My friend Anne Jelinek knows all about mindful breathing. I've been practicing yoga for many years, and like with my drumming, I'm always learning something. A big part of yoga involves mindful breathing and movement. I was reminded of this recently, and it struck me that mindful breathing [...]

The relevance of sales and marketing cannot be ignored nor understated when it comes to getting yourself and your bands booked. The thought of sales is lame for many of us. The thought of marketing, also a lame thought to many of us; but let's face it, if you're in [...]

You've nurtured relationships with venues and musicians in your local scene, and you've developed a reputation as a reliable, hard-working player. You show up on time, you don't bitch too much, and you support the efforts of your bandmates. How can you take that to another level? I imagine this [...]

The importance of establishing and maintaining a good reputation goes without saying for musicians. Worth considering are the finer points of how ones reputation came to be, and exactly why it matters. There are multiple reasons why one's reputation as a musician are deemed good. Of course there's the actual [...]

As a gigging musician, I go out of my way to procure lightweight gear. After hundreds of gigs, it dawned on me that I could probably lighten my load, so to speak. If memory serves me correct, I started with single brace stands. I'm currently using Tama Stage Master Straight [...]

Relationships have everything to do with being a busy musician. Being a good player (something I'm always working to be) is certainly important, but relationships are arguably even more important. I've heard many musicians, some of them extremely talented and quite successful, say that just being a nice guy makes [...]