this talk: is about loneliness in the music industry - with Lewis Watson
'Champagne problems' is a phrase I hear a lot in my line of work and I get it, as a professional musician, it's very tough to look at what I do for a living and think that it's fair to complain.
It's no secret that the music industry is a ruthless, cut-throat business to work in. The schedule is gruelling, the rest-periods are few and far between and the chances of ever becoming (and staying) successful are slim at best but I knew all of this going into it. I knew that I'd have to work hard to get anywhere and I loved that idea, I looked forward to spending months in the studio or abroad because 'if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life' or whatever my distant relatives keep telling me. I really do have my dream job and, because of comments like these, I hate complaining about what I do.
Enter 2017, I've just released my second full length and I'm looking at my touring schedule. 147 gigs? Amazing. No problem, in fact. Touring very quickly became one of my favourite parts of my job, I get to travel the world, play songs that I wrote in my bedroom to thousands of people and I get to do it with my tour-family; some of my favourite people in the world, the band and crew. However, after factoring in the costs of taking a 5-piece band to America, it became obvious that I'd have to do a bulk of the touring alone. This wasn't the best news but I still love playing solo, intimate gigs, I'm a fan of my own company and I was 24 years old! Definitely old enough to travel around America by myself. However, with hotels every night, Ubers to and from airports and at least one flight a day, the money would still be tight so i'd suggested that i'd sell the merch every night - it'd make the trip harder but it'd save us paying a local person to do it and I'd get to meet everybody that came to the gig to thank them. I couldn't wait. 'It will be a fun little adventure' I thought.
And do you know what? It started off brilliantly. I flew into Chicago with my guitar and my suitcase, picked up my big box of merch from my hotel and headed to the venue for night number one. I was tired from my flight but the gig was sold out and I remember being really happy with my set. 'Give me five minutes and then meet me at the merch table' I say after my final song, 'I'll stay until i've thanked you all!'. I was on cloud 9, hundreds of people bought a ticket to see me play a gig in Evanston, Illinois. Ridiculous.
So I step off stage, walk through the crowd to get to the backstage door and did the short walk to my dressing room to have a sit down, sip some grape fanta and grab a sharpie before heading back out to the merch table. I don't know if it was because I was missing home or if it was because the adrenaline was draining out of me but I have never felt as alone as I did in those short 5 minutes. I had nobody to share my high with, nobody to congratulate, nobody to hug, it was awful. 'It's just the first one' I think, 'I'll get used to it'. I stayed until I saw absolutely everybody in that room, I sold all of the merch, packed up and left. The time must've been 2am when I got back to my hotel, so I set my alarm for 5am for my early flight to Atlanta the next day and then get straight to sleep.
I arrive in Atlanta, head straight to the hotel and sleep until I'm needed at the venue for soundcheck. Most people think that touring means that you get to explore the city you're playing that night but that couldn't be further from the truth for me. Most of the time, I see the airport, my hotel room, the venue and maybe a radio studio if I'm lucky enough to have promo that day. It's cruel really but that's by-the-by. I wake up, pick up the merch from the hotel desk and make a few changes to the set in the Uber. Everything runs smoothly and I play a good gig, I was funny and I hit my notes, I was chuffed. 'Give me five minutes' I say after I strum my final chord 'I'll be at the merch stand to thank every one of you!'. I pack up my gear and head back to my dressing room and, once again, i'm knocked for six by how alone I feel. I'm scheduled to tour in the states on-and-off for just under 3 months of the year and I start to worry that I won't be able to take this happening every night. I start dreading the gigs because those 80-ish minutes of euphoria on stage will be followed by 5 minutes of crippling loneliness. How stupid is that?
Don't get me wrong, I've been down before but this was just so intense, it had started as a five minute thing post-stage but it very quickly bled into my morning routine, my table-for-one lunches and even my particularly sad songs on stage. In fact, it got so bad that when my hotel room had two beds in it, I'd use one of the beds to sleep in and the other one to cry on. I wouldn't label myself as an optimist but it takes a lot to get me down/angry - I see the good in everybody/everything, sometimes to a fault, so this was so new for me. I just didn't really know how to handle this new-found sadness. The worst part of it all, is that I felt so bad for not enjoying myself, people would kill to be in my position and I was sad about it. Because of that - I didn't want to talk to anybody about it.
This is when I started to wonder how many other musicians have felt the need to suppress their sadness for fear of coming across as ungrateful and, in a weird way, that made me feel better. I'm certainly not the first musician to travel and tour completely alone and I definitely won't be the last, I found comfort in that. It was a sad thought, sure, but I wasn't alone in my loneliness and that improved things for me.
As soon as I finished that tour and landed back in the UK, I promised that i'd be more open with those around me and not feel guilty about having a bad day in the studio or on the road. Bad days are bad days, all that glitters isn't gold and, sometimes, champagne problems are real problems worth talking about.