(It's Tax Time) Let's Do The Math*

*I hate math because I suck at it. But we're doing it anyways.

Okay ready go:

Say you're lucky, and you have 5 paying gigs a week, averaging $200/night, including tips. That's $1,000 per week, about $4,000 per month, and $52,000 per year. (Not too shab)

But on 2 of those nights you split the profit with a equally with a 4 piece band (it's the weekend and people want to dance). Now you're down to $700 per week, around $2,800 per month, and $36,400 per year. (Still...not shab)

Per night, you spend 4 hours playing (ok, you get 3 ten-minute breaks to pee or whatever), and 2 hours for set-up and breakdown, and an additional 3 hours selling CD's, social networking, texting, promotions, before & after your gig...

If you're serious, you practice 2 hours a day, including vocal warm ups on your way to the gig.

That's 11 hours of dedicated time to your craft per gig-day. If your gross average $140 per night (which it is), your gross hourly income per working day is about $12 an hour. (At least it's double digits).

But because you play venues that submit their 1099's (with your name and GE tax ID on it), you must give up 4.5% of your income, around $1,600. But wait, it gets better...as a legitimate independent contractor, you will also pay a Self-Employment tax to the of about $5,500 a year. 

Now you're netting $29,300 a year. $2,400 a month. $10.90 an hour. That's after taxes, but before expenses. If you kept all your receipts you might have paid a little less. But it's still money from your pocket, out the door. That's why they're called expenses.

And forget about health insurance or retirement funds, saving for your kid's college tuition or  your future mortgage. You'll have just enough for rent, a car, food, gas, and gear.

Oh, you want to make a record?? 

So you've come across some decent recording gear and plan to do some of the recording and all the producing yourself. Great. Fantastic. You only pay for 75 hours at the studio. At $50 an hour, you spend $3,750. That's almost 400 hours of gigging, and that's a good deal. Then you spend $1,500 on mastering and $3,000 on artwork and CD duplication, and $780 on copyright registration for your 12 original songs.

Assuming your studio musicians played for free (because the love you so much), your record cost around $9,000. Nearly a third of your net yearly income. 

You now have 2,000 CD's to sell. If you can sell 20 CD's per week at $10 each all by yourself, you can start making a profit...IN ONE YEAR...

A favorite musician of mine said recently, "There is no longer a music business. Only MUSIC." I think she's right. CD sales and bar gigs are not to be trusted as your only major sources of income if you want to have a savings to speak of. Time to get creative. Time to branch out. Time to get a move on...

December Notes

Here's a little bit of what I did his month (besides chasing Sebastien all over the creation, as he has gone from creepy crawler to speed walker in a matter of days, it seems).

12.6 - Dearest friend, Brother, Godfather to my son, and all-around waterman badass, Marcus Marcos, lost his battle with cancer. We are devastated. We will keep him alive in our hearts and minds...

12.8 - Celabrated with Sabrina at her CD showcase at The Venue. (photo: honolulupulse.com)

12.16 - How I ended up singing with The Posies at their show at Pipeline Cafe can be credited mostly to the invention of social media. We first made contact on Twitter, then they checked my Myspace music page, then there was a message on Facebook, which led us to email...eventually we all met up for practice at soundcheck...and there was a show. But I'm still trying to piece together how I made it through "Licenses To Hide"without fainting from excitement and nerves. All I can say is, The Posies rock. Thank you Ken, Jon, Matt & Darius for making me do it.

12.23 - Live at The Peace Cafe! One of my favorite spots for healthy home style eats hosted a candle-lit dinner + music. Hopefully we can make it a regular gig in 2011.

12.25 - Christmas number 1 for Seastien! He scored all the best loot, by far. This mini flannel from his Aunty Ruth is definitely one of my favorites. The picture doesn't do it justice though. He wouldn't sit still.

12.26 - Tyrone & Elina Wells + Kupa`aina jammed at the Venue for their annual Family Show. This is something I look forward to every holiday season.

Happy 2011 everyone. Peace, Kelli

Honolulu Pulse

Check out pictures and more from the Apartm3nt show.

This is me after my set (shetten bricks)

Peace, Kelli

Apt. 3 Gig Notes & More Gigs

Woah, I had a great time playing at Apartm3nt last night. Headlining the bill was Jess Penner (whom with which I am thoroughly impressed), and Sabrina (I was super excited to see and hear her again). Both of these girls have records out, so please support them by buying their music.

Jess Penner
Sabrina

Not only was a wee bit nervooos to play alongside such accomplished women, but I was literally singing to a wall of musicians. Johnny Helm, Kings of Spade (all 100 of them), Otis Schaper, Joni & Bran Apeles from Wait For It, Taryn Manning...

