Amena Brown:
Hey, everybody, welcome back to a new episode of HER with Amena Brown. My husband Matt is here. DJ Opdiggy is here in the building, in the living room with us.
Matt:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of HER with Amena Brown. I'm Matt and I'm here with Amena Brown.
Amena Brown:
It's her.
Matt:
I feel like I've been here a few times.
Amena Brown:
It's her with him.
Matt:
So I am happy to be with her.
Amena Brown:
Love to see it, in so many ways. Okay, so today I want y'all to really, really try to channel Charles Barkley saying the word terrible.
Matt:
That's terrible.
Amena Brown:
For the road stories we're going to tell you right now. So these are some of the probably what would be on our list of the yikes. This is the yikes of the road stories.
Matt:
Shout out to your sister, yikes on bikes.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, yikes on bikes for this one, guys. Okay, so one thing, I think we had talked earlier about how most artists, and a lot of speakers too, but in particularly artists, whether it's indie artists or your mainstream artists, whether it's artists who were in Christian space like we used to be in, or whether it's artists who are just traveling in various sundry places, most artists have what's called a rider. An R-I-D-E-R, rider.
And if you don't do events world, you might be like, what's that? Where there's a such thing as a technical rider. Where in a case with Matt as a DJ, the technical rider will have his sound needs. If he has visuals, if he's got particular audio specifications of what he needs, the technical rider tells whoever is running sound and AV at the venue that this is what he needs as an artist.
Matt:
I need a table to set up on.
Amena Brown:
Right. I need XLR, I need DI cables. It's all these things.
Matt:
Wow, look at you. Look at you.
Amena Brown:
Did y'all see me naming stuff like I know what I'm talking about?
Matt:
I mean, I don't really need a DI box. It's a DI box. But I mean, I'm on HER, so DI cables.
Amena Brown:
Nah. I knew it was DI, y'all. I really didn't know if it was cable on the end, and I just threw it out there to see if it was going to work out. So it is DI box.
Matt:
I'm impressed.
Amena Brown:
Which we did have to use in your setup.
Matt:
We did.
Amena Brown:
At one time.
Matt:
At one time.
Amena Brown:
All right. So now there is a regular rider, that's not the tech rider. And the regular rider can have all manner of things in it according to the artist specifications. I know I have a food rider, because I have certain dietary restrictions that I have to keep to when I'm on the road.
We had our travel specifications were in there as far as the airline that we travel, the types of hotels that we to stay in, all these things. Even down to... now, what I'm trying to get to in telling y'all about the rider, is the reason why artists and speakers have riders is because nine times out of 10, if you see something on the rider that's kind of wild sounding, especially for independent artists, I know we know plenty of rock stars who have, "I want white doves in my green room."
Matt:
A baby grand piano.
Amena Brown:
"I want all of the green M&Ms pulled out." I'm not talking about those things. I'm talking about when you see some things that you're like, "Why does it say proper heating and air? Why does it say a hotel room where the doors are not on the outside? Why does it say those things?" And when it says those things, it's because something got messed up at a gig in the past. And that's how those things end up on the rider.
Matt:
It's always something that you're like, "Nah, we wouldn't have to spell this out. They would." And then you get there and be like, "Oh, okay."
Amena Brown:
Okay, we needed to spell that out.
Matt:
I need to specifically say this.
Amena Brown:
That wasn't a common sense thing. Right. So one thing that my rider says, is it says that I need an area prior to performing that has proper heating and proper air conditioning. And the reason why it says that is because I used to do a gig that was in the mountains in undisclosed location, and it was for students. And so when you went to the gig, it was in a big convention center pretty much.
And the year that I went to it, the green room was basically behind the convention area. So if y'all have ever been behind an arena or convention center, pretty much the back of it is all the other different used chairs and different things that they have to had sectioned off. Different cases for sound and video equipment is back there. But what's not normally back there is a green room. Why? Because it doesn't have heating and air in the same way that the indoors portion... it's all indoors, but the part where the actual people is sitting at...
