wow where do i start?
nice vistalites, btw.
there is music and then there is the music business.
first what do you want/get our of playing the drums? what i mean is do you see yourself on stage every night playing your hit songs to thousands and thousands of fans? do you see yourself in the studio keeping the beat for various singer/songwriters and what not? or do you see yourself playing in a houseband and making serious bank doing cover tunes? when you are playing the drums what are you thinking about? are you imaging "success"? what is "making it" to you?
i'm 29 and I've been playing drums for about 16 years. i've played in a lot of bands. even did a US tour in 2004. I'll first off tell you that is hard. it is tough to keep it together. the band, your wits, your friendship. it takes serious comittment. and not just playing the drums. you might be the next bonham but if you can't work out band issues then you aren't going to last. and that's what happened to me. i love playing drums as much as i love painting. i loved my band. i loved my bandmates. i loved our music. but i didn't love being in a band. you are married to your bandmates. you will see all sides of your bandmates and vice versa. you will find things (if you have already) that they do that annoy the living daylights out of you. and they will continue to do it even if it is brought to their attention. there will most likely be at least one "blow up" from somebody in the band. i'm not saying you are guaranteed to break up, i'm saying that tensions get very high when you and 4 or 5 other people are constantly together confined most of the time to a very small area. you sleep together. you eat together. you work together. you pee together (depending on the amount of alcohol consumed) you didn't say what you did for your current job so i can't tell you if you will be able to make the same amount of income. if you are working a paper route on a bicycle only on mondays from 6-10am. then yes you will most likely make a little more money. maybe. when my band went on tour
http://www.theexlovers.com we made exactly enought to buy us gas to the next gig. we sold a total of 10 t-shirts and about 15 cds. sometimes we'd do a little better and could afford a hotel or by a meal. we slept on gracious people's floors otherwise. it is VERY tight money wise. we broke even by the time we got home and turned in our uhaul trailer. and we still had to pay our bills when we got home and uhm we didn't exactly have income those 3 weeks on tour. i was forced to sell my beloved ibook
and my 10 track digital recorder.
previously i had quit my boring/frustrating job as a prepress tech. i made good money but i wanted to go on tour and didn't see any other way around it.
as scary as it was when i got back off tour, we did get by. and it was one of the best times of my life and will carry with me til i die. we played some great shows and met some wonderful people. we also got the chance to hook up with our other friends who had moved out to different places all over the country. our friends shellshag (
http://www.starcleaner.com were on tour with us for the first half and that was awesome too. we saw the whole country. rebekah and i would probably never had gotten a chance to do this at least not for a long time.
unfortnately our band broke up during/right after tour. so when i got back, i had no job and no band to even give reason to not having a job.
luckily (financially speaking) i found another job as a prepress tech a few months after yet here i am again, frustrated and stressed out like you wouldn't believe with my current job. i am not doing what i want with the majority of my days. but i am working on leaving and pursuing my skills for our own business. i spend the majority of my waking day working a job i truly do not like. stress consumes me and more times than i can stand i have brought it home to rebekah and our animals. right now i work all day. come home, hang with the dogs for a bit and then got to my second non-paying job of painting, working on my feeders or the website, etc. for our business.
this it just my experience. not saying it will happen to you.
I say if it is in your blood then you have to do it and none of what i experienced will bother you if you have to go through it. don't forget you have a family of course. i wouldn't quit your dayjob unless it is making you physically ill or if your job requires you to do something illegal. but if you have the heart, desire and dream to play drums, then i would suggest getting a different job that allows you to take time off when you need for gigs/recording. you might need to eat ramen for a while, but i believe if it is truly in you want to do it will happen.
rebekah gave me some recent help via steve jobs (i love apple computers)
i highly recomend you read this:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html