15. Building Your Music Career w/Jeff Ralston

In this episode of 'The Music Executive,' host Cinnamon Denise interviews Jeff Ralston, a talented guitarist and friend. 

Jeff shares his experiences of moving to Atlanta, transitioning his music career, and how he prepared to succeed in a new city. 

The discussion covers critical aspects of 

• laying a solid foundation, 
• doing the footwork, 
• and crushing the real work to establish oneself as a professional musician. 

Jeff emphasizes the importance of having an online presence, networking diligently, and paying meticulous attention to detail, from rehearsals to attire. The episode concludes with Jeff performing the classical piece 'Julio Flora' by Augustin Barrios Mangoré.

Chapters

• 2:17 Transition to a New City
• 4:42 Laying the Groundwork
• 9:21 Doing the Footwork

Transcript

When you move to a new city, assuming you have your foundation ready to direct people to, you're ready to roll, you're going to go out and meet people, you have one opportunity to make a first impression.

This is the music executive. A show where we talk about gig tips, music, business strategies, songwriting experiences, collabs, and even more with industry professionals. Let's get into it. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the show. My name is Cinnamon Denise. That's Cinnamon like the spice. And Denise, like Denise and today's show is really special because we have Jeff Ralston, who is an incredible, incredible guitarist and a great friend of mine as well.

Jeff, how are you doing? I'm great. How are you? Thanks for having me. Good. I'm. Good. Jeff, what is the most beautiful place you've ever seen? Oh my gosh. Most beautiful place I've ever seen. I would have to say Pula Bay, Thailand. Oh my goodness. Yes. Yes, yes. Hands down. It was breastfeeding and what was beautiful about it, the islands.

So if you ever look up the islands where these big rock sculptures that are just popping outta the water, that almost looks like Avatar, that is the Pui Band Island. It's just fantastic and the colors just pop, and it is just, it was spectacular. My wife and I went there for our honeymoon actually.

There's obviously fond memories there, of course, as well. So, but that has to be the most beautiful place I've ever been to. Nice. Most definitely. Am I allowed to ask you or no? Yeah, sure. You wanna ask me? Yeah. What's your, what's the most be you been to it? The most beautiful place I've ever been to was definitely Ibiza, Spain.

I was gonna say, it's gotta be Spain. Goodness. It's the same concept I tell people all the time, you know that screensaver on your Windows computer, the picture is probably taking any visa, and I promise you they did not Photoshop it. Yes, yes. That's the way I explained that, but mm-hmm. Yeah, it was the most.

Beautiful magical place once everything even kind of settles down from the Ibiza party scene rush in the summertime. I was there at the end of the party scene in the beginning of fall and so it was the most beautiful thing. I was there for the heat and for the cool weather, so it was really cool. Oh, that sounds amazing, um, to be able to do that.

Any who Y'all welcome to the show. Jeff is an amazing guitarist, as I mentioned, but it's one thing to be an amazing musician and it's another thing to be a professional. So today we're gonna be talking about what it really takes to be a professional and lay down foundation for being a professional musician.

Now thing about Jeff, I want you to tell us a little bit about your background. Sure. I grew up in New Jersey, currently in Atlanta. I guess I grew up playing the, playing the trumpet before I ever got a guitar. Got a guitar in eighth grade and they couldn't get it outta my hands. And I just loved it and knew this is what I gotta do.

Went to college at Rowan University in New Jersey and then graduated from there. Got my master's degree at the University of Delaware. Lived there for about two years, which was kind of fun. But you know, Delaware is so close to New Jersey, was about an hour from home, so it really kind of almost counts like Jersey to me, you know?

And then moved back up to New Jersey and then met my wife and. She got a job done here. We got married and moved down here to be in Atlanta. That's the thing. So Jeff is being modest, y'all. Let me tell you, Jeff was a consistently performing musician up in, I'm just gonna say the Northeast, right? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I guess I can skip that whole punch. Basically, let me tell you, when she goes from Virginia South, everything else. North of there. Nobody understands where anything is. So we're like Jersey, New York, Philly, Boston. What? Yes. What's going on? So it, it does kind of all blend together, honestly. Even when you live there, it's like one city you drive to the next city, you drive to the next city.

