What a beautiful picture.

I mean, just look at that sandwich.

In today�s installment of Ask An Indie-Rock Celebrity For Career Advice, I present the following correspondence:

From: Jake Mohan
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 1:47 PM
To: Travis Morrison
Subject: day jobs

Travis,

I am currently writing to you from my work email account. I work for a large powerful law firm in Chicago which usually represents the interests of Big Business; i.e., the Man. This is relevant to my two-part question, which is:

1) How the hell does one play in a band and not go broke?
2) When can I quit my day job already?

In other words, how do people make a living from what is commonly known as a "day job" and also sustain successful or semi-successful music careers that include recording, touring, that whole thing? Or are the two mutually exclusive? I refuse to believe so just yet, because I know plenty of indie rock bands whose members still have to work day jobs to pay the rent while waiting for their split EP on Touch & Go to blow up. Surely the members of the Plan had to slog away at temp jobs for a while, at least in the early days.

My own band went on a six-week tour last fall. We were all broke, and we got broker; and it's not like we were making a profit from our meager merch sales. Yet we're on a label, we just released our album on Tuesday, and despite pressure from that label, we're not sure we can tour behind it now because we all have jobs. I'd like nothing more than to get back on the road and play my drums; I'd love to subscribe to the free-spirit maxim, "if you're not doing what you love, it's not worth doing." But from an empirical standpoint, that's not possible right now.

To that end, are there any tips you might have, being a veteran in the business and at one point, I can only assume, having been forced to balance the dichotomy I described in the previous paragraph? And how the hell do musicians get health insurance?

Thanks,
Jake

From: travis morrison
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 5:00 PM
To: Mohan, Jake
Subject: RE: day jobs

> 2) When can I quit my day job already?

Well, Jake, the sad fact is: never, unless you get really lucky.

I wasn't able to quit my day job until I was 27. That's my experience. It really is luck that dictates who gets interest from the public.

We were together for five years before we were able to do it full time and we were about to call it a day. Why did we get popular all of the sudden? I'm really not sure.

If you all have jobs that won't allow you to go anywhere, then no, you can't tour. We did try to get temping work so we were all able to leave when we wanted.

I dunno, chief, people ask me this all the time and it's predicated on the notion that I did something intentional that got me to where I'm at now. That is so far from the truth it's sad.

-T

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