JONAH BAYER, 30 (New York, NY)

WRITER, MUSICIAN (United Nations)

YEARS IN MUSIC: 15

ON THE WEB: jonahbayer.org // twitter.com/mynameisjonah

PROJECTS: United Nations; Editorial Correspondent for MySpace Music and freelance writer for 
 Alternative Press, Inked, Revolver; Music Editor at Alternative Press 2002 – 2005; Freelance 
 music writer 2005 – present

WHO FIRST GOT YOU INTERESTED IN MUSIC? My mom took me to see Guns N’ Roses at Richfield Coliseum in 1991 when I was 12. I had bifocals, curly hair and blood stains all over my shredded Levi’s because I got a bloody nose before the show and thought that the dried blood stains would make me look more legit.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE MOMENT YOU FIGURED OUT WHAT YOU WANTED TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE? In addition to playing in countless terrible punk and hardcore bands in high school, I began working on a zine called Law Of Inertia my sophomore year of college with a guy named Ross Siegel. I had never written about music before, but discovered I was pretty good at it and started interviewing my favorite bands, such as American Nightmare, Pedro The Lion and Anti-Flag. I even talked to Jack Black before the first Tenacious D disc came out. When I was 21, I switched into all writing classes and began spending more time working on the zine than on my schoolwork. That was probably the moment I realized that I could possibly make a living as a music writer.

WHAT WERE YOUR GOALS WHEN YOU FIRST GOT STARTED, AND WHAT ARE THEY NOW? Initially my goal was to make Law Of Inertia a full-time gig, however a few weeks after I graduated college I got a call from Alternative Press (where I had formerly interned) to see if I wanted to work for them on the 2002 Warped Tour. Shortly after the tour ended, I applied for and landed a job as their music editor and continued to work there and on the Warped Tour for the next three years. Eventually, my goal became simply to make a living off my writing, which is something that I’ve achieved. I’d also like to publish a book at some point, but don’t have anything concrete just yet.

WERE YOU ALWAYS ON THE PATH YOU’RE ON NOW? Yes, originally I wanted to play in a band, and from 2002 – 2006 I was in a band called the Lovekill who actually played some shows on the EIY stage. Thankfully I was editing/writing the whole time I was in the band, so when we broke up it was easy for me to fall back on my writing. I realized I liked it better than driving eight hours every night to play to 10 kids. Right now I have the best of both worlds, because I play in a band called United Nations, which is really fun but isn’t a full-time touring project.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU ON A DAILY BASIS? Just the people around me: my friends, family and all of the people I’ve met over the past decade.

HOW MUCH OF YOUR SUCCESS HAS COME FROM LUCK? TALENT? HARD WORK? I think a decent amount of my success has come from luck. For example, the job at AP was perfect timing because the former Music Editor was leaving after a nine-year tenure. That said, I also worked extremely hard on my zine, and had various internships during the period before I got the job, and I think that’s why I got hired. When a lot of my friends were partying in college, I was at home editing interviews and/or setting up shows with bands like Discount and Atom & HIs Package.

HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUCCESS? Just moving forward and slowly gaining more and more accomplishments. As long as I don’t feel stagnant, I’m happy.

DO YOU HAVE ANY REGRETS SO FAR? Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I had continued to pursue music full-time but I definitely wouldn’t call that “a regret.” I gave the full-time touring thing a shot and got to travel the world and meet tons of amazing people and I’m able to maintain those relationships and stay in that scene now via my writing. Just because you’re not playing music full-time doesn’t mean that you can’t still be vitally involved in the music community in some other capacity.

***

Read Jonah’s answers to 50 questions about music and the music business in the EIY HANDBOOK, available in print or eBook version at www.earnityourself.com

JOHN OAKES, 29 (Southern California)

ENTREPRENEUR

YEARS IN MUSIC: 16

ON THE WEB: entertainment3sixty.com //
 rockstartasteofchaos.com // mayhemfest.com // rockstaruproar.com

CURRENT PROJECTS: VP of Experiential Marketing, 
 Entertainment 3Sixty; Sponsorship and 
 Marketing, Rockstar Taste Of Chaos; Co-Founder / 
 Partner, Mayhem Festival; Co-Founder / Co-Producer / 
 Partner, Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Festival; Partner / 
 Vice President, Freeze Artist Management

WHAT FIRST GOT YOU INTERESTED IN MUSIC? 
My skateboard!

WHAT WERE YOUR GOALS WHEN 
YOU FIRST GOT STARTED? When I was a teenager 
in high school managing my friends’ band [Story Of 
The Year], I had goals about saving money for recording 
and selling out a 100cap club. Those evolved into 
pressing CDs, selling out a 500cap club, raising money 
to afford radio commercials, and distributing 10K flyers 
to promote one show. Then they got bigger: trading/
booking shows out of town, selling out 1,000cap 
venues, releasing more music, moving to California, 
touring full-time, getting a major label record deal, 
and selling over a million records around the world. 


WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS NOW? HOW HAVE 
THEY CHANGED? Absolutely they have changed! Now my 
goals simply have more zeroes. It’s not a three-day weekend 
trip, it’s a 30+ multi-city tour. Instead of selling 1,000 tickets, 
we try to sell 10,000. Of course there are goals personally as 
well as professionally, now, too. I am training to run my first 
marathon. I want to scuba dive at epic diving locations all 
around the world. I dream about owning an internationally 
successful company and being on the cover of Entrepreneur 
Magazine. I strive to produce music festivals, tours, and events 
that will become annual household names that both bands and 
fans alike enjoy being apart of.

WERE YOU ALWAYS ON THE PATH THAT YOU’RE ON NOW? 
The trail of my life behind me looks like a pile of broken ladders with some great ideas and even more unsuccessful ones. In front of me there is a salad fork, a dinner fork, and a dessert fork at every turn.

WHAT HAVE YOU HAD TO SACRIFICE ALONG THE WAY IN ORDER TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE? I passed on academic and athletic college scholarships. I dropped out of community college. I moved away from my family, friends, and hometown. I somehow managed to condition my body to operate on minimal sleep, without caffeine. Are those sacrifices?

WHAT INSPIRES YOU ON A DAILY BASIS? Great music, good times, and being a part of making things happen.

HOW MUCH OF YOUR SUCCESS HAS COME FROM LUCK? TALENT? HARD WORK? As a non-musician, my talent is hard work and occasionally getting lucky with great ideas! However, without AMAZING songs from talented musicians, my hard work would not get me or anyone else from city to city, again and again. Talent, depending on how you define it, is the most important of the three. Luck always helps, but with out diversified hard work, the most talented song writers probably never leave their garage except when Guitar Center has a sale. Was I supposed to answer in percentages? 


HOW HAVE YOU MEASURED YOUR SUCCESS THROUGHOUT YOUR CAREER? My personal happiness!

HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUCCESS? Money helps when you’re looking at a P&L, but at the beginning and end of my day, if I am not happy doing something you can be assured I wont be doing it for very long.

DO YOU HAVE ANY REGRETS SO FAR? I can look at mistakes and small failures in my past, wishing I didn’t make those mistakes — but those mistakes make me, and I am happy with who I am, so my answer is: NO! I have no regrets — except I should have mailed my mom’s Mother’s Day card on Monday instead of yesterday (Wednesday).

DO YOU THINK THE BEST BANDS IN THE WORLD TEND TO GET FAMOUS, OR TEND TO STAY UNDISCOVERED? What is famous? I think great music normally finds its way out to the tribe of people who need to listen to it and love it. Not all great music needs to be listened to by hundreds of thousands (or millions) of people. Maybe “undiscovered’ music only needs to be heard by the person who wrote it.

***
Read John’s answers to 50 questions about music and the music business in the EIY HANDBOOK, available in print or eBook version at www.earnityourself.com

ERNST SCHOEN-RENÉ, 38 (San Francisco, CA)

MUSICIAN, RECORD LABEL OWNER

YEARS IN MUSIC: 22yrs

CURRENT PROJECT: New Disorder Records, and a sleu of bands over the years. 

ROLES: I run NDR; played guitar, bass, and drums
 in my bands 


WHO AND/OR WHAT FIRST GOT YOU INTERESTED IN MUSIC AS MORE THAN JUST SOMETHING ON THE RADIO? My cousin turned me on to the Angry Samoans and the “Repo Man” Soundtrack in 1984. 


DO YOU REMEMBER THE MOMENT YOU FIGURED OUT WHAT YOU WANTED TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE? I haven’t figured out what I want to do with my life yet. 


WHAT WERE YOUR GOALS WHEN YOU FIRST GOT STARTED? My goals were to be in a band that could afford to tour without losing too much money, and to run a record label that helped out bands with talent. 


HAVE YOU ACHIEVED THOSE GOALS? Sometimes. 


WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS NOW? To work out a way to do art, music, and writing whenever I want. 


WERE YOU ALWAYS ON THE PATH THAT YOU’RE ON NOW, IN THE INDUSTRY, OR DID IT TAKE A FEW DIFFERENT PATHS TO FIND WHAT YOU LOVED TO DO? Right now I’m in transition, trying to find a place in the world for an aging punk rocker and a record label. 


WHAT HAVE YOU HAD TO SACRIFICE ALONG THE WAY IN ORDER TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE? All of my friends, and huge amounts of money. 


WHAT INSPIRES YOU ON A DAILY BASIS? Awesome music, fearless people. 


HOW MUCH OF YOUR SUCCESS HAS COME FROM LUCK? TALENT? HARD WORK? I haven’t had a lot of success, but the success I’ve had has come from luck and hard work. 90% luck and 10% hard work, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot of hard work! 


HOW HAVE YOU MEASURED YOUR SUCCESS THROUGHOUT YOUR CAREER? Success is when I give a band a chance they didn’t have, when I entertain even one person who comes to a show, or when I make something I am proud of. 