So. Exactly. And when you live in Florida, for example, I lived in Florida for a little while. You can drive 10 hours and still be in the state of Florida. Yep. So, yep. Mm-hmm. So that's the thing. But Jeff was a consistently performing, playing gigging musician in the Northeast Now. As Jeff mentioned, he met his wonderful wife.

Shout out to Alta. Yeah. And if I'm saying this incorrectly, let me know, but essentially they moved to Atlanta. Yeah. And if you're a musician, you know, you know that leaving your contacts in an area and having consistent work and leaving, basically having to start over. Is a huge deal. So one, you must really love your wife.

She well, she's amazing. She's amazing. And two and two, that's really scary. It takes a lot of courage. And it is. So that's what this today's episode is about, y'all. Mm-hmm. It's about laying the groundwork, doing the footwork and crushing the real work. Yeah. There it's, so first let's start off with what it means to lay the groundwork.

So when I was thinking about it, and you mentioned this topic to me because I guess I kind of do have a pretty good story when it comes to that, when moving to a new city. When I think about laying the groundwork of getting there, there's a lot of things you want to have in place as you start the new venture.

One of the biggest things is you really need to have some kinda online presence when you move to a new spot. And you're meeting people, you have to direct them to something. They don't know who you are. They never heard you say, hi, I'm Jeff. I play the guitar. Great. I know a lot of people who play the guitar.

You really have to have some kind of online presence. Now that's pretty easy these days. I mean, everyone has an Instagram. That's Elise the start. I think you should probably have a website too. I had a website when I was in New Jersey, but I didn't rely on it too heavily because I had a lot of work. I knew people, I didn't kind of, I don't wanna say I didn't need to, but it was there, but it wasn't doing much for me.

When I moved here to Atlanta, the first thing I did was revamp my website, re-up, update it, make change all the formatting, update all the content, get everything movie set. When I meet people, I can send them somewhere. I also still think cards are somewhat important. I know they're going out of vogue. In musicians today, everyone's just kind of going Instagram and that's great, but if you're performing and looking for work, there's still a lot of people that like cards and when you can hand them one, it adds a certain, to some people and to some generations, like I think it's starting to go away.

It depends. It depends. It's certain, it adds a certain degree of legitimacy. I think to your, your work, if you're trying to get corporate work, you need a business card. Yeah, you do. You just do. And not only that, it's gotta look good. Good. Yes. It has to look good. I mean, spend the money to get someone. If you're not good with design yourself, which I was not, I hired someone to do it and I sent 'em some pictures and I love the way they turned out because yeah, you can get a vista print and that's fine, and you can kind of design it yourself, but when you hand it to someone and it looks really, really good, you only have one opportunity to make a first impression.

You wanna make a good one. So have all that ready to roll, because when you meet people, you wanna direct 'em to your music, you wanna direct 'em online. You wanna build to hand 'em a card and let them know the tone and tenor of the conversation and who you are as a person right then and there off the bat, because you have to.

I also think it's valuable to think about, look at the city where you're moving to and look what they're known for. I moved to Atlanta hip hop r and b. That's what we're probably known for Now. When you move, you know, outside the city, you the, the scene kind of changes, but that's there. So. Wherever you're moving to look ahead to see what's bumping in that scene.

And if you don't know how to speak that musical language, start learning. Right. Or maybe don't move to that city. Well, or, or there's that, I, there's certainly that, I mean, I'm assuming that the move is set in stone, but if I was moving to St. Louis for example, it's a different scene down there. Do what you can online to find what's going on and what's working and start to learn that music.

I don't really play a lot of country music. I never really resonated very well with it, but I was moving to maybe Nashville or something like that. Nashville might not be a good example, but 'cause they kind of have everything. But if I was moving to a city that had a lot of country music, I would be like, okay, well I need to start learning some country music if I'm gonna get some work.

That's the thing. So this is the difference between. Someone who's growing in their work and someone who's a professional. A good example that someone said was a professional doesn't just work when they only feel like working. Period. So yeah, so that's not a thing when you're a professional. Um, it helps, obviously, it helps to be passionate about what you're doing.

