, which was great and it came out amazing. And then when they released it, it was on Bandcamp.
Jordan Perlson:For an entire year you could not stream it even on Bandcamp. It was nowhere else. You had to either buy it digitally for $10 or buy a physical copy. And they really I mean, if there's ever a bet that you're going to take on yourself, that's it saying I'm going to release a record, I'm not going to put it on Spotify or Apple or Tidal or YouTube. You have to buy at least a digital copy. And on Bandcamp it's not a pay, what you want situation. It's like it is ten dollars for this record and I don't know what they've done in digital sales. But I know that by two o'clock the first day they had sold out of all the physical copies they had pre-ordered.
Jordan Perlson:So obviously they bet on themselves and it worked, but they didn't do it. That didn't come out of nowhere. This is the result of hard work in themselves and their careers and doing a million different things that have kind of been leading towards something like this. But that sort of thing didn't exist so many years ago. So I'll get back to your question of is it hard, is it daunting? I'm trying to. I'll get back to your question of you know, is it hard, is it daunting, is it? You know it's like yes, but only because I think you need to figure that. You need to figure out whatever your success is going to look like for yourself. And I mean being around those guys is really inspiring for me because, like they are defining just that, you know, right, right in front of my eyes and I'm I'm super pumped to be able to be a part of it and also really inspired to be a part of it.
Jordan Perlson:You know it's great and if you're looking for that record, that actually has been a year since they released it, so it just or maybe not a year, I don't remember what the amount of time was but they actually just released it on spotify and everything just this week, okay, so, uh, okay yeah, and I'll look for it.
Nick Petrella:If you wanted to send a link to me, I could post it or I could just search for it sure the show notes yeah
Andy Heise:I love that. It's sort of the antithesis not the antithesis, but sort of um breaking the norms of of music distribution today. And if you know, if we go back to when the record companies were trying to figure out what to do with Napster and downloads and that sort of thing, you look like Trent Reznor in the pay what you want version, which was sort of again the opposite of what people were doing. They valued the music but they didn't have to pay for it until they were given a way to pay for it.
Jordan Perlson:Right, it made sense for them.
Andy Heise:It's just a great example.
Jordan Perlson:Yeah, I think the inherent value of music has completely gone away. Exactly Just how easy it is to listen to anything at the drop of a hat, versus like I'm going to work all week and then when I get my paycheck I'm going to go to wall-to-wall sound and video and buy the CD that I've been wanting to get for $18, which is I really only want to spend those $18 for two songs, but hopefully the other eight will be cool. But we'll find out. You know, like that's just like a completely that is so lost on my stepkids, you know, who are teenagers.
Jordan Perlson:Like it just doesn't you know, but it doesn't, even though that doesn't exist, like I said, the inherent value of it, but the specific value of your thing is completely undefined you can create value in it and build value in your art, whatever it is you're doing, which, to be fair, that did exist, right, like the examples that everybody referred to, at least in the music industry, were Dave Matthews Band and Pat Metheny. Like they would, they toured relentlessly in a van for years and built up insane followings. And also Mendesky, martin and Wood, and built up insane followings just selling self-produced CDs out of their or tapes or whatever era we're talking about, out of their van and, just you know, bringing their extremely high quality product everywhere they went, just bringing their extremely high quality product everywhere they went. Actually, another great example is Snarky Puppy. Those guys were just pounding the pavement for years like 12 guys in a van pulling a trailer and it worked out.
Jordan Perlson:The scary thing is it's like, yes, here's a handful of examples of where it worked and there's infinite examples I'm sure of where it didn't. But if you are confident in your product and the thing that you do and there's infinite examples, I'm sure where it didn't, you know. So if, but if you are confident in your product and the thing that you do and you're like this will work, I will make this work. You know there's that's the first step and the most important one.
Andy Heise:Jordan, I see you offer online lessons which you describe as coaching. Can you first talk about why you use the term coach instead of teach in your lessons and discuss the advantages disadvantages to teaching online?