Matt:
People supposed to be at these indoors, people ain't supposed to be in those indoors.
Amena Brown:
Mm-hmm. And so it was 19 degrees, and we are in a warehouse looking kind of area for the green room. So the ceilings are very, very tall and there is no heating back there. I just know that the organization had plugged in some space heaters. And I'm going to tell y'all, when you're in something that could be the size of a cathedral, a space heater, it turns out, is not going to heat properly.
Matt:
It's heating a space, but not this whole space.
Amena Brown:
And I'm there as a poet. There are also singers there. It was so cold, it was primetime for us to be getting pneumonia. The singers are nervous as hell because they are in the back like, "Am I here trying to get paid? But I'm also going to get sick," because it's moist air, like it would be outside. It's cold enough that it could be snowing outside. And I'm in here, I'm inside, but it's still just as cold as it is outside. They gave us little hand warmers to warm our hands, and pretty much our choices were either we'll be in the green room and have a little bit of space to ourselves and be cold, or be out there where the students were and have the students just talking to you, students and other adult leaders that were there, chatting you up until your performance. That was your choice. And for introverted artist, yikes.
Matt:
That's no good.
Amena Brown:
Yikes. So that event is why my rider now that's says...
Matt:
That's snuggle weather right there.
Amena Brown:
... proper heating and air. Proper heating and air. Also, I would like to speak about gigs and traveling to racism.
Matt:
Yelp could use it, as you know how whenever you're looking up something on Yelp, nearest to me, four stars and above, if you're looking up...
Amena Brown:
Oh yeah, like the filters.
Matt:
... open now, a filter. That would be kind of interesting to have a racist area.
Amena Brown:
If I go to this restaurant, am I traveling to racism? I would like someone to just express that.
Matt:
You know how on Apple maps, you'll be driving along and you'll slow down and the thing will pop up saying that there was something, some hazard was in the road, and they'll ask, is it still there or has it been cleared? I never know what to say, because I'm always scared. I don't want to hit clear, I just X out of it. But it would be interesting if it was like, racism spotted here. Is it still here?
Amena Brown:
Is it still racist?
Matt:
And we'd be like, yes.
Amena Brown:
Yes. Indeed.
Matt:
That way you kind of pass.
Amena Brown:
Indeed. If you're traveling through that area, you will indeed travel to racism. Yes. Yes. So Matt and I, as we've discussed in previous episodes, have traveled all over the country. All over the country, y'all. There are very few states that we did not travel to-
Matt:
That's true.
Amena Brown:
... at least once.
Matt:
Either together or separately.
Amena Brown:
Or separately, yeah. So we have traveled all over the country, various regions, various times of the year, all sorts of things. And there was one time that we got booked for a youth event, and I want to say it was in Kentucky, Tennessee area. This gets blurry now, but it was somewhere that it would still be considered the south, but maybe bordering what could become the Midwest a little bit. And I remember Matt and I, we were talking to y'all about the southeast portions of the road. And we live in Atlanta in the southeast, but Atlanta is a major metropolitan city. It is a sprawling place. It's like you're in Atlanta, you can almost eat any kind of food you want to eat. You have all sorts of choices. Being in Atlanta and being in a small town in the southeast are two different things.
Matt:
Atlanta's like an island. There's Atlanta and then there's Georgia.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. There's Atlanta and Charlotte and some of these other cities that you'd get there and be like, "Oh, I'm in a city when I'm here." And then you could be two hours from that in a very, very small town and be like, "Yikes, I'm concerned for my life right here."
Matt:
You could be 30 minutes outside of the Atlanta and people like, "Oh, you mean go into town?"
Amena Brown:
I'm like, okay. Yikes. All right. So when we were at this gig... now, sometimes when we would do these southeast runs, it would basically be like we were only in the small town for a night. So we'd like be at this small college and whatever this little town was, do our gig there, drive two hours to the next gig. Sometimes that was the run. But every now and then we got booked for a camp. And this is a good time for us to talk about camp life.