It's tough playing solo. The last time I was playing shows regularly, I had a band of friends backing me up. If things were going bad, we could look to the side and have a laugh about it. If things were going great, we could look to the side and have an even better laugh about it. But not anymore...I'm up there all nakey and alone. Laughing at/with myself.

Here's what I have going so far music-wise for the rest of 2010:

Saturday 11.27 - 12-3 PM Songwriter Radio Show on KTUH 90.3 FM (also feat. Sabrina!)
Thursday 12.23 - 7-9 PM The Peace Cafe (2239 S. King)

Halloweekend

This year, my Halloween weekend started on Wednesday. Well, actually it started on what I thought was Wednesday, but it was actually a Thursday.

So this year, my Halloween weekend started on Thursday.

Now that that's out of the way, on THURSDAY, I was bestowed the honor of delivering my guitar to one of my favorite bands, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros.

They needed an acoustic guitar for an acoustic show. I was thrilled to deliver. But being that I was a day behind schedule (thank you, parenthood), I nearly messed it all up by being in the back of Manoa Valley at the exact time I should have been walking through the doors of the music hall with guitar. I frantically dialed my contact, then sped like a bat out of hell towards Dillingham, and made it there to find Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros mid-soundcheck, and happy to recieve the guitar, albeit a half hour behind schedule.

ES & The Magnetic Zeros (and Nico playing my guitar!)

Whew. Thankfully my Mom and Sister were able to keep Sebastien in Manoa so I could break the speed limit laws and roll through the 10 thousand stop signs in Manoa without endangering him.

Friday I was pumped to see Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros again, this time at the Waterfront at Aloha Tower. I was extra excited since I hadn't had a real night out with live music included. My Sister and I got there early to check out the 2 supporting bands, The Throwdowns & The Budos Band. In betwen sets we counted beards and Lady Gaga costumes. She had whiskey. I had a (single) vodka tonic.

After we met up with several other good friends, Edward Sharpe started playing and I soon found myself smashed up against some girl's fairy wings on one side and some white guy's fake dreads on the other. There was a dangerous and muggy looking armpit to my left, and Alex Ebert, a.k.a. Edward Sharpe, was pretty much dripping sweat on my nose. I had to duck every couple if minutes to avoid getting kicked in the head by falling crowd surfers.

At times the music became the mood. But mostly, the drunk and aggressive (mostly) guys trying their damndest to rush the stage by trampling all who stood in thier way made it hard to really let the music set it. There were several of them who could have taken one up the pooper, but I just shut my mouth instead to avoid becoming one of them.

Regardless, the show was a whole lot of much-needed reckless fun. My only wish was that the on stage monitors were more to the artists' liking, if only to relieve them of the awkward looks shooting across the stage. Oh well.

Home was patiently waiting for me, and I greeted it like a limp noodle at around 2 AM. I think Sebastien's spidey sense was on high alert because he woke up just to lecture me shortly after I walked in. I shmacked him with the boob and he fell back asleep pretty quickly...but he got up extra early Saturday to finish filing his complaints.

Saturday afternoon I found myself committed to helping set up a stage and sound downtown for the Hallowbaloo Art & Music Festival. Let me start by saying, live sound is a beast. It's overly stressful for me...me being someone who prefers the meticulous and controlled chaos of studio tracking over the masochistic task of doing live sound for 3 full bands. But I said yes. It was for a good friend. And there were no major heart attacks during set up. I helped out for about 3 hours, but Sebastien's babysitter (a.k.a. my Sis) gave me a good excuse to leave as she could only watch him until 6 PM.

I finished the night watching her and her friends get festive before heading Downtown for the freak show. Then headed home to Daddy with Sebastien.

On Sunday, Sebastien wore his Yoda hat (which he had been practicing doing for the last 3 days) to brunch at the Cream Pot. There were plenty of other babies in the house, but Sebastien was by far the loudest and hungriest.

Later on, I met up with my Mom and Sister, and we took him to Kahala Mall, where Sebastien promtly passed out, and missed the parade of costumes.

We then headed for UH Manoa to check out an Edward Gorey exhibit, but arrived too late.

Alas, Sebastien & I ended our Halloween eating spaghetti in Manoa before heading home to Papakolea.
Peace.

Shallow

My deep thought mode has been out done by Sebastien's screeching hungry baby teradactyl mode. Now that he's sleeping, the rest of my waking night will be spent looking at things on the internet with BBQ Pit Masters plays on the tube in the background.

Go Myron. Go.

GENIUS HAIR

Oh, and...

I finally discovered what Sebastien's purpose in life is. It's the 13th commandment (the one in fine print): 

Thou shalt suck boob and give thine mother hell.

And he's doing a damn good job at it. Extremely punctual and proficient. Good job S.