Jordan Perlson:Sure, I think when I started using coaching I was I very naturally started, I think. I think my bread and butter kind of student or demographic is tends to be people who are already pretty well established and pretty advanced skill wise, but they want to refine some skills or develop some new skills to go on top of what they already have in their toolbox. Um, and coach. Coaching just felt more appropriate in the sense of like uh, these were. It was less about coming up with a lesson to teach this person and more about like, let's take what you already have and refine it, redirect it, you know, create a little more specific of a trajectory for some of these things you already are doing, which feels more like coaching to me than it did lessons as opposed to to like we'll buy the elementary drum method by roy burns and we're gonna go page by page each week, which there's nothing wrong with that. But the thing that's the thing that I can't help people with with that is most people in that position need a lesson at the same time every week and I don't have a schedule that really allows for that. Historically, that's. It's becoming a little more possible for me at the moment, but uh, I I kind of shy away from not just teaching kids. I love kids, but like any kind of beginner and uh, that always felt like a little more of a beginner vocabulary or vernacular, yeah, and so that's where the coaching term came from.
Jordan Perlson:And the advantages obviously to teaching online are you have a further reach, you have a little more flexibility with scheduling and things like that. You don't necessarily need a brick and mortar situation to do it. The disadvantages are teaching drum lessons online. You know, I don't know what you know. I would assume teaching something like flute or voice is a little easier through Zoom than drums, because just getting drums to sound good through even decent microphones and a decent interface and getting it all to talk to zoom and getting it like it's just it's just a total pain. And then if the internet slows down, you're not sure if somebody was dragging or if it was the internet. You know things like that and I I hated giving zoom lessons. Like, just for that reason I love to teach but I hate fighting technology while I have to teach the same thing. I love mowing the lawn, but if I have to fight my lawnmower and it's not working right, then it becomes the worst thing in the world you know.
Jordan Perlson:So I, uh, I. It's a very simple solution that I didn't come up with. I actually I signed up for a uh, for some fitness training with a trainer who you know lives in the whole other part of the country and he used this method. He used it very poorly, but what I was very grateful for was I can do this with drums much better than you do this with fitness. So I quit that with him, obviously, because it wasn't a good value.
Jordan Perlson:But what I do is, once we establish and it might take a Zoom call or two to establish skill set of where they're at, what their goals are, how much practice time they have, things like that we then go into a flow of I put all of your lessons and exercises and things into a Google sheet. I send you any videos with links to unlisted YouTube videos that I'll make for you, uh, or that I have already made, explaining an exercise if it isn't already very clear, and then, when you're ready, I, we do what's called a turnaround. You send me a series of links to YouTube videos. They can be unlisted, you don't have to make them for the world, they can do just for me and I review them and I put more into the Googleet based on those videos and so on and so forth, and I just have it set up as a subscription service. You can do one, two or four turnarounds a month for different prices and it's not for everybody.
Jordan Perlson:I know a lot of people would rather meet, you know, synchronously, and I'm just not. I'm not completely opposed to it and I certainly have. I've had some very, very long time, uh, students, through this method that sometimes we just need to get together on zoom to work a couple of things out or just check in about something like that's perfectly fine. I'm not like making myself inaccessible in this way, it's just I don't think it's a good experience for teacher or student to do a drum lesson. You know, when you're fighting the internet and you're fighting microphones and things like that, it's like let's, let's just focus on the thing we actually want to focus on, which is getting better at drums, you know and uh, and I think this method works great and I actually, for the first time in a very, very long time, just recently, took on a fairly he's not a beginner, actually, he's got some hours logged already, but he's pretty young, he's a middle schooler and we're doing it this way and his dad is helping kind of oversee everything.
Jordan Perlson:But it's going great and it's been a really good option for him because he grew up in a very populated area and then during the pandemic, their family moved to a much more remote area, like a lot of people did, and they don't have access to a real. There's like one music teacher in town and she just teaches every instrument to all the kids and he surpassed what he could do with her and they reached out to me and I said well, let's give it a shot. I don't usually teach kids you know kids in general or people at this level but I'm willing to do it, give it a shot if you are, and it's been great. He's a super hard worker, he totally gets the process and he's open to it and we're making really great progress.
Nick Petrella:That's great. Yeah, is there much buzz about AI in your circles, is there?
Jordan Perlson:much buzz about AI in your circles, yes and no. From a specifically drummer's perspective, no, we've been fighting machines longer than anybody. You know, like when I'm trying to think of a good example. But when everyone got upset about Napster and MP3s and I was just, like you know, jokingly. I was like drummers got mp3'd in the 80s, you know, or the late 70s, early 80s.