Matt:
Oh, man.
Amena Brown:
It has a time. Because when you get booked for a camp, the camp has a limited budget. The camp ain't paying for people to come in for one day. They going to try to pay you as well as they can. That's too much of a statement. You going to get a number.
Matt:
They going to pay you what they going to pay you.
Amena Brown:
They going to pay you what they're going to pay you. They maybe not going to pay you as high as they can, but the number's going to feel high to you at first when you see it, until you really think to yourself that they're asking you to come to that place for five days. Because the camp going to run Monday to Friday, sometimes into Saturday. Depends on how the setup is. And if these are church kids, then they got to end in time to get back to they churches on Sunday. So they typically paying you for five days, because they going to have a little sendoff service on Friday where they got to get the kids amped up to go back.
Matt:
Throw a dance party.
Amena Brown:
Totally.
Matt:
But don't play those songs.
Amena Brown:
But don't play the air quote secular. Do not play the secular music for those children, is what they going to tell you. So when you're in this situation, you are not in Atlanta where you can be like, where are some vegan eats? Where is some organic food?
Matt:
Right. Yeah.
Amena Brown:
Where is some dairy free food? No, those aren't your choices. You are in small town wherever for five days. They got a Hardee's. They got someplace that's kind of like cafeteria style that's probably got-
Matt:
Always.
Amena Brown:
... some southern food, something.
Matt:
Some green beans that are sitting in some liquid.
Amena Brown:
That you can't discern.
Matt:
Swimming. Green beans.
Amena Brown:
They got some restaurant that got some either fried kind of foods, some fried fish, some fried chicken, some something.
Matt:
Fried okra. All of it.
Amena Brown:
Or they got one that's got some barbecue something. But do not ask those people for vegetables. It's coleslaw and starch.
Matt:
Do you have a Whole Foods anywhere nearby?
Amena Brown:
No. Good night. You might, sometimes in little bitty towns-
Matt:
Sprouts?
Amena Brown:
No.
Matt:
Trader Joe's?
Amena Brown:
You might find a mom and pop health food store.
Matt:
Maybe. That's a big maybe.
Amena Brown:
That's like a size of a convenience store.
Matt:
But it's never open the day you trying to go.
Amena Brown:
No, it's not. The hours are very short, and you have three hours that you could eat in that place.
Matt:
Whatever day you trying to go, they're not open then.
Amena Brown:
They're not going to be open that day.
Matt:
No.
Amena Brown:
No thank you. So this particular camp that we were at, we were already having a time. And I remember we were trying to figure out like, okay, what's in the area that's close enough? Because here's the other thing. When these type of camps book you, they are trying to get everything out of you they can in five days. So you typically don't have a day off, and sometimes during the day you might only have a two hour break to go get some food before you got to be back for a sound check or be back for a session, be back for a Q and A or whatever.
So when you're going to eat, you really got to be focused on your focus. You can eat and get back. So we find a restaurant to go to, walk up in there, and people asked us a lot when we were dating and got engaged. I had quite a few people at our church at that time asking us had we thought about what it was going to be like to travel together as an interracial couple. And I didn't want to dismiss what they were asking, but I just didn't expect that it was going to be as much of a problem I guess as they were asking us. But this particular place was the one moment I can remember being like, "Oh, shit, I'm wondering if we need to be concerned for our safety."
Matt:
Yeah. It was definitely the most concerning place that we've been. We had some Midwest towns where I could tell people were uncomfortable, and I was like, all right, I got to stay close. But that one was like, I'm not going to the bathroom. I'm sitting right here by you. There will not be a time that I'm not sitting beside of you on this trip.
Amena Brown:
We walked up in there and we could hear the people's forks hit their plates that we walked in there together. And I'm pretty sure this was in... this is not me saying that me and Matt don't walk around holding hands today, but I'm just telling y'all, I'm pretty sure we had only been married a couple of years at this point. So we were two people who walked right in a place holding hands with the fingers intertwined.