But gee whiz, talk about a great example of, you know, you don't resonate with country music. I have a similar experience. I've had to sing some country songs before. Sure. Well, actually I love country music. Not a good example, but I've had to s songs that I don't like. Let me just put it that way. Oh man, I oof.

But you know how many lyrics to songs that I know that I can't stand because they were top 40 or Oh yeah. Whatever. So yeah, that's a good point. And it's, it's not that I just. Don't like country music. I don't really know it. I never got into it. I there, you know, and the stuff that I would consider country music, most country fans would probably say is like diet, country music.

You know what I mean? So it's like, uh, uh, and, and some of it is catchy. I know I've had to play it for gigs and things like that and, but anyway, so the next part, right? Sure. This is scary moving to an entirely new scene, so you can do as much research as you want as far as what the city's known for. There are unwritten rules in cities for musicians, and you learn them by meeting other musicians and talking to them, or you learn them the hard way.

Mm-hmm. And that's all part of doing the footwork. Can you talk to us about Yes. Doing the footwork and do's and don'ts, that brings us right out to our next step. Do the footwork. So the footwork, I consider the footwork is essentially your networking work, your ground game. When you move to a new city, assuming you have your.

Foundation ready to direct people to. You're ready to roll, you're going to go out and meet people. You have one opportunity to make a first impression, so when you go out and do it, have everything ready. When you get out there, the first thing is you have to get out there. A lot of musicians, and I unfortunately do this too, especially if you're working a lot and you're gigging a lot, when you have like a night off, you don't always necessarily wanna get out there and learn some music now if you're moving to or, or see some music.

Now, if you're moving to a new city, number one, you probably don't have a lot of work. So you have no reason not to, but you need to get out and find where is music being played? What kind of music are they doing? Who's hiring them? What is it? You gotta out and find them. You gotta find jam sessions and find people to play with.

Sit in with them, you have no idea where they're gonna be. Do a little bit of research ahead of time. See, is it, is it an open jam? I mean, when I moved here, I used to hit up some of the jam sessions around the city. 'cause I just knew nobody and I knew that if I was gonna play somewhere, that was one of them.

And with jam sessions, you know, there's a whole, well, I mean, there's a whole etiquette. The jam sessions, that's a whole nother topic and discussion, I think, for another episode. But when you get to the session, you gotta get there and start playing with people. Make note of the people that you want to meet, the people that you, you can tell right away, okay, this guy knows what he's doing.

This girl knows what she's doing. They're out there working, hustling in the business. I can kind of tell, find them and strike up a conversation. Hey, I'm new to the city. Ask them for their information. You don't necessarily have to force yours on them. Get them and follow them and just start the conversation, the dialogue.

Ask them questions. Hey, how long have you been playing in the city? Are you from here? Oh, that's very cool, great. Et cetera. Then after you do all those things, go home or when your home, shoot 'em at the email. Every now and then, Hey, just check in. You have, and you are good. I can go check out this weekend.

You recommend. I still don't know very many people. All those little follow up things are great ways to keep you kind of in the conversation. Now, as far as the rules you were talking about, right? Those pitfalls are hard to, I mean, they're gonna be unique to every city and they're gonna be hard to know until you trip on a wire, so to speak.

The best way to try to avoid them is to ask a lot of questions and don't assume anything. Mm-hmm. Because you just don't know. When I moved to the city here, I heard there was a number of places, or I knew a couple people and I was talking to a great sax. Actually, my buddy Matt Miller, he is a other half of my duo, ninth Street Duo.

Uh. We play around the city a lot lately, and he told me there's a guy in the city who has a lot of these jazz gigs on lock. Definitely someone you wanna know. Great. Cool. And he told me some stories of times when the person would contact my friend Matt, for the gig, and then the venue would ask Matt for all of his contact information to try to circumvent the person who kind of gave the gig to Matt.

And there's a whole thing there. And so he didn't know what to do, so he just kinda gave it, and then of course got a phone call about it and he said, Hey, you know, this is my gig. You can't walk around. You gotta be careful who throws you that on. Right. And those, that stuff's kinda hard to figure out and that that's a whole nother topic for an episode too.

But. Yeah, you're right. There's a hierarchy to things. So there's people that you quote unquote cross because, because of whatever reason or they're quote unquote lower on the totem pole, and there's people that you just don't cross, especially in Atlanta, there is a hierarchy, and honestly, I don't wanna make it sound so derogatory because sometimes hierarchical things sound derogatory.

