Matt Walsh at the Collaboratory

Yesterday I had the pleasure of getting to hear Matt Walsh speak at the Collaboratory at Messiah College. I know, I graduated last year, but I still help out with Collab and really wanted to hear Matt. He and his family are missionaries at the center that I was at in Burkina Faso two summers ago. That, and he’s got good things to say.

Through his talk, he had a lot of great things to say with regards to work in Burkina, as well as work in other non-westernized cultures. Though one thing struck me… and I think it has to do with actually having gone over there and being a bit older and, perhaps, a bit wiser.

His point, the shot no one saw coming, was that sometimes we need to impede our successes. We need solutions that are both “good” and also sustainable. An overnight boom in anything is seldom sustainable and, often times, it’s “goodness” is measured strictly in quantity. In the case of Matt’s work, he provided many examples of foreign aid on things like crop yield that, overnight, would double or triple yields, but in the process would cripple communities and actually increase poverty in the area.

In the case of this blog, with the main focus on music, the same can be applied.

One of your worst fears as an artist is to explode overnight. So many strive for it and anxiously await the day, but it seldom does any good. You’ve seen it so often (i.e. top 40), where all of the sudden everyone is singing the same song and everyone likes the same band and it seems like everything is going well for said artist.

Fast-forward a week or two from that instance. Has the song been forgotten? Overplayed ad nauseam? Has the artist been forgotten? At that point, maybe not. But then fast-forward a few years. In almost all cases, you’ve got a burned out act playing dumpy bars and clubs, riding the coat-tails of the good ‘ole days.

Instead, you want something sustainable. You don’t want a fling with success, you want a career in it. And a career is sustainable. A career isn’t made with a hit. A career isn’t made by hype. Those are quantitative results, recklessly obtained with no regard for quality. People see that and that’s why they forget about you.

You need to build slowly. The fans you get shouldn’t be the drifters, following whatever the tastemakers are saying is hot. The fans you get you want to be life fans. Those are fans that know when you’re in their city and know when your next big project is coming out. Those are the people who you talk to after the show and have meaningful conversations with. Those are the people that you smile to and thank for coming to the show. They will build your career and sustain it for you.

It’s always about the fans; always about the people. If it starts to be about the money, the hype, and the fame, you’ll all but be forgotten tomorrow.