Matt:
Booed up.
Amena Brown:
It is very clear that we is not friends, that we is not coworkers, or whatever.
Matt:
Not work associates. None of that.
Amena Brown:
So I think they saw our little lovey-dovey selves walking up in there, them forks, clink clink on the plate. It got quiet as hell. I literally was like, I don't know. Because we've had some other times where we were traveling and pulled up to a place and saw Confederate flags outside of it, or saw references to Dixie, and like skeert skeert.
Matt:
Not for us.
Amena Brown:
Ride back.
Matt:
Roll up.
Amena Brown:
Like, we're going to get gas somewhere else. Good night.
Matt:
Yep. Got enough in the tank.
Amena Brown:
But that was one of the first times of being in a place and seeing people freaked out.
Matt:
Reacting the way they were. She's not making extra of it, it was really that wild of a reaction.
Amena Brown:
The only thing that really helped us was the fact that we were at that camp, and one of the youth groups was in the restaurant, and they saw us and they were like... and they made whatever noise they made, and that really saved us that day.
Matt:
It did.
Amena Brown:
Because it made the rest of the people...
Matt:
Have to back up.
Amena Brown:
... in the restaurant kind of chill. It also made us have to eat fast as hell so that we could be done with our meal close to the time.
Matt:
Before they got back with their tiki torches.
Amena Brown:
Close to the time the youth group was leaving too, so we wouldn't be stuck in there by ourselves. But that meant in a small town that had four places to eat, now there's only three that we can eat at.
Matt:
It was almost like, remember in the last episode when I mentioned that Portland was a place where there was whimsical with the furrow brow, it was Portland minus the whimsical. It was just dudes in overalls, not afraid to stare at you with a very furrow brow.
Amena Brown:
Nah. We had to be like, all right, here's what we going to get our food and take it back to the hotel. Big yikes. Other things that I want to talk about is one of the things that makes a gig the worst is when you were asked to do something that you thought was going to be really cool, and then the plan gets changed at the last minute.
Matt:
The old switcheroo.
Amena Brown:
That's a good... thank you for using that phrasing.
Matt:
The old switcheroo.
Amena Brown:
The old switcheroo. As an artist, that's a rough one. Some of this now, looking back on it is business lessons. These gigs we about to tell y'all about are reasons I had to learn, don't just say you're going to do a particular gig blanketly in the contract. Have some things in the contract to protect you that says you have to approve all creative changes before they're made, or make the contract say what you're going to do when you get there, so that way they can't change it.
But say at that time, our contracts would say things like, Amena and Matt, when we were performing together, it might say, "Amena and Matt are going to perform for 90 minutes over the duration of the event." Well, that gave them whatever they wanted to do with that 90 minutes, which means they could ask us to do the wackest things in the world.
Matt:
Indeed.
Amena Brown:
And we didn't have any way outside of the deciding we weren't going to do the gig at all as any thing that we could do to speak up for ourselves, pretty much. So two of our worst, at undisclosed locations. One of them was... the funny thing is, again with the camps. Gosh.
Matt:
See, here's the thing with camps, that you kind of brought up earlier, is that you get to a camp and over the period of these days, these people become very enamored with you. And so it feels awesome. Everywhere you walk around, they're like, "Yeah." It's like have people cheering, people, "Can I take a picture with you? Will you sign my piece of pizza? Will you sign my elbow?" You just feel like, "Whoa, man. That's right, I am good at what I do. Thank you." So those parts feel like, for that period of time you are it. And then you go back home and you go to Target, then nobody's... but then there's also the other side of it, which is what you're talking about.
Amena Brown:
There's also two different types... this is overgeneralizing of course, y'all, but there really is, almost feels like there's two different types of church camp for kids, for high schoolers in particular. There's sort of your mid budget camp. Which the one we were telling y'all about that was somewhere in the southeast, Kentucky, Tennessee something, this is where a very small nonprofit in that area that is probably being run by a coalition of youth pastors who are in that area, they pool their resources together because they can't afford to organize their own camps individually. So they pool their money together so that they could put on the best camp they can for those kids. But they really got to budget very well to pull the camp off. Which means the churches that are coming there are not these churches with huge budgets, huge resources.