Jordan Perlson:Yeah, it's like don't even don't even you know, come at me with that. You know. So it's. It's. It's been a long-standing thing for drummers, like if you want a, a human drummer, you will go find a human drummer. That's not a new decision. To make you know what I mean. It's become much, much easier, obviously. You know well I shouldn't say obviously if you're unfamiliar with the technology.
Jordan Perlson:There's incredible technology out there to program drums and make it sound very realistic and and really I think I can. For a long time I could tell if it was programmed only because it was clear a non-drummer programmed it. You know that was the only time I could, otherwise it just sounded like a drummer. Nowadays it's much harder because so much popular music is programmed drums programmed by non-drummers. Now actual drummers have to emulate the non-drummer programming. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of strange decisions in both playing wise and performance wise and also sound choice wise being. I won't say strange, I'll just say you know, not traditional, you know, uh, that makes it a little more uh, vague. As to what is what's going on behind the scenes, and I think that's okay. It as to what as what's going on behind the scenes, and I think that's okay, it's not important to know what's going on behind the scenes. If the song sounds great and the production sounds great, then that's the end of the story.
Jordan Perlson:But as far as drummers being freaked out by AI, I don't think any like we've, we've, we've, we've grown accustomed to, to living, living and working alongside of machines. Now the rest of the music industry, I think, is in a we're in a honeymoon period right now with AI. By that I mean remember the days of the internet where you could sell whatever you wanted to sell for whatever price you wanted. Or you could put your song on the iTunes store and sell it for 99 cents and get 74 cents of the sale, and Apple would take 25 cents and everybody was thrilled. We're in that period right now with AI, because what I'm seeing at SoundBetter with my position there is we see people coming.
Jordan Perlson:You know, say, last year, someone would say I have an idea for a song, I really want it to be like Keith Urban, but I also really like Juice WRLD, and producers would be like I don't know what to do, like what are you saying right now to me? But now, instead of an inexperienced person with a song idea coming to a very experienced producer and the producer having to interpret. What if Keith Urban was to make a record with juice world, what that would sound like? Now that person can go to ai and get a, a rough draft, basically, you know, mocked up, and then they can bring it to a real producer to turn it into a real track. That's why I'm saying this is the honeymoon period, this is like the, this is the like, this is great. And then. But I, we all see what's coming. I don't know none, none of us know long-term what the effects, artistically or economically, are going to be. But uh yeah, I don't think anybody's too affected at the moment. But we all know a huge wave of changes is upon us.
Nick Petrella:You know it's funny. Just by happenstance, I found a whole bunch of things on YouTube where they create these mashups and I think they're getting away with it because of parody. But to your point, they're everywhere and you can certainly do that on your own. I've never tried it, but it's obvious that you can.
Jordan Perlson:Yeah, I haven't dabbled with it much myself, but yeah, there's plenty of it out there.
Andy Heise:Are there geographic considerations to what you do? So you're living in Nashville. Is there a reason you chose to live in Nashville?
Jordan Perlson:Yeah, I lived in the Northeast my whole life until I lived here. I grew up in the Philly area, I went to college in Boston and then I lived in New York for the earlier part of my career and New York was starting to feel not very sustainable long-term and I decided I wanted to try outside. I said I've been all over the world quite literally, but I've never lived anywhere but in this region. So I wanted to move. I wanted to move somewhere else. I didn't want to be one of the New Yorkers commuting from Jersey or from some New York suburb or something like that. I was like I'm going, like that. I was like if I'm going to move, I want to move, I want to try something else. And, uh, I knew that I wanted to still be a working drummer. So I was like I knew I could move somewhere very cheap and very not musically minded and hopefully just keep touring. But I again, kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier in the interview, I I want a lot of safety nets, as much as possible. So I didn't want to depend on the people I was touring with, still touring all the time and making my income from that. So it kind of came down to Austin or Nashville, because LA was kind of a lateral move economically and my only two rules were it has to be a different region. It has three rules it has to be a different region, it has to be a little cheaper. Where it has to be a different region, it has to or three rules has to be a different region, it has to be a little cheaper and it has to be warmer than New York and all those places you know.
