The hard work of being an artist!

Sometimes everyones tired and grumpy...
Sometimes everyone's tired and grumpy...

Lots of people think it’s just glamour, travels and good times to be an artist. Even friends of mine tell me how great it must be for me to “get to” tour and travel so much. Even they don’t realize I pay for the tour myself most of the time and bringing a band is never cheap, you guys out there who have families know a couple of plane tickets tend to eat up your budget pretty fast.

I also get a lot of questions from up-and-coming artists wondering how to go about the business of starting a record label or how to promote their music. I always try to answer the best I can, but the short answer to all of this is “you have to work your ass off!”. Nothing comes for free in this business and no one will care about your music as much as you do, no matter what that manager/label/pr company is trying to tell you.

.. but most of the time it's great!
.. but most of the time it's great!

So I was very happy to stumble upon this great website where all of the stuff about being an artist and building your brand is collected in a fun and comprehensible way. This post today is mainly for all you artists and musicians out there, but you other guys can check out http://www.eventric.com/ as well (scroll down to featured articles), it’s a lot of fun reading and gives you an insight on all the things you need to know when you want to get out there with your music.Martin Atkins who is the guy sharing all these great tips really knows what he’s talking about!

One of the things that made me laugh was the post about why you need to learn screen printing as an artist. Why? So you can make your own merchandise of course. Just like I started doing a while back. All my tees are hand printed by me, check them out here: shop.sofiatalvik.com. So it’s just a lot of great advice there for all artists, no matter where you are in your career.

Here’s some fast links to my fave posts:

11 (of 27) Things Touring Bands Can Do NOW To Make a Difference

11 MORE (of 29) Tips Touring Bands Can Do Now To Make a Difference

10 Ideas For Making Your Show an Event

Just remember that it's a lot of hard work!
Just remember that it's a lot of hard work!

“I love you and all your shoes”

So I just told you I love food… Well I also love shoes. And any girl who loves shoes knows it’s more like an addiction. There are ladies who loves handbags. Me, I buy one that I love after many hours looking for the perfect one and wear it till it falls apart (quite literally).

But shoes… They’re quite a different story. I guess I could say I’m a shoe collector with no intention of being one. I see them and I think I shouldn’t. I think I have too many already. And yet they call out to me. Their tiny voices saying “buy me, buy me”.

So today with 15 minutes to spare between work and party I found these great not too high heeled boots on sale (of course).

I asked if they had a return policy – no.

I asked if I could have them reserved until tomorrow – no.

(At this point I felt I’d done all I could to turn them down.)

What was left to do but to buy them?

In a weak moment I heard myself saying” I’ll take them”, while picturing my overfull wardrobe at home, and at the same time picturing someone else walking away in these boots on sale in my size…

Walking to the party with the bag in my hand, I kept thinking how my husband would sigh over me buying yet another pair of shoes I don’t need. So when I called him later from the bar and told him about that new pair of shoes that would clutter our apartment I dreaded the worst but he said… “Honey, I love you and all your shoes”.

And I guess that’s a story of true love, whether you apply it to the shoes or the wife buying them.

new shoes
Yet another pair of great shoes, Jimmy Choo for HM

LA and the giant sandwich

I played at the dinner that A&R Worldwide and the Swedish Consulate held yesterday. (A big thank you to the organizers for having me, it was a great honour!) It was nothing like I had expected. I thought it was going to be more of a networking thing, where people would mingle and talk while I stood in a corner singing. Instead there were a hundred seated people, totally quiet, just looking at me. I got so nervous I thought my knees would shake me off the planet! But I got through it and then Kristin, Peter and Warren took me to the Troubador.
I’m going home today so I’m having my last american sandwich…

…which is basically a sandwich monster. I bought one yeaterday, so this is actually the left over half of that one. I can’t imagine why they want to overstuff their sandwiches like this.

I’m actually so glad I’m going home today. First of all since I get to go home to Jonas, second because my ears hurt from all the english. It gets kind of intense after a while, and I think the phrases I’ve used most during these two weeks have been:
“That’s cool”
“That’s awsome”
“That’s a good thing”

and of course “Thank you so much” which I am also saying now to you guys for following my tour blog. I hope you got to see one of my showcases in Austin, where I had my lovely band with me (I missed you guys so much yesterday). Good by America!