The Toughest Industry

How to Make it in Today’s Music Game

BY JACK DAVIDSON

It’s your first time performing for an audience, you step on to the stage—you get a little jolt of adrenaline as you see the audience. You’ve practiced for months and have organized your band together to get this gig. You smile at your bassist and start the first song of your set.

Breaking into a local music scene can be hard for a young group of musicians just starting out. The way music is listened to, discovered, and talked about has changed significantly over the last two decades and the musical competition, high cost of living, and limited venues contribute to the difficulty of becoming a musician in Austin.

Jesse Ebaugh, frontman of Austin country band The Tender Things, has spent decades in various musical climates throughout the South. Ebaugh grew his bluegrass roots living in Northern Kentucky. Ebaugh then played upright bass in The Heartless Bastards until he started his own band, The Tender Things.

Ebaugh was introduced to playing music at a young age, taking piano lessons starting at age 11. Ebaugh would practice every day when he got home from school. When Ebaugh was 13-years-old, as soon as he came home from seeing the movie Stand By Me, he learned the bassline from the theme of the movie.

“And then probably less than a year later, I had my first band with some friends from school,” Ebaugh said.

Ebaugh then moved to Northern Kentucky where he learned the secrets of bluegrass.

“I then moved to Kentucky and there were bluegrass people playing all around,” Ebaugh said. “And so I thought, well, I’ll get an upright bass and I can go and play this music, because it’s such a vital folk form that was happening all around.”

As Ebaugh got situated in Northern Kentucky, he found lessons from other bass players that lived in the area.

“I got some good technique under my belt, and got a nice

instrument,” Ebaugh said. “That gave me a lot of power as a bass player to be able to be versatile and I’ve actually gotten a lot of work being able to play the upright bass.”

Ebaugh was then invited by a friend, Erika Wennerstrom, to Austin in 2008 to record demo recordings for an album.

“She went on to have a band that got pretty successful, but she left that group of musicians when she moved to Austin because it seemed like an exciting place to be,” Ebaugh said.

Wennerstrom came back to Austin to record another Album with studio musicians and asked Ebaugh if he could play for her. Ebaugh wanted to get out of Cincinnati and start fresh in a new city.

“I left Cincinnati and came here and played in that touring band, and then ended up recording in that band for 10 or 11 years,” Ebaugh said. Ebaugh had started to get settled into the Austin music scene.

“When I arrived in 2008, it was just a tumult of activity,” Ebaugh said. “I do feel like it’s cooling off a little bit. The stakes are higher now than they were when I moved here. And certainly, before I moved here.”

Torrence Thomas and his Brother Thurman Thomas started R&B trio THEBROSFRESH in Louisiana in 2019. Thomas has been playing music for over 15 years and has learned through years of performing in cities throughout the South.

Thomas started out by playing in “Small daiquiri shops, cigar bars, little places in little strip malls and things like that. And then from there, you know, you kind of graduate to doing small venues in town, you know, real legit actual venues,” Thomas said.

Once THEBROSFRESH had amassed a following, the trio started to explore performing in Austin.

“When we got to Austin, it took us probably almost about 10 months to a year till we got our first gig here. It was hard, because you don’t really know anybody. It’s like being the new kid in school. So you’ve gotta figure out, you know, who are the other players here? What are the venues? Who are the people in contact? How do you get in touch with them? Things like that,” Thomas said. Thomas had entered the Austin scene at just the right time. “At that point in time, there were no shows and everything was shut down because of the pandemic,” Thomas said. “It was good because people wanted performances and they wanted shows so you can get in touch with these guys easier because they don’t have anybody blowing them up 24/7.” Thomas said that the Austin music scene is very different compared to Louisiana.

“In Austin, the ears are much more open to original music,” Thomas said. “If you’re an artist that’s starting out and want to have your own original music, Austin is a great place because there are people here with those types of ears. They want to hear the new music they want to hear and see the next big thing instead of people just wanting to hear people playing covers the whole time. It’s hard to do original music in Louisiana because the ears are so used to hearing something they heard on the radio or hearing something that they heard growing up. They just want to go see a live jukebox. Austin isn’t really like that; they want to actually hear you, which is great.”

It is important to start small and incrementally build upon what

Torrence (far left) playing with his bandmates. Photo courtesy of THEBROSFRESH.

you have successfully done in the past.

“Early on, I kept trying to make home runs,” Thomas said. “I kept trying to hit a home run, instead of just trying to get on base. That was my thing. I’d try to make something really big and it needs to be like, ‘Just do it. And do it again.’”

Thomas looked back on his past self and thought about what he would do differently if he had to grow into being a musician again. “One tip that I would give myself back then—I would tell myself, if you can play it slow, You can play it fast,” Thomas said. “And that’s just not with music, that’s with life. So if you can do it on a small scale, you can do it on a big scale.”

The music industry has changed significantly in Thomas’s time of being a musician.

“The thing is, from when it started to what it is now, it’s completely different, as far as how people get noticed in the game,” Thomas said. “When I started out, the way to get in was through music blogs. Now, it’s like blogs don’t even exist. Playlists are the things now, people don’t make a lot of the playlist. A lot of playlists are made by artificial intelligence.”

Thomas started out by promoting his band by passing along to friends, then progressed to social media promotion, and then online advertisements.

“We promoted the old school way, through friend groups passing along to friends, not being afraid to share it,” Thomas said. “Social media has been big with that. Traveling in general, it’s been a good way to spread THEBROSFRESH because every city we go to everyone asks what you do and the type of work that you do, that you get done. So that’s a good way to do it. But as of lately, We’ve been running ads as well. And I’m just starting to play with a little bit more, because you got to be in the real world. And you have to play with technology a little bit, too. You’ve got to do ads, but you’re also going to have to make real life touch points that can actually stay in people’s minds.”

Austin is a vibrant place full of music, innovation, and competition. It is tough to be a musician in our modern world, especially in Austin. Carefully incrementally improving and scaling your musical endeavors will help you to break into the Austin scene. Have fun and pick up a guitar!