gigging advice

You book the dream gig, the day finally comes, and you crush the performance. Then what?

Musicians are always chasing the one big gig. But what happens after it’s over?

Being a professional musician is one of the few scenarios where an adult builds an entire life around an interest that grabbed their attention when they were children. Ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, and they usually answer with their fantasy job: professional athlete, cowboy, movie star, princess, president, astronaut. Time usually reveals that many of these career paths are not likely to work, so most of us silence that childish dream and stumble into something that pays the bills. But plenty of musicians never quite make the leap to practicality.

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When so many cultures converge, creativity is bound to flourish.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any that some of the most groundbreaking styles of music have emerged from unique metropolises where people, cultures, and ideas collide and intermingle. There’s nothing groundbreaking in this. It’s exactly what we humans have done ever since we became human, or perhaps even before. Thus, every culture, person, and music on Earth is actually a remix of something much earlier. As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, but some things are certainly unique: the balti gosht (curry) from India, the guaguancó (dance) from Cuba, and epics of the Sahel from West Africa. There have always been regions known for attracting peoples from all over, and without fail these “melting pots” became perfect environments for new and exciting sounds.

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Aksel McDermott wields the Akselerator on a gig. It goes up to 11!

A lucky 7-year-old builds the guitar of his dreams with his father during the pandemic … with knobs that go to 11!

Name: Scott and Aksel McDermott
Location: New York, New York
Guitar: The Akselerator

Back when things were locked down for Covid in 2020, my then 7-year-old son Aksel found an old Epiphone SG in the back of a closet that I’d bought 25 years ago but never learned to play. He took to it immediately. A weekly lesson soon started at the Williamsburg School of Music when things opened up a little and he was hooked. However, after sitting for so long, the SG needed to go in for a tune-up eventually. With nothing to play for a few days, we started talking about building a simple string between two nails on a board stretched over a Coke bottle contraption, as a fun little project. But it’s only rock ’n’ roll if it’s electric. Suddenly we were researching pickup-wiring schemes and the difference between a single-coil and a humbucker, etc. It quickly became clear: Why don’t we just build a real guitar?

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