But just know there are some people who can say one thing and get a gig in town anywhere they want it. Mm. And there are some people who have a gig somewhere, and if you try to get there a gig, someone's gonna tell them. And then there's people who are begging for gigs. So there's just hierarchical things that are going on.

Well, when you're new, you don't know where they are in that structure. No idea. Idea. So you can't, can't cross anybody. Don't cross anybody. And sometimes it's unintentional. Right. Sure. Especially with you. 'cause you're really a no filter type of person, so you make friends anywhere you go. Let me just put it that way.

You are very non-biased. Uh, you have a great heart. So when you're speaking to people, you're always genuine, but people aren't always receiving the genuine spirit. People perceive you differently than you intended, right? True. Yeah. So you may be crossing someone's, you know, stepping on someone's toes and literally you won't have a clue until three years later.

That they don't like you or whatever. So let me clarify. It's not always about if someone likes you or not, but geez, sure. It's important to know who to be friends with and who not to get on their bad side. Right? Another important part of you know that footwork is don't be a jerk. Yeah. Seriously. You know?

Seriously. Be considerate. Yeah. Be considerate. Would you want that done to you? Think about everything you're doing. Would you want someone to show up 30 minutes late to your rehearsal? Well, that brings us to our third point, I think. Fresh. The real work. Yes. Crush the real work. Talk to me about that. Yeah.

Okay. The real work, so I look at the real work is that's the gig. That's what you're doing. It's not, the other part's not work. It is work. But you know, I just thought it was kind of catchy and fun. So the real work, that's the gig. When you get a gig, crush it. Do your homework. Prepare ahead of time. Is there a rehearsal?

Be on time for that rehearsal. Have your music learned inside and out. If the person doesn't send you the music in time, or, or it is getting to the point where you haven't received the music and you feel like you might need more time, you don't know what it's gonna look like. You need to be kind of hounding that person.

It's part of responsibility. I mean like, ugh, trust me, nuts. Sometimes people don't send out music ahead of time. I can wing it if I need to. I mean, I've performed in front of audiences of 15 to a hundred to 2000 people with a band that I met at soundcheck. I can do that, but I don't like to, I don't wanna say I don't like, it's kind of fun.

But anyway, it's not preferable. It's not ideal, let's put it that way. When you crush it, all the, the behind the scenes preparation work needs to be in place so that you come to that rehearsal and you're ready to roll. You need to take your small gigs at this point as seriously as your big ones too.

'cause the reality is you are new. You don't know who these people are. You don't know what the hell broad their network is. But you know what? When you show up to that one rehearsal and they click off that first song, they have one chance to make a first impression of, am I gonna call Jeff back again? Am I gonna call Cinnamon back again?

And if you come and you have all your work done, you're ready to roll. When I get a set list for just about any gig and I look at it, anything I don't know, I immediately go and transcribe the entire recording so that the answers are right there and then I memorize it. If I need to read it, if I can just, it depends on what I do with it from there, then when I go to rehearsal, I bring it, and then when we cover the song, there's always questions.

I look, okay, what is recording? Does this, this is what the recording does. There's the answer. We can change it. That's fine, but here's the answer to the question. Oh, okay. Cool. And if you are that person, they're gonna love you. Cinnamon VO on this. Any working musician will happily take a very well prepared person over a killer player any day of the week period, any day of the week.

We all know killer musicians and all instruments that are great, but if they don't do the prep work, we don't care because it means that we have to do another rehearsal now. Yeah, because you came to the first one not knowing your material. Right. And we don't have time to get somebody else. Right. Great.

And I still have to pay you. That's, that's how the band leader feels. Lemme still, lemme tell y'all listening. That's how the band leader feels. And Jeff, you've been a band leader before, you know. Oh sure. Yeah. Let me tell y'all I will speak. You know how some people say, I can't speak for all black people.

I'll speak for all band leaders. We still have to pay you. And we feel really annoyed about it. Of course. Oh and no, we're not hiring you again. Just know that any who you bring up. Good point. Crush the real work. Crush the real work. And it's, here's another example, Jeff. It's not even just the music. It's, Hey y'all, the gig is Friday at seven.

