The Sunset Gig

A few days ago, about an hour west of Austin, TX, I played the last of 2 live sets at a music festival. At the end of the show, I thanked the audience and told them that they may have seen my last performance as The Flashbulb. I invited my family onstage for a photo, and folded up my hundreds of pounds of gear for, perhaps, the final time.

I more or less made the announcement on social media the next day, and woke up to a widely mixed variety of reactions. Most pleasant, many curious, some angry at me, and some delivering emotional baggage for not “announcing” this sooner, as they would have traveled to see me perform if I was never doing it again. So, if you care to read, let me explain. :)

The first time I left town to play a gig was in 1998.
That’s 24 years ago. I’ve played hundreds of shows across 4 continents. I’ve performed in tiny venues, jazz clubs, dive bars, night clubs, arenas, classical halls, planetariums, remote forests, city parks, and even on the sidewalk with an open guitar case. My point (and defense) here is that if you really really wanted to see me perform live and could otherwise afford to do so, you’ve had quite a few chances.
What I did NOT want to do was try to manipulate my fans into traveling to festivals this summer using a “last chance” gimmick. I didn’t want to set myself up to where I feel even more guilt or baggage for changing my mind should I find a way to make sense of playing shows again. I want to be open to it in the future!

In 2019, touring was becoming exceedingly difficult. Venues and ticket providers were doing a great job at financially strangling touring musicians just tight enough to keep them alive. I was with a major booking agency, and my agent was making under $1,500 for booking me 2 weeks worth of shows for this cut. Needless to say, even for him, it was a love of labor as he took his time away from ultra-profitable and popular DJs he represented to deal with my complex gear and stage logistics. I felt as grateful as I felt undeserving or emotionally subsidized. I’ve always been in this horrible reverse-Goldilocks-zone of musicians: Big enough to draw a few hundred people at a minimum, not big enough to hire a full staff or have decent visuals. Not big enough to justify a tour bus, but big enough to have to comp 2-3 hotel rooms per night. Not big enough to have a team setup gear for me, but big enough to have to drive across the country hauling an SUV and trailer full of gear. The last 15 years has been this, big time responsibilities with small time problems. Literally the worst of both worlds in so many ways.

In early 2020, I decided to take the step up. I’d tour Europe after 10 years of not touching the continent. I’d splurge for a bus and a crew. You know what else happened in 2020. The day before my most recent full-length album dropped, I was dropped by my booking agency, who nearly went under themselves. Every single show was canceled. This isn’t a sob story either. A lot of musicians lost their entire careers during the pandemic and never recovered. I was lucky enough to have a wide spectrum of projects and was able to make adjustments to put more time into YouTube content and research gigs.

I’ve played 3 shows since then, all music festivals. All originally delayed post-pandemic bookings that were renegotiated for this new reality where I can no longer book 5 shows to get me from one place to another. Not only because I don’t have the contacts or protection of a booking agency, but because the aforementioned neck squeeze has gotten tight enough to suffocate this particular musician. Less venues open mean more competition between acts to book them. More competition equals more negotiation power to the venues and promoters. That negotiation power puts me in the red.

”So why not slim things down and just bring a laptop?”

I’ve been a deeply improvisational and performative musician since childhood. There is nothing less “The Flashbulb” than me DJing my own music to an audience, and I say that while endearing some other musicians in electronic music who do this very thing with grace and make it work wonderfully.
I’m already literally cursing myself nearly every performance for having backing stem tracks instead of a crowd of live musicians. With the exception of a few incredible opportunities, I’ve always questioned the point of it all. Why am I not home doing what I love rather than trying to emulate it in this extremely limited environment? It’s absurd. I made a whole video about it that absurdity last year.
Me DJing The Flashbulb behind a laptop would be pointless. I’d be a gimmick of my own brand. It would make so much more sense for me to hang out with my listeners than do that. At least something new would be conjured up in those conversations.

”What if you’re paid more somehow?”

I already ask for a whole lot. So much that I don’t entirely understand the economics of it anymore and feel like I’m being subsidized somehow.
So I had an idea. In 2023, I would only play festivals. I would play them without a booking fee under a single condition: They use my own ticketing system.
Believe it or not, I have my own ticketing system! It’s called Showseed and I’ve used it successfully a few times for my own venue shows. I was working on some business partnerships to expand it to other artists before the pandemic. But without going into a full pitch regarding why it’s so awesome, I’d be inserting myself in place of Ticketmaster or Eventbrite rather than requiring promoters to dig deep into their budgets.

But this requires a lot of something I don’t have: Time
So does preparing and rehearsing and traveling.
And remember, this only works with festivals. And festivals are (in my opinion) quite literally the worst place for me to perform. I can’t set up early, soundcheck, leave things connected, or most importantly, play quiet things without noise bleeding from another stage or simply unrelated festival audience commotion.
Everything I do has to be the “festival version”. Quick and compact setup with a loud, fun, and linear set.
If you’re a fan of my music, then I’m sure you can agree The Flashbulb isn’t any of those things. Whatever may have appealed so much to you or maybe even given you the chills was not fun. To me it’s heavy and maximalist. A selfish outpouring of audible expression that floods past lines of genre.
In some cases, it was a brief connection between my deepest, darkest place and yours through the vehicle of melodic subtlety. And that’s magical to me.

So how can I do that in a performance?
A seated audience in a quiet auditorium, for starters. But typically venues that value such an intimate connection between audience and musician are gatekept for classical music, ethnic music, or particular acts that have been chosen by a board of directors somewhere to receive a grant and opportunity.
Again, we enter the “reverse-Goldilocks-zone”. Too instrumentally performative and emotional for festivals and nightclubs, but too electronic and experimental for auditoriums or grants.

So wouldn’t it just be better if I sunset the whole thing and spent my time making The Flashbulb music, videos, instruments, and all of the other things that I do?

Rather than constantly trying to force The Flashbulb to work as a live act, wouldn’t it make more sense to leave it up to the universe to present that as an option?

And if that fate should be so kind, there would be no musical or performative compromises or contingencies. It would actually be me doing what I love, untethered from the need to financially or logistically work within a system I’ve never seemingly fit into.

It would be The Flashbulb live, and I would love to do it. And I would scream from a mountain top for my fans to come see it.

Until then, I will perform constantly. I play instruments and make songs nearly every Thursday evening on a livestream as well as in my videos. I create audio assets for my Patrons. The very website you’re reading this on has a “non-album” section where you can hear what I’m creating in a much more direct way than Spotify or Bandcamp.
I will likely continue to meet my fans at trade shows and other types of events, as well as speak at the occasional college or educational institution.

The only thing I’m retiring from is the futility of doing what I do best in today’s live music economy, and I hope this helped explain why.

Finally, thank you to all of you who have booked me, worked for me, opened for me, had me open for them, or attended my shows. I’ve always tried to make the best of the creative, logistical, and fiscal challenges, and I don’t regret any show I’ve ever played. I’ll always be grateful for the opportunities, experiences, and friends made along the way.