Scott Faris, the musician who just won’t quit, recently took a break from his heavy workweeks in Lubbock, Texas (home of Buddy Holly) to visit Bloomsburg University. While here, he shared his wisdom with any musicians, audiophiles and dreamers who would listen about the nine steps he learned the hard way which helped him make his own way in the music industry with no label and no compromises.
To learn about all nine of the steps you can find Scott online at scottfaris.com, or on one of his two self-run business ventures, fariswheel.com and profile amusementparkstudio on MySpace. Also on offer are tips on building a mission statement, honest critiques of your work, contracted services including graphic design, and a message for all the flakes out there: You can do this. After his talk, Mr. Faris generously gave The Voice an exclusive interview about his career, his nine steps, and the road ahead. An abridged version follows:
OLIVER GHINGOLD: You’ve been in a lot of bands. How many of them have met your criteria for success?
SCOTT FARIS: Really I think almost every band I’ve been in has been successful in some certain way…The first band that I was in, I mean we got to tour a lot, we toured multi-State, in the last two years we grossed about a half a million dollars in that band. Which sounds like a lot of money but…you have an awful lot of expenses…I was probably making about $20,000 a year at that time, but [my wife] Amy was making 20 grand, too, and so we were making about 40 a year doing what we love…that’s fantastic. I’ve had some bands that I feel were very artistically successful but weren’t successful fiscally. I’ve had bands that we made enough to survive. I think it always varies.
OG: When you take the dive and you start your own band, how do you, with no business experience, take into account things like overhead, cost, managing money.
SF: When I was very young, I was in my…late teens early twenties, some friends of mine built a studio. And I watched them go out and get the business loan, $200,000 loan, and build this great facility, and I kinda got to watch that happen. But these guys, every time they went “Oh, we can’t get a good enough acoustic guitar sound,” they would go spend $5,000 on an acoustic guitar and they kept buying gear and buying gear and buying gear. And within two years they went belly-up…So I learned that you’re gonna have to keep your overhead low. Like my studio right now, I’m very blessed—I found this space very inexpensively, it’s about $500 a month. In my market I can make that and that means the money I make after that I get to eat on. You know, it pays for that. I think that’s my biggest weakness, is that I didn’t study business…I’m in business to make a living, you know, so you do have to manage all that.
OG: When you do diversify and you’re managing 30 projects at a time, how do you get them done on time?
SF: That’s the hardest thing and I fail on that a lot, I’ll be honest…I have to stay very organized which is a really difficult thing…I know I can’t do scheduling so I hired an office manager who schedules me. We meet every Monday morning to make sure that we go through the list of projects, and I tell her what’s due when and she gives me reminders on a daily basis…You really probably shouldn’t manage more than two or three [projects simultaneously] and I’m managing 30 right now, you know, and so that’s a real big problem…So what I try to do is hire people…that have the strengths that I don’t have.
OG: In terms of the time commitment you’re making now, how many hours a week do you say you spend in the office or at least thinking about the office.
SF: Eighty…I am a little bit of a workaholic. If you’re gonna own your own business, [if] you don’t work you don’t eat. It’s funny, there’s a record producer that’s an amazing guy, his name’s Lloyd Maines, and I heard him speak once and he’s produced some really kind of great artists. I mean he produced the Dixie Chicks, he produced major, major stuff, but in his career he’s produced some really no-name, really kind of not very good bands and all that, and somebody asked him “Why did you produce that band I mean they weren’t very good.” I was like wow, that’s a pretty crappy question, and he had such a great answer, he said, “I do gigs like that because I’ve heard the deafening roar of the phone not ringing.” I was like, yeah, man, I’m right there with ya, you know?
OG: What do you attribute the ability of artists to make it on their own to? What would you say has changed in the last twenty years that makes it possible to succeed without a label?
SF: Absolutely it’s the Internet, obviously, the advent of technology. Recording technology costs have dropped through the floor as well. Literally you can buy an MBox and a laptop and have more power than The Beatles recorded “Sergeant Pepper” with. That’s an amazing thing. We live in an amazing time. You can make records in your garage. But it’s just true, you’ve got, we have tools that were unimaginable ten years ago…
OG: You talk about not wanting to have any regrets. When you’re spending 80 hours a week working on 30 other peoples’ projects do you build any regrets?
SF: Of course you do. As a matter a fact that’s one of the reasons I ended up quitting the job I was doing because I was doing this stuff and [teaching] and it was really difficult…While I work very, very hard, I get to go home for lunch, and I do try to have or carve out some time. There are still some strings attached to that. I hope that at some point I can get to where I’m working 40 hours, and then 30, and then 20, you know what I mean? But I love what I do…I’m not going “I hate my life,” I’m coming home going “Man, you should’ve heard this singer I got to work with tonight!” I’m thrilled by this and it’s a really, really great thing. So yeah I work very, very hard, but I lead a really charmed life. I’m very fortunate.
OG: A lot of the people in this room obviously already have ambitions and dreams that they’re at least trying to follow. Do you have a more general message outside of your nine steps for people who aren’t necessarily following their dreams who might read this paper?
SF: I would say in the industry there’s room for all types of talent…Life is just too short to do something that you hate. I don’t wanna be the guy who wakes up and goes “Why did I spend 60 years?” and my life’s gone. You can’t go back. You can’t go back and restart it; you don’t get a second chance at this. I’d rather take that risk now, and even if I fail at least I know I tried. If I’ve gotta work at Home Depot next week, okay. I owned a studio for three years and I had a great time.
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