ION INDIE MAGAZINE September 2015, Volume 16 | Page 68

A friend recently posed the question to me "What is the greatest challenge facing artists today?" Well, more specifically in terms of musicians like myself, it is time. Those who strive to make great music must often hold down a day job which drains their energy. I am no exception. Most artists and musicians in the Rust Belt, work one or several side jobs to support their art. I just worked all day yesterday, drove to the gig directly from work and walked right onstage to play, dead exhausted. Once I get going I perk up from adrenaline, but I would imagine this is a very common scenario. In my late thirties I decided I was done stage performing and dragging my amp out of clubs at 3:30 a.m. I spent my whole youth doing this every week. However, I came to the realization that I only had so many more years to do this--even if that is forty years, it's gonna end one day. I guess that the love of what we do keeps us chugging away, even during the discouraging times. There always comes a show that makes the struggle worth it. *** Downtown Tommy's Guitar Lesson of the Month: Like many other guitarists, I stubbornly refuse to mess with alternate tunings, and play strictly in A440. This includes tuning down a half step, which messes me up because my C is no longer a C when I tune down. The good news is, there are plenty of transposed guitar tabs out there for guitarists like us. My band added "Coming Right Along" by The Posies to our set--a favorite song of mine that I played for them on our practice break. The original is in some odd tuning configuration that I had no intention of