DO YOU HAVE ANY REGRETS SO FAR? I regret not pushing harder to sign certain bands who would have helped the record label. I regret wasting money on some bands who I could tell weren’t in it for the long haul. I guess I regret a lot of things, but at the same time, I wouldn’t be where I am if they hadn’t happened, so I regret nothing. 


DO YOU THINK THE BEST BANDS IN THE WORLD TEND TO GET FAMOUS, OR TEND TO STAY UNDISCOVERED? Undiscovered. Definitely.

***

Read Ernst’s answers to 50 questions about music and the music business in the EIY HANDBOOK, available in print or eBook version at www.earnityourself.com

EDDY NUMBSKULL, Old enough to be your uncle. (Berkeley/Oxnard, CA)

PROMOTER
 YEARS IN MUSIC: 21
 ON THE WEB: akpress.org // numbskullshows.com

CURRENT PROJECT: NUMBSKULL

ROLE: Don

WHO FIRST GOT YOU INTERESTED IN MUSIC AS MORE THAN JUST SOMETHING ON THE RADIO? My mom would play Elvis and Motown records incessantly when I was a kid. When I was 13, my brother took me to see The Clash and that changed everything.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE MOMENT YOU FIGURED OUT WHAT YOU WANTED TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE? I wish I could recall a certain moment, but there really wasn’t one. I have an enormously unhealthy music addiction. Sometime in my late teens, I had to figure out a way to feed this addiction without filing for bankruptcy… so I decided working in music was the only way this was gonna happen.

WHAT WERE YOUR GOALS WHEN YOU FIRST GOT STARTED? My goal was to provide a platform for local independent fringe artists to showcase their talents and not lose my ass doing so. I was 18.

HAVE YOU ACHIEVED THOSE GOALS? Numbskull has exceeded every imaginable goal, and then some.

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS NOW? HOW HAVE THEY CHANGED? Our mission is still the same. I want to continue to keep the culture of independent music alive.

WERE YOU ALWAYS ON THE PATH THAT YOU’RE ON NOW, IN THE INDUSTRY, OR DID IT TAKE A FEW DIFFERENT PATHS TO FIND WHAT YOU LOVED TO DO? Oh it took eons. I tried my hand at everything: freelance writing, radio, record labels, marketing, booking agent, tour managing… I even did quality control at a record pressing plant. All of the above became too specialized for me. I wanted something that incorporated every facet of music, and I needed that immediate gratification. Promoting shows did exactly that.

WHAT HAVE YOU HAD TO SACRIFICE ALONG THE WAY IN ORDER TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE? Sleep, and interacting with loved ones a regular basis.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU ON A DAILY BASIS? My son. My Mom. Music.

HOW MUCH OF YOUR SUCCESS HAS COME FROM LUCK? TALENT? HARD WORK? Honestly, I think it was a combination of all of the above. It’s goddamned hard work putting on shows. It takes a special demented individual to deal with all the finances, municipalities, band egos, suits, concerned parents, media, spectators, etc. I am a glutton for punishment, so maybe my talent is a high pain threshold. I was fortunate enough to be immersed in punk rock culture before it got mainstreamed. I was lucky enough to have those bands that we helped establish in their fetal stages remember where they came from and take us along for the ride.

HOW HAVE YOU MEASURED YOUR SUCCESS THROUGHOUT YOUR CAREER? Oddly enough, I go by the fun factor. If I experience a whopper of a story or get to meet and work with a punk idol of mine, than I am content. The other day I went record shopping with Henry Rollins — talk about unreal. I was in “pinch me” mode.

HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUCCESS? If you are content with your effort in obtaining your goals. It’s not if you win the game, but how you play it.

DO YOU HAVE ANY REGRETS SO FAR? I regret not archiving our immense history in an easily obtainable fashion. Shit is just piled in storage spaces. I also regret not keeping regular journal entries, not taking more pictures or videotaping. So many life-altering moments, now just living in memory banks and not immortalized on film or in print!

DO YOU THINK THE BEST BANDS IN THE WORLD TEND TO GET FAMOUS, OR TEND TO STAY UNDISCOVERED? These days, if you are doing something significant, someone is going to find you. Everything is just so accessible.

DO YOU HAVE ANY FAVORITE (as-of-yet) UNDISCOVERED BANDS? I have been in love with Nathaniel Rateliff & The Wheel all year, but they just got signed. So I guess that doesn’t count. There is this face-melting metal quartet out of Denver called Taun Taun that I dig. The Ragged Jubilee are these kids on the Central Cali coast doing this swampy bluesy punk sludge. It’s truly awe-inspiring. Stop Breathing is the new band featuring ex-Missing 23rd members. They are so full throttle.

***

Read Eddy’s answers to 50 questions about music and the music business in the EIY HANDBOOK, available in print or eBook version at www.earnityourself.com