doves, frogs, and piggies

So my friend Nick Zubeck has just recently got a song of his into a Dove commercial: one of the "campaign for real beauty" ones (song is "The Lucky One")... and as I've been managing his site, I've watched the hits spike from like 5 a day to suddenly 173 yesterday, and 40 already today, before noon. It's wild. He says the response he's been getting from people is pretty overwhelming. At the same time, my friend (and Nick's incidentally) Brian MacMillan just had his CD release for 2007's "Let the Darkness Go" six weeks ago, and it was a sold-out packed house at Hugh's Room in TO.

Now granted, both guys are a little older than me, and I'm officially a trumpeter not a singer-songwriter, and I did get to play on both their albums, but it's hard not to feel some envy over the long-overdue and certainly well-merited success these guys are finally getting...

But in my brooding, it actually occured to me that this may be the best way to get one's own music career going, and I've seen both of them do it: continue making your own music, but then also play for other people (Nick: Barzin, Brian: Kevin Hearn) whose careers eventually take off, bringing you with them. You're then at an elevated place from which to start plugging and playing your own music, for a smaller, more targeted audience. It's a piggy-back /leap-frog idea. It's a longer-term way of thinking about your career, but it obviously works...