Please wear all black, no jeans. Someone shows up in black jeans.

You're like, what? You know, that bothers me. That bothers me. Just like it bothers you when I know what that is. Again, speaking for all band leaders out there, it's annoying, you know? So there, there's attention to detail. You know, please, it's a a hundred dollars bill, a hundred dollars ticket. Please come.

And your Sunday Best shows up in Sunday. Best with the wrinkled shirt. Like, you know, it's attention to detail and it's not even just for you. It's not because the band leader or anybody that you're working with or for Ash you to do it. It's because you take pride in performing in excellence, period. Yeah.

And it's not to say that all gigs require suit and tie, but if they ask you to wear cowboy boots and you don't have cowboy boots, you should have said something at the rehearsal and they actually wear cowboy boots. Yes. You know, not show up to the gig. And say, oh, I don't have cowboy boots. You know, we could have changed this two weeks ago.

Well, let's also flip this too. If you are the band leader, booking the gig in this new city, give all of your musicians enough notice for everything you need. Everything you need. Need exactly everything you need, you know, I mean, I'll give you a real world example. I just booked a date this Friday night with a band of people I'm not used to playing with.

I've played with some of them before, but it's kind of like a piecemeal band. Guy called me Saturday. He said, I'll get me the music Sunday. I'm like, great, no problem. It's Monday. I just actually just got an email. As we were talking, there's the set list. If I didn't get that email, as soon as we got off this recording, I would be hounding it saying, Hey, you got that set list.

Am I worried about it? No, but you know what? I don't want any surprises. I want a week to learn it, right? There's no rehearsal. I'm gonna meet you at the gig. I'd rather have a little bit of extra time to make sure and play in my week out. Totally do that for your musicians. Totally fair. So y'all hear it.

We're gonna have a different episode called Band Leader Blues. Oh, that would be great. That's a great, and then we'll then, we'll then we'll have a session called Band Member, blues Band Member. Please, or a band member melancholy, let's call it that. But there's gotta be an episode where we talk about bad gigs at one time.

That's gotta be a good one. I, we'll talk about all these things. Jeff, thank you so much for being on the show and Oh, thank you for having me. Let me tell y'all another cool thing about Jeff, besides the fact that he performs a variety of styles and can perform and do production work in his home studio, which he's done some for me, and the quality is just what I needed, so, oh, thank you.

Thank you for that. Jeff is a dead lifter. Well, yeah. Weightlifter, I guess. Weightlifter. And we were just talking about how he's noticed a big improvement in his six years of lifting. Mm-hmm. That you know, one day you'll be able to. Lift an amount of weight that you've been trying to lift for years. And the thing about that is with any sort of exercise or any sort of thing that you're trying to, that you need to be consistent and persistent with, it requires practice.

Mm-hmm. And just like with anything, just like with being a musician. He's able to do that dead lifting. I don't know how much you lift. You wanna share how much you lift? Well, I mean, my highest right now is 3 75, which is not very much, but Okay. I lift my fork. All right. Well, I'm not a very strong person in general.

I was a little more geared for like distance running and stuff like that, but I've had a lifelong, well, not lifelong, couple year long goal of trying to hit 4 0 5, which would be nice for me. Yeah, and I'm getting pretty close, so it feels pretty good. You're getting close where I'm at. I bring that up to say, musicians understand the importance and the value of practice.

How vital all these things with laying the groundwork, doing the footwork, crushing the real work. It takes practice and you get better as time goes on, and you find days where you can lift that weight or you find days where you can't lift. Anything and or you find days where you're sore, so you're, you're feeling the growing pains of things so.

Uh, just know out there anyone listening that it, it takes practice. Jeff, I'm so grateful for you today. Oh, thank you for being on the show. Oh, thanks for having me. Sure thing. So y'all, we've been talking about how amazing of a guitarist Jeff is. So this piece that you're about to hear, it's called Julio Flora by a Augustin, Barrios Mango, and Jeff is an amazing player.

Again, he plays a variety of styles, but here's a classical piece. Enjoy and talk to y'all soon.

Don't forget to leave a rating of the show. Helps to make us better. Thanks so much y'all. Take care.