In Leew

In lieu of blogging in the bloggin blogosphere, as I promised myself I would do despite the all-encompassing job of learning how to be a MOTHER, if only to keep the writing juices flowing (in lieu of me + guitar time), I've actually been living a life that is starting to resemble my old one in many ways.

And the biggest (and most important one) being: Hello recording studios...I'm baaack!!! Hello buttons and microphones. Carpeted walls. Talking to machines when you think no one is listening. Listening to the sound of an upright bass with every cell in your body. All day long. Hello music that no one has heard except you and the people making it. Many times a week. On a weekly basis.

It's funner this time around.

Keeps

More and more I look at Sebastien and at how far we've come from day one.  This boy, who once weighed only 8 pounds now weighs in at 17. A once scrawny floppy-necked little lump is now a babbling, chuckling, smiling little boy who whimpers when he bops his nose on his hand and wears number 3 diapers and is all full of personality and lard. He's  cute. And he lets me take him to the studio and on the airplane. And he lets me stay in bed most of the night...I think I'll keep him.

Music Motherhood Misc

This kid is going to have an interesting life.

Hard Knocks 101

First-time parenthood is not for sissies. Not for lazy romantics who romanticize laziness. It will kick you in the ass when you think you have no ass left to kick. Its main philosophy is that there is no better cure for whiplash than MORE WHIPLASH!!! Except you can't file an insurance claim against parenthood for rear-ending you, then get it to pay for your acupuncture treatments.

You start off fighting the way your life has completely changed. Praying certain things will go back to how they were before (i.e. lady parts). Then you accept it fully...You will be tired forever. Not cute for a while. Completely powerless at times. But full of this exquisite pain, and the kind of gratitude that can only occupy one who is presently standing in the former shoes of their mother, or father, or whoever...

HAPPY (early) MOTHER'S DAY ALL YOU MOTHERS OUT THERE.

Time In Flux

A week's worth of minutes blows right by. Yet I can't find the time to cut my nails.

4-22: Roaming Chinatown. Found Heaven. Contracted serious case of building envy. 

4-23: One Rufus Love Machine - saving my spot.

 

4-24: First day back in the studio. Oooo pretty buttons. How I've missed you.

4-25: Rufus - Babysitting

4-26: Swimming lesson.

4-27: To the sea!

4-28: Why I wake up when I really don't want to wake up.

4-29: Mine and mine all mine.

Goose53 Makes My Day

No sleep will come tonight. Sebastien - even though his eyes are closed - is not really sleeping. As in he's half awake because he's SICK. At least I think he is. Congestion, excess drool, grumps (also in excess), restlessness, sleeping with one eye open...it must be a cold. His poor little whines sound like rusty hinges. And since I couldn't get an appointment for him until tomorrow, the first thing I did (after frowning at the receptionist through the phone line) was go online to search for something...anything that might be of help to him if his stuffiness got any worse. Because if I know anything, it's this:

No. 1: Breathing is essential to continuation of life. I know this one first hand.

No. 2: For how minor an ailment stuffy noses are, they irritate the living crap out of me. At least I can complain and then feel a little better. All he can do is cry, which makes stuffy noses even stuffier (I also have first-hand experience with this one).

Most forums I found on the subject suggested steaming the snot out of him (like a sauna for his nostrils), as well as employing the ever-popular bulb aspirator and saline solution trick (a.k.a. nose douche). Decided to hold off on that last one...

Then I found this forum, which reminds why I love the internet so much. And here's why: 'MarionR' had a 6-week old with congestion that could not be cleared up by any of the standard remedies. Her doctor (whom they'd visited twice) sent them home with no prognosis/remedy, other than 'it's just a stuffy nose...deal with it'. The posts that followed were mostly encouraging MarionR to see another doctor, get another opinion, and stress the importance of her daughter's need to breathe to her care-giver. Well, she did just that, and it turns out the baby was re-tested, then diagnosed with acid reflux. The mother was relieved that she could finally help her baby get better. Yay for happy endings...

The posts then congratulated MarionR for going with her instinct and getting the 2nd opinion. And then 'organic_fernando' enters the fray. Stage left. And I quote: "most patients don't realize that most of the time, the problems in diagnoses stem from an inability of the patient to understand the problems at hand, or communicate them in a non-hysterical, quasi-scientific manner...as the non-medical son and husband of doctors, I can tell you firsthand that overwhelmingly, the problems with most misdiagnoses have more to do with the patients than the doctor'. 

First of all...WHAT!? Could this be true? Yes we see doctors because we are having trouble understanding the problem. But it's MY fault if they don't understand it too?! And isn't the patient a NEWBORN?! AND, if your wife is a doctor, WHY ARE YOU LURKING ON THIS FORUM?!

