Rock and roll success stories aside, the vast majority of musicians have to hold down a day job to support their creative endeavors. As music has been progressively demonetized, the need for side hustles and second careers has only increased. Observe English pop star Lily Allen’s recent comment on social media that she makes more money from OnlyFans subscribers looking for pictures of her feet than from her 8 million monthly subscribers on Spotify. She’s not alone. Singer Kate Nash recently launched a Butts for Tour Buses campaign, funding her ongoing tour by flashing the goods on OnlyFans.
Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante put it succinctly in an interview with the Irish Times: “There is no music industry,” he said. “You’d probably make more money selling lemonade on the corner.”
Balancing making art with making a living is a conundrum, and many artists are searching desperately for answers. As Burlington-based singer-songwriter Emma Cook pointed out when we spoke last week, musicians’ solutions vary.
“There’s no road map anymore — everyone is doing it in their own way,” the 33-year-old told me while discussing recording her forthcoming solo album, Of the Morning, her first since 2011.
Much has changed for Cook between solo records, including having a daughter in 2022. She’s fronted two local bands, the now-defunct Emma Cook & Questionable Company and her trio with Alayna Howard and Andy Feltus, EmaLou & the Beat. In 2018, she became a full-time working musician, teaching piano lessons and performing kids’ music with her mentor, early childhood educator Chris Dorman, aka Mister Chris.
When she wrote a new batch of songs in 2022, Cook decided to record them as a solo artist and make the folk album of her dreams. Having cut multiple records in her career, she knew that wouldn’t be cheap.
“I made my first record after taking a semester off at [the University of Vermont] and moving back in with my parents,” she recalled. “It was great, making a record in the woods of northern Michigan, a very homegrown kind of experience. But I knew that with this record, I wanted to do something very different.”
Cook linked up with producer and musician Katie Martucci and headed to the Greenpoint Recording Collective in Brooklyn to begin making Of the Morning, which she hopes to release in May. She estimates the entire process will cost around $20,000 — not particularly costly for a studio project.
“So much of the work in music is unpaid work,” she said. “My songwriting, my booking, the overall development of entire projects … it’s all unpaid. I could be doing kids’ music or teaching lessons, where I know I’ll be paid. But I’ve found that I have to keep a balance where I’m accessing my songwriting and expressing myself and taking the opportunity to connect with people listening to my songs.”
To offset the costs of the recording, Cook launched a Kickstarter campaign, the first time in her career she’s tried crowdfunding. While it initially felt strange to her to ask for money, seeing the project halfway funded in the campaign’s first 24 hours gave Cook an immense feeling of gratitude and connection to her fans.
“The theme of Of the Morning is about connection and our shared humanity,” Cook said. “So it’s kind of fitting how something like a fundraising effort brought that home for me. I put out a call for help with making an album, and my community was there — that really makes me emotional.”
Cook hopes to wrap up the campaign in December and, with full funding, finish tracking, mixing and mastering the new LP. In the meantime, she has more than enough other projects to keep her busy.
She’ll teach music and movement classes for kids with local singer-songwriter Giovanina Bucci at Bucci’s Marigold Gallery in 2025. And EmaLou & the Beat will host a live holiday album recording on Saturday, December 21, at Burlington’s Tank Recording Studio as part of its TRS Live series.
“The band did a holiday show at the Venetian [Cocktail & Soda] Lounge last Christmas, and it was such a blast,” Cook recalled. “So we decided to record a holiday album live at the Tank with Ben [Collette, producer and Tank owner].”
Show attendees will have access to a free download of the performance a week or so later. The band hopes to put the recording out on vinyl for next Christmas.
It’s shaping up to be a big 2025 for Cook. While she acknowledges the challenges of creating and promoting her music while raising a family and working full time, she said the process also brings plenty of rewards.
“At the end of the day, I’m making the music I want to make, and that’s immensely gratifying,” she said. “And the response I’ve gotten from fans and friends and family, as they see my pursuing a dream I’ve had since I was a kid, just makes me want to keep going.”
This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2024.
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