Jordan Perlson:Nashville and Austin both fit those check those boxes and at the time my now ex-wife and I just landed on Nashville for a whole bunch of reasons. She had family close by and we liked Nashville a lot and yeah, and I'm glad it's a great place to live. As a musician I think it's a very high quality of life. It's getting more expensive, like a lot of places, but I think a lot you don't hear anybody saying where I live is affordable and it's not getting expensive. So I don't know what the point of saying that anymore is. Anyway, I think it's just kind of assumed. Well, it's not New York, exactly.
Jordan Perlson:All the people moving from New York, la and San Francisco. When people hear a complaint about prices and traffic, I've stopped doing this, but for the first few years I was here, I would tell them to their face that they were being adorable. Nobody liked that so I stopped doing that, but it's the truth, you know. Like that, you know, for however bad, you know when people when I would tell people where I lived previously to where I live now and where my studio was, they'd be like wow, you do that drive every day. Like this 20 minute drive is some kind of. I was like I used to wait for the g train for 20 minutes and that was just the first train. You know that was just the train to take me to the other train or two that I had to take to get to the thing I had to do first. You know that day.
Andy Heise:So I, yeah, I'm not, I'm not terribly concerned with those, uh, the those shortcomings of nashville personally, Well, Jordan, we've reached the point of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions, and the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an art entrepreneur?
Jordan Perlson:I would say you need to not only develop your skills but think about how you're going to monetize those skills, if it's not otherwise super obvious. You know, if the skill you want to develop is t-shirt printing and you're going to buy the technology to print those t-shirts, you got to think of every single way to make that investment worth it. You know, if it's, if you're going to, if you're going to buy the, buy the technology to print your t-shirts, you know and you want to open a store, you also should open an online store and you should also get in some. See if you can get in some ballparks to sell your shirts at ballparks. And you should also, you know like, think of every you gotta, you gotta exhaust every possibility that made in whatever investment you're making worth it. I think that's the, that's the main thing.
Nick Petrella:What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Jordan Perlson:I'm a big I should say I'm a big hater of gatekeeping. I think it's amazing that you know there's a lot of studios in Nashville that are switching from having all this really expensive gear. I don't want to get too in the weeds about music gear because I know not everybody listening to this is a musician, but you know, historically studios have all what we call outboard gear where there's just tons of things you can plug, you can run all your sound through, and over the last many years there's been amazing technology developed that we refer to as in the box, where it's all that stuff is kind of emulated inside the computer and there's been a lot of like. You know it's good but it's not the same kind of thing. And now people are realizing it's kind of the same or better in a lot of ways. And more importantly, it's standardizing how to use the equipment and there's now studios that are coming about that have no outboard gear. More importantly, it's standardizing how to use the equipment and there's now studios that are coming about that have no outboard gear. They have fully robust plug-in selections that everybody uses and that way anybody can slide in and use the studio like they would use their own, and I think things like that, steps like that, are huge in making things more accessible.
Jordan Perlson:That's more accessible on a music making and a music recording standpoint, and one of the reasons I'm really pumped to join the faculty at MTSU is because that's Middle Tennessee State University. It's a state school and it's famously and Tennessee is doing incredible things to boost education in this. It it really energizes me and pumps me up when I hear info like that because it's like it's. It's it's taking taking actionable steps to make, specifically, art more accessible, but in our case, art. But you know, whatever you want to study, especially at a place like mtsu, but the example like studios switching to all plugins, you know it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a special. It's a special conscious decision people are making to, to to create these opportunities for people, and I think just more and more decision, intentional decisions like that being made or what, or what we need to do to make art more accessible.
Andy Heise:Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given?
Jordan Perlson:The secret to success is being too stupid to know when to quit that. I remind myself of that every single day. One of my favorite teachers and the most famous person I've ever studied with, joe Morello, drummer in the Dave Rubeck Quartet. That was his favorite saying. He's like if you just keep your head down and keep going, obviously you need to lift your head up and look around sometimes and make some conscious decisions, but second-guessing yourself and being up in your head about your process and who you are and what you're doing will probably slow you down and derail you more than it will help you. Uh, is obviously the subtext of that, of that phrase. But as simple as that is, I wish I had something a little more like you know and you know and invest early mutual funds, something like that. It's really the you know being too stupid. You know the secret to success is my favorite.
Nick Petrella:Jordan, thanks for sharing your flexible approach to playing in life and and the safety net approach as well. It's been great having you on the podcast. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Jordan Perlson:Thanks, jordan.
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