'coleenoz' retorts in favor of 2nd opinions: 'Ladies, trust your instincts'.

'organic_fernano': 'Parenting is nervewracking, and makes you feel sometimes like you're just sitting there watching someone asphyxiate. But you're not (mostly). And thank God we don't just "trust our instincts". If we did, we'd still be burning women at stakes for "witchery" and bleeding people when they sneezed too loud at parties.' 

Okay...even though my nerves have been thoroughly wracked by parenthood, I doubt I'd find myself just 'sitting there' while my baby chokes. Which is a sure sign that my instincts are to be trusted.

And then out of the blue, 'goose53' diffuses the whole situation: 'did you two notice this post is over SIX years old? get a life!'

Ha! I always knew I liked poultry.

The Pants - Circa 2008

A couple years ago, some guy asked me how I got these pants up past my ankles. Instead of kicking him in the breakfast I paused and realized 2 things: He has a point because these pants are tight and severely tapered at the ankle...and if I did in fact kick him in the breakfast the pants might rip at the crotch, giving the guy reason enough to say: Dude she totally fondled me AND let me see her underwear.

Skills?

My shoulder smells like cheese. Don't think anyone could appreciate this more that my good friend Johnny Helm. Several times a day I find myself wondering....how can I get this shirt off without smearing Sebastien's barf all down my arm and across my cheek? I've actually gotten pretty good at avoiding altercations with his splooge. One of the things I've mastered since becoming a Mama. That and dodging the golden shower.

Desktop Essentials

Salvation Army lamp, Sharpies, Voodoo candle holder, tortilla chips, gummy bears, blank CD's, Apple

Proof That Dogs Aren't Color Blind

He doesn't like the green ones.

And I Live To Tell

I guess the only thing more daunting than taking a newborn on an airplane for the first time is...ummm...NOTHING. Though it took some convincing, convince me she did, to join her and my sister for a mini vacation in Hilo. My Mom even offered to pay for one leg of the journey, being that this week was the Merrie Monarch hula festival, and all flights to Hilo were double expensive. On Tuesday afternoon we booked, and on Wednesday morning we flew. No time time think about it. Much better that way.

We lucked out on our way to Hilo and I was able to fly with them, even though my reservation was for an earlier flight. And I even got a seat next to my sister, which would make the whole nursing on the plane thing a bit more comfortable. At the gate in Honolulu, I ran into a friend/producer/musician (who shall remain nameless) whom I have worked with in studio over the past couple of years. His wife recently had a baby...

And this is how I ended up talking breast pumps. With a dude. In public. Within earshot of other dudes.

It went something like, "Hey long time no see, so are you breast feeding?" And I was like, "Yes and no, I need to express my milk to keep up with his appetite." And he was like, "What kind of pump are you using. Is it 'meh' something? That's what my wife used." "Medela? No, I use a manual pump. Helps to strengthen my grip at the same time..."

Okay I didn't say that thing about the grip. Only in my head.

And this is not the first time I've had this conversation with a guy. It just so happens that I know more guys that girls who have recently become parents. And this is what parents with newborns talk about I guess.

Oh, Hilo. Right. It was beautiful as it always is. And buzzing with anticipation for the Festival. We stopped in at the makeshift Kealopiko boutique on Bay Front. Had some bowls at the `awa bar. Met up with family outside the Salvation Army after scoring some outfits for Sebastien. Oogled the plywood ceiling at the Sig Zane boutique. It was fun and tiring. A test of his tolerance for my meanderings.

Jamie & Hina & Sebastien at the Kealopiko boutique

He doesn't mind, I swear

I've come to appreciate the coordination it takes to travel with little ones. The never ending and ever challenging juggle of feedings, diaperings, burpings, nappings, and in and out of the car-seatings when you're on the move, all while trying to enjoy yourself and not ruin the vacation part of the vacation for your fellow travelers because these airline tickets cost an arm and a leg dammit! And you WILL enjoy this if it KILLS you!!! At times I felt like a 2-ton ball and chain packing a stroller. But my family was gracious, always helpful, and never once complained about the drag.

My Sis accepting award for Best Aunty

The following and final day of the trip went much the same, and before I knew it I was back at the airport, on my way home. Only this time I was flying solo - with Sebastien. With diaper bag on one shoulder, tired squawky and squirmy on the other, boarding pass and ID between my teeth, warm bottle at the ready, we made it to the gate just in time for pre-boarding. All without ruining my 1 hour old pedicure at security.

Anti-Gravity

After The Girlas opened for him at Pipeline Cafe in 2008, we took Justin Nozuka for a surf/swim off Diamond Head. I snuck up on him sneakily and got this shot. By the way, he stood up on his first wave...what a guy!