Then there's rich Christian kids camp, and then this is what we're talking about right now. Rich Christian kids camp be on a nice beach. Be in some place where, first of all, the kids can actually wear swimwear. I couldn't even wear swimwear when I was going to youth group events.
Matt:
You better put that t-shirt on.
Amena Brown:
You had to put a t-shirt on. I don't care, if they see nipples out, it's a problem-
Matt:
You said nipple.
Amena Brown:
... for anybody that got nips. All nips need to be covered up. All kneecaps, whatever.
Matt:
Everybody got nipples.
Amena Brown:
Rich kid camp means they can afford to pay you for you to maybe come in one time, instead of mid to low budget camp has to pay you to try to convince you to be there for five days. Rich kid camp got enough money for those kids to be staying not in cabins but in a hotel. Very nice hotels, where they have access to very nice beach. They have money to pay a certain amount of artists that will stay there for the week, and then they have money to pay certain spotlight artists that would come and do their thing for the night.
Matt and I, in these situations, really could do both, but in rich kid camp, they already had their people that was going to be there all week. So we had actually gotten booked to do our show that we had built together at the time. We were really excited about it, because the show was going really well in front of students. And so we were so excited about it. And the way the camp was, we pretty much had a certain amount of weeks in the summer that we were going to have to travel back to that same place once a week for several weeks in the summer. But that meant we pretty much let that be our summer. We couldn't hold or take on certain other gigs during the summer because we had that.
So we find out maybe two weeks before we were supposed to go to the gig that they had decided they didn't want our show anymore. They had decided they didn't want Matt to DJ at all. They had decided they had some readings that they wanted me to read as a narrator for the way that they had changed it. And we had to go to lunch with them. I remember this very clear. We had to go to lunch with them, and it was kind of a weird lunch because we had the option to walk away. But for us at the time, it was a lot of money to walk away from.
Matt:
It was.
Amena Brown:
And by then we're two weeks ahead of the summer. So all of the other camps that we could have booked, maybe the mid-budget camps that we could have booked or other rich Christian kids camps we could have booked, they're already booked at two weeks before the summer is about to start.
Matt:
What you going to do?
Amena Brown:
And to me it sort of felt like they knew we had the option to say no, but they also knew they were putting us in a pickle. They were putting us in a place where, what could we say? So it was sort of like a, sorry, not sorry lunch. Like, "Sorry you might feel a way about this, but if you want to get paid, this is what we're doing." And we had to stick with it. And that was miserable.
Matt:
It was miserable.
Amena Brown:
It was miserable. I have never been that miserable near a beach, several times a summer, than I was that summer.
Matt:
That was a long drive, every single time.
Amena Brown:
Y'all.
Matt:
And it's not like what they got out of you was like, "Oh, yeah. That worked." Because sometimes you can have creative differences with someone.
Amena Brown:
Sure, sure.
Matt:
Sometimes you can have an idea of what's going... and with both of us, even now, whenever someone brings one or the other or both of us into a situation, we realize we're working inside of a lot of moving pieces. There's a lot of moving pieces, a lot of people. And so there are a lot of conversations that we're not a part of. So there may be something that has been, this has been whittled down, whittled down, whittled down. And you may not see the full picture, but if you trust us and go with it. So we really try to get in and go with the flow.
Amena Brown:
That's true.
Matt:
Because we're working with larger structures that have a lot of moving parts. So I get it. But in a lot of these instances where they start toying with what you do or what I do, it's not like they ever get the best version of us. In this case, it turned out to be like really, they could have got anybody to do that thing. And for us it wasn't fulfilling. We didn't enjoy it.
And for us, also a thing that I've learned about being a performance artist, is that when you say yes to something, you are saying yes to somebody else seeing you do that something and have to do it again. Well, if you're that miserable doing the thing, probably shouldn't do it that one time, because if so, somebody's going to be like, "Oh, will you come do this?" And now you've built a career of doing something that you hate doing, or you didn't spend the time doing. I'm kind of preaching to myself right now, honestly. Oh, man.
Amena Brown:
Right. Yo. It's interesting us talking through this now, because it's like when you look back on it, Matt and I have been having a lot of conversations around the term artist versus the term content creator. And I think what that miserable summer really showed me is how when we were in church space, and this is very true of church space as an industry, it can also be true of corporate space too, what I'm about to say, but we experienced it very particularly in church space. There was sort of this idea that art couldn't be important for art's sake. That it had to be a vehicle to carry something else. So it couldn't be that the art could be there because it's fun or because it would bring people enjoyment or bring them joy or put a smile on their... that couldn't be the point.
Especially you're in a religious setting, so the point is, we have a big message we're trying to get across. So it doesn't matter if your vehicle is a go-kart, a tow truck, we have a big old message that we want to put on that. And that always has to be the point. And for those who are religious, that point is important. But I think here is the part where it got tricky for a lot of artists in that space, is you were really venturing more into becoming a content creator than being able to be an artist. Because you couldn't then just make stuff because you had a question you wanted to explore, or because that felt interesting to you, or because that made you laugh. You always had to be a bit furrow browed in order to make art over there.
And so that was one instance where we had created something that we thought was really artful and beautiful, but it was fun. And truthfully, it told the message they wanted to tell in an amazing way, but they went back to what was the safe zone. And they didn't give us any leeway to work with them as artists. They put us in the place of feeling like we were just works for hire. We couldn't be collaborators. We couldn't be people that they could trust as professionals. We just had to be people that want to do whatever they said we should do. And so that was a long summer of both of us having to realize, first of all, we want to be artists. We want to be artists who have the opportunity to explore ideas because they deserve to be explored.
Matt:
Tell stories.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. And if there ends up being... I think the thing probably where we both are now in our art is if there ends up being, air quotes, a message there, it's for the reader or the listener or the watcher to discern that. It's not for me as the creator to say, "And the whole message of why I tap danced, is because people need to know feet are important."
Matt:
You flipped the picture over and it was Jesus' face the whole time.
Amena Brown:
It's like, just dance. Let the person who's there as the audience take from it. Trust the audience to take from it what they should.
Matt:
Yeah. That is an interesting dance in humanity, because how many times was someone unsure about it, but they went ahead and booked us, let us do our thing. Or even for you, I've seen it with you as a poet, where they're like, "I'm not sure," and they bring you in to their corporate setting to do a presentation, to tell your stories. Because they're like, is it a motivational talk, or want to kind of get you into this idea. But when they really allow you to get up there and do your thing, every single time, I've watched it time and time again, whether it's the two of us, whether it's just you, whether it's me by myself, they come back and they go, "Wow, I get it now. I see it now. Oh, wow." And the crowd loves it.
It's a win for everybody because something authentic happened in that room. Stories were told. People got what they got from it because they showed up carrying what they showed up carrying. We didn't make sure, and all the pieces of the... and I get it. When you're working on a team and you're putting an event together, and you have now gotten all the way down to your hashtag and the color of your logo, and you've gotten down to everything. The theme of this thing is water. And then so as a DJ, how many songs about water do you have?
Well, people probably aren't going to walk away being like, "Man, that guy sure played a lot of water songs. That is awesome." People walk away, "Man, I felt good. Oh, that was great." So it is almost like when people don't put their hands in it too much, they actually get the better end of the deal. They actually get a better artist, a better you, a better me. And that's one less thing for them to have to really think about. Because if they bring you in, if they bring me in, if somebody brings me in, my job is that you don't have to stand there and watch me and make sure. I'm going to show up. I'm going to be set up on time.
Amena Brown:
Right. And be professional. Yeah.
Matt:
Yeah. I'm going to do all these things, and I'm one less thing that you have to worry. You can sit back and know, that thing you brought me in to do, that's covered.
Amena Brown:
I think Matt and I are both... people who work with us would say we are both great collaborators. And I think that's a strength of ours in the sense that we can go into a lot of situations, which is a lot of what happened in church world in particular, you're going into these situations. The event has a theme, like you were saying, they want you to fit into that. They've got a particular moment they're trying to create. And we can be good collaborators with people, but sometimes that doesn't work to your benefit as an artist in a certain way, because we also both know artists who would walk in and be like, "This is my shit that I do, and this is all I'm doing. So if you wanted that or this or some other idea, then book somebody else. But this is me, this is what I do and let me do my shit," kind of thing.
And I would look at artists and be like, damn, I wonder if that makes you not so easy to work with? But sometimes it was like we made ourselves so easy to work with, but then on the other hand, we didn't get the respect of the fact that we are very much professionals at what we're doing, and that you should trust us to come in and do what we do. And if you wanted something else, book someone else. So I think for each artist, the answer is somewhere there in the middle. But I feel like both Matt and I had to learn after these experiences, I feel like we both had to learn how to collaborate with the people who want to be good collaborators, and how on the other hand to say, "This is what I do. So if that's what you want, then book me. But if you want somebody that you can control or that you can wield in whatever way, I'm just not your person." And that's okay. Maybe there's somebody else that does that type of thing. So lots of lessons to learn from terrible gigs, y'all.
Matt:
And I'll say also that if you are an artist listening, or a maker, you make something, there is a good that you sell that is you. Whether it's you doing something, you making something, you performing something. Get somebody in your life that is a good friend that will help you build some better practices. Because I'm talking about this morning, Amena was like, "Do not send that text talk. Talk it out with me. Do not reply to that email. Talk it out with me. Tell me this, why were you about to say that?" Because when you're an artist or you make something, you're an entrepreneur, you live and eat from what you do. And someone comes to you, you go, "Oh, you'll pay me money to do this? I would be happy to do this."
And then also if you came up broke, there's something inside of you... there's something inside of me that's like, if I don't say yes to you and I don't make it as easy as possible for you to bring me in and do it for as cheap as possible, you might move on and find somebody cheaper, find somebody easier to work with, somebody that will say yes to whatever you're offering, and then I may go without. And I know that's not true. In the end, I've lived long enough to be like, that's not true. But you have to find somebody in your life that will be there with you. I got lucky. I married in.
Amena Brown:
Me too.
Matt:
Because Mena been making sure I had some business practices. When she first met me, I was doing everything for free.
Amena Brown:
That's true. That's true. And I was like, we got to put a stop to that. But then the other thing is, you as an artist, you will jump into what you do because it's fun to you.
Matt:
Love it.
Amena Brown:
Some of what you do when you're making music, sometimes you make music just because you want to play in it. You want to experiment with it. You want to see what it is. And so I think we give back and forth to each other that way, because I've had to learn in a lot of these hard situations how to think like a business woman. But sometimes I have to remind myself when we are creating to be like, hey, it's okay to also play and experiment with your art and make stuff just because. So that's us being in a partnership that way works so great.
And that's why artists should be in community with other people. So you can have other people to say to you, "You're worth more than that." So you can have people to say to you, "How they treated you at that event is trash. Do not go to another event. Update your contract, so your contract don't put you in situations like that. Don't work with those people on your team if they going to book you for things like that."
So artists, be a community and do not accept trash treatment. And if you book artists, try. I know it's scary to you if you're used to doing the same thing at your event, but try to let the artist do what they do. You would not go in an OR and stand there behind the surgeon and be like, "Now, now this is just me thinking about it, I'm not a surgeon, but this is me thinking about it. I wouldn't cut it right there. I wouldn't cut it right there, just me thinking about it." But you do it to poets and musicians and visual artists. You do it to us all the time. Stop it. Let us do what we do. We're great at it.
Matt:
Right.
Amena Brown:
See y'all next time. HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.