YOU DON'T NEED NASHVILLE #3: PRIORITIES

(Top priorities: Gabriella, Gresham and Penelope)

Reason #2 why you might not need a record label? They don’t love your family, friends and church as much as you should.

Let me back up. If I ran a record company and wanted it to be both profitable for me and healthy for my artists right now I would only sign single people or married people without kids willing to travel together.

Right now CCM records sell best when they have the full support of radio play and touring behind them. But right now radio stations are playing fewer songs than ever before. So artists must tour incessantly to make up for that lost exposure. An artist can’t sell enough records to make a label the biggest profit possible (or any profit at all) without doing so. You have to be a road dog if you’re not a radio star.

The problem with touring is – and this is what no one wants to say out loud in CCM circles – it’s unhealthy for the artist and his/her family. The best scenario for a married artist is to share a bus/van/plane with their spouse. But many of us have spouses with attachments of their own back home in Nashville – friends and family they need to see, church services and opportunities to serve they shouldn’t miss. There’s a craving for neighborhood and normalcy that goes unmet on tour.

The need is greater when kids come along. I talked to a child psychologist soon after my first child was born about how to best manage touring and my family’s mental health. I knew from working at an orphanage the damage an absent father does to a child’s concepts of God and self-worth. It’s for a reason that the bible calls God our Abba (Daddy): Dad’s are important living metaphors for God, lending children their first glimpses of God’s character and love. The psychologist told me that under no circumstance is it ever healthy for a child over three and under adolescence to be without either parent for more than a few days. And it’s never healthy for a child to miss his/her routine for an extended period of time either. Kids, she said, need the same breakfast table, cereal, naptime and bathtub most days. It makes them feel safe.

And then there’s church. It’s ironic to me that “Christian” artists spend so little time in church, much less serving there. Our music informs the Church universal about doctrine, about the values of God. Yet we sometimes think we’ve arrived and no longer need to keep learning those things ourselves? We sometimes think we need no one mentoring and guiding and correcting and encouraging US as we do such dangerous work? Yes, it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to speak about God for God, regardless of what your job is, without being tethered to God’s people – the same people on a consistent intimate basis.

I can’t get by with writing bad theology because my pastor or worship pastor or co-pastor or someone from my church would call me on it. And I couldn’t have made it through my first tumultuous year of touring (when I toured too much) without my Sunday School class and others surrounding my wife with care – serving her and checking in on her to an almost smothering degree. It was great to be loved by them through the hard times when I acted so stupidly. And I would have a larger ego than I already do if I didn’t crawl around on the floor with one year-olds from time to time on Sunday mornings or disciple a group of students or teach a bible study or serve in other ways that remind me I’m not special, I’m just one more functioning part of a greater organism called Church.

The harm done by travel is not the label’s fault. No one makes artists abandon kids, wives, churches and friends. Labels are businesses. They need profitable successful artists so that they can take care of their own families. But now matter how much money we artists lose them they can’t make us tour more. That’s our choice. And it’s a choice many artist friends of mine make. Then, when their marriage is crumbling and their kids don’t like them anymore, they point a finger at their label. But these artists chose popularity, happiness or ministry over community, church and family – on their own.

I say ALL this to say that whether you remain an indie artist or sign a deal you will sell more records if you play more shows. I’ll tell you how to get those shows in a later post but for now take the time to examine your life realistically – signed or unsigned.

If you’re single: How many days can you be gone each month and still have real relationships with non-musician friends and family? With that schedule can you commit to some gathering of Christians who will teach you and serve you but also encourage and correct you as you give back to them in any way they need on a regular basis?

If you’re married: How many days a month, and for how many days at a time, can you SAFELY be gone from home? What steps will you take to insure that your marriage stays healthy when you are gone? Do you and your spouse have a church you can lean on and serve? Do you have a minister or older Christian friend to ask you regularly how you’re serving your spouse, how your marriage is, how you are dealing with temptation on the road? Please, get someone to travel with you always. Never be alone on the road. Guard your marriage like the precious jewel it is.

If you have kids: Same questions for you but also are you willing to give up your career or change it drastically at the first sign of damage to your children? Do you have an older friend who is a parent, someone who has balanced work and family well and raised pretty normal kids, who can teach you how to parent if you get stumped?

Prayerfully answer these questions and wrestle with these realities with those closest to you. I’ll post soon about how to get gigs once you've figured out how many you and yours can truly handle.

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