Mindsets — October 7, 2009 18:52 — 0 Comments

Avoid the Death Roll

The “death roll” is a term used in sailing to describe what happens when a boat becomes unstable, loses control and, in most cases, capsizes. Once it starts it takes a skilled captain to maneuver out of it.

A similar experience occurs often in the world of music. It usually happens with bands who start out trying to do too much too soon and don’t know how to read the instruments that should be used to steer their ship. Everything looks great, they’re well on their way to fame and fortune and then all-of-a-sudden their boat quickly starts rocking out of control, they’re going too fast to do anything about it and their boat capsizes, leaving them to die a slow and painful death out on the open water. : )

Here’s how it usually goes down: Bands often have a few good shows right off the bat. Their friends buy into the hype and are more than willing to come out and support. The shows are a novelty at first and are often fun social events for the friends who attend. Everyone has a great time and the band is convinced that not only will it always be like this, but that it will only get better. If it starts that fast then it will grow just as fast. They bank on that, start getting over confident, and base their decisions on that assumption.

There are a couple of problems with this. When bands start to get too cocky they often make poor decisions. They might book shows that they aren’t ready to play, they may drink too much before they go on, they may adopt an insufferable attitude, or a combination of all those and more. Either way, when they’re banking on the continuation of their early success and they start to believe the hype then they unwittingly put themselves in a fragile position. Inevitably things will go wrong. When they do, then such bands will often over-react and get uptight, often in front of their audience, which could cause them to crash-and-burn on the spot . When a person feels like they’ve given up more time and money than it was worth to go to your show then you’re going to have a hard time getting them to come back.

The bottom line is this – you’re at where you’re at. The greater the disparity between where you’re actually at and where you think your at, the faster and harder you will fall.

This reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to collect baseball cards. There was a lot of hype about baseball cards back then. I remember Jose Canseco’s 1986 rookie card was worth about $175 at one point. The problem was that it was all overblown. In the end it wasn’t really worth very much. Once the value started to decline, it never stopped. The market collapsed. You can buy that card now for $7.50.

This is why experience is so important. You need to think in terms of real growth. It’s about growing something worthwhile not about blowing up and becoming a rockstar in three months. If you want to be great then you’ve got to put in the work and pay your dues. If it comes too easily then you’d better be careful. Easy come, easy go.

What a lot of bands fail to realize is that the amount of friends that come to your shows is a terrible indicator of your level of success. Many artists see as many as 100 or 200 people come to their shows and they think they’ve made it. The problem is that they already know most of these people. They haven’t really accomplished anything special by getting them to a few shows. If they don’t learn to grow an audience then the rest of their shows will also be attended by only their friends – just less and less of them.

Your audience has an internal sense of where your momentum is at. If the perception is that your status is climbing then people will want to be a part of it. If you don’t learn to grow an audience of people who aren’t already your friends then you will quickly be perceived as being stagnant. As soon as people start to feel like you’re stagnating then you will start to lose your audience. The death roll has been initiated.

When you start to lose your local audience then you’re pretty well screwed. They’re probably not coming back.

In summary, what you need to do is to learn how to grow an audience (more on this in a later post), anticipate a drop off after early success, become calibrated to where you’re really at and consistently over-deliver.

If you do find yourself in the death roll then the only thing you can do is stop – IMMEDIATELY. Stop what you’re doing. Re-evaluate your strategy. Play some shows out of town. Go underground. Give it some time. You need to create some separation so that when you start playing local shows again, you can re-energize your fan base. You have to convince them that you’ve grown and they you’re better than ever. Then you have to deliver.

BTW – here’s the Crocodile’s version of the death roll. Check out what happens when this guy makes a bad decision due to a false sense of confidence. Don’t let this happen to you….