Jess Bush

Jealousy. Nobody in this industry wants to talk about it publicly, but I'm pretty sure we've all felt it. That vice grip sensation square in the center of your chest. The heat rising in your face. Maybe even some waves of existential dread. It will swallow you whole if you let it, and I've personally felt like I'm sitting at the bottom of the musical ocean on more than one occasion. 

I've been in therapy long enough to understand that jealousy (and envy, let's just pretend they're interchangeable terms for the sake of this post), feels a lot less like ill will and more like anxiety to me. I would say nine out of ten times, if something big happens to someone I know, it's genuinely well-deserved. I don't sit around and pray for flat tires and broken gear, brown notes and hoarse voices. I am, however, prone to succumbing to a fear of being left behind, of backsliding, of staying stagnant, of being replaced, and most of all, of becoming even less relevant in the music industry than I already am. Woof.

Even when big breaks happen to musicians who DON'T deserve it, there is rarely, if ever, an excuse to be anything but supportive and congratulatory. Jealousy is venom in a little glass bottle and I keep that bottle tightly corked. I won't pretend I've never vented to a trusted friend, but for the most part, I'm journaling about it, unpacking it with my therapist, channeling my insecurities discreetly into my art…whatever feels the least toxic and the least likely to affect my reputation as a good sport and a (hopefully) decent human being.

The fact that I'm significantly more likely to feel jealous and/or envious of a female musician says A LOT about what it means to be a woman in music. If the music industry is a mug of water, the patriarchy is a tea bag that has been left to steep for far, far too long. It doesn't matter how supportive and inclusive the men around you are, we've been brainwashed into thinking there is a finite amount of space for us, and that other women are a threat. It is categorically untrue, to say the least, and I try to remember that when those kinds of thoughts start to creep in. 

If you're reading this and you've felt some pangs of the J word lately, I hope you feel slightly less alone now. You are not your thoughts, and you never know what opportunities are just around the corner.

If you've ever played music with me, you probably know my motto is “Don't be a hero.” But what does that really mean?

I believe that self-awareness and knowing your strengths and weaknesses as a musician is often more important than how much talent you actually have. Knowing what's in your wheelhouse, what isn't, what you'd like to be able to do, and what you're working on, is huge.

I have a very direct communication style, for the most part. If someone wants to hire me to play keys or sing for them, I'm not going to say yes unless I'm confident that I can deliver. Of course life happens, we get sick, etc, but there's a difference between taking on a challenging project that's going to take extra effort to pull off, and inflating your abilities so much that you find yourself completely underwater. I've watched friends go through that, and I've been there myself. It's hard to watch (and listen to).

As a band leader, I'm always parroting this motto to my players. I play keys. I don't play drums. I don't play bass. I am, at best, a campfire guitarist. I don't know if what I'm asking for is realistic, and I'll take clean, simple parts over something flashy every. single. time. Can't quite land it? Let's figure out something else. No worries.

It goes without saying that it's important to balance this mindset with one of growth and potential. My brilliant producer/sound engineer/guitarist friend Grey Bear Erickson once described me as a “meat and potatoes” player during a session, and I agree. I'm generally pretty consistent from take to take, I have good instincts, and I quite literally play well with others. I will tell anyone who asks, however, that I am not great at playing absolutely face melting keys solos. I have to be careful not to turn that into a permanent self-fulfilling prophecy. Taking solos is part of being a musician, I do it all the time, and while I might not be blowing anyone away in those moments, it always sounds tasteful. It's just an area with a lot of potential for improvement.

What are you working on right now as far as musicianship goes? What are your strengths and weaknesses?

It's no secret that my foray into rock and roll was a happy accident. I started taking piano lessons at age seven, playing a lot of classical but also a healthy dose of show tunes, ragtime, the Beatles, etc. Every now and then I would bring my teacher Claudia a Backstreet Boys song I wanted to learn, thinking it would make me popular at school. It did not.

When it was time to apply for college, I had my heart set on the Music Business program at USC. I can't even remember what the end goal was…a career as an entertainment lawyer perhaps? As I filled out the application, trying to figure out what to write under “recording studio internships” (who was landing those at seventeen years old, and where??), I knew I wasn't getting in. And I was right.

I ended up at Cal Poly SLO, majoring in Business and minoring in Music, specifically Piano Performance. I had the most wonderful piano professor/advisor, Dr. Terry Spiller, who ironically, got his doctorate at USC. It was all classical, all the time, but he freed me from (most) of my crippling perfectionism. Hearing an actual prodigy make mistakes did me a world of good.

Fast forward a few years and I was moving into a charming, but fairly beaten up house in midtown Ventura that I found on Craigslist. My new roommate played guitar, and we ended up having some pretty raucous jam sessions with a few friends in our living room. I didn't know how to use an amp or even really how to “jam,” but I faked it well enough to become the keys player in my very first band, The Mystos. Those guys taught me A LOT, but I still learned quite a few hard lessons on my own.

Here are just a FEW of the things I think every classical player should know before they descend into the beautiful degeneracy of rock and roll:

• Hot, means loud. Wet, means reverb. I still really don't use either term, but just know that if they come up in conversation, you're not being sexually harassed. 
• ¼ cables, aka instrument cables, are actually several feet long. There's also a very specific art to how you wrap them. Find a trusted, non-judgmental friend and have them show you the “over under” method, ASAP.
• Speaking of cables, you'll be shocked when you see how much time non-classical musicians spend simply plugging and unplugging things. Pay attention to when it's safe to plug/unplug a cable or power source. One wrong move and you just might deafen everyone within 100 feet.
• Get this…MONITORS…are not…screens? Eventually, you'll be asked what instruments you want to hear in the one in front of you onstage. You may experience flashbacks to your fifth grade spelling bee the first time you have to do this, but you will survive. On a related note, your fellow players aren't raising their fingers in the air during soundcheck because they all randomly “have an idea”….it means “more of that sound please.”
• If you find yourself in a recording studio, know that “comping” does not mean the session is free. Tragic, I know.

If your career trajectory sounds like mine, may these tips save you from all the embarrassment I endured. You'll get there.

Bach and